Certain decisions made in the past, by man, have given us the civilization that confronts us daily.
Now surely man had no part to play in the ecological evolution of the world, up to a certain point. The big bang, ice ages, meteor impacts, etc., all happened and will continue to happen regardless of our choosing, like the shifting tide. We once lived in a world where all risk was exogenous-- it came from our interactions with and inability to overcome nature. Now we have created a world where much of the risk we face is manufactured-- it is a result of our willingness to build factories or surf on the internet or drive a motorcycle.
Civilization is inherently a man-made thing. While at first our products were much more bound to satisfy the environmental constraints we faced, now we can often scoff at what might have not been created naturally and manufacture a world to our liking. We live with the products of what our forefathers made, and have no choice but to, but we can also set out to build upon this civilization given what we know now, and work to improve what we were born into .
2 comments:
Thanks for the main page shout-out. that actually is similar to what I was thinking would eb a good way to get these side-conversations, which, as you mention, are part of the blog's progress, into the body of the blog itself. That way the casual visitor could see some of the interaction and be encouraged to get involved. not that i'm an expert at this sort of thing. my own blog hasnt exactly gone viral.
now, for the actual content of your entry.
how would you bring what you say here about man's ability to control his existence together with your thoughts on major disasters? i'm not sure i'm bringing the two thoughts together in the manner that makes my question clearest, but thats what i got.
is it naive for us to assume we've got the basics of what holds up society on lock-down? electricity, energy, shelter, means of communication, etc. or is our firm faith in our creations and our ability to sustain them misplaced?
and btw, not positive, but i think the name you were thinking of for the vhs alternative was beta-max.
the decision for that i think, like a lot of product-survival stories, was probably influenced by some kind of shady entertainment-market-cabal-control. like the death of hddvd bc the sutdios backed blu-ray
First, Tom, I apologize for the late response. Things down in DC have been a little crazy and I continue to forget to post whenever I have some time to sit and think.
I don't feel those two themes -- controlling our existence and my ideas on the precariousness of our society -- are contradictory, though they may seem so. If anything it demonstrates man's inability to construct a society capable of tempering or absorbing crises in stride. In other words, just because we have been given the know-how to construct a globally interconnected, technologically driven human network, doesn't mean we construct it well.
My initial point was that our faith in our ability to to sustain the institutions that support man's needs and wants are misplaced. I suppose we are coping with this problem now. In terms of the economy, while I wont advocate a soviet style state-regulated economy (as the state is often the cause of not the solution to many of our public problems) what we have needs to change. I dont think there's any disagreement there.
On another note, I have been listening to a decent amount of commentary about the behavior of the stock market, and what "the stock market's doing today," as if this is some exogenous phenomena like the weather that we have no control over. PEOPLE have created and are exacerbating this problem. Once we come to terms with this, then we can proceed with a way to attack those who are at fault, so that it cannot happen again. And I am unsure if the $700 billion does that.
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