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I guess I’ve been waiting for apocalypse since before Y2K. This is why being a history buff is dangerous: you look down through the ages and all you see are societies rising and falling again. Sheep grazing in the Roman Forum. The sun setting all over the British Empire. The steady decline of hip-hop. And so on.
What I’m starting to realize is that things are both better and worse than I used to think in my Mad Max nightmare fantasies. I’m not expecting a collapse in my own lifetime, really. But the game is changing, slowly, in such a way that we probably wouldn’t recognize the world we’re leaving to babies now being born. And it’s not going to be al-Qa’ida or the Chinese or even global climate change that will do us in, but simple mathematics:
Economies can’t grow forever. Cancers eventually kill their hosts.
This is as close to heresy as it gets in our modern age. The idea of constant growth is at the heart of mainstream economic theory: the worst thing imaginable to an economist is a halt – a “recession” – in growth. But it stands to reason (or it should, at least) that you just can’t keep growing on a finite planet with finite reserves.
Richard Heinberg, in his excellent upcoming book The End of Growth (which is already available on Kindle, so I’m not using a crystal ball here) points out three dynamics that mainstream economists completely ignore:
These things are both a consequence of our heedless growth and a major roadblock to the ongoing metastasis of industrial civilization. Now, a wise and enlightened society would see the inherent contradiction between what we believe and what is actually happening and begin the process of transition to a more sustainable way of living. But obviously, we’re not wise or enlightened, so what seems more and more likely is that simple mathematics will hit us upside the head with a cluestick. Unfortunately, though, the harshest consequences will fall on those people least able to cope: the poor, the sick, and the very young and old.
There has been a lot written down through the years – especially since the 1970s, when people like Donella Meadows began pointing out the limits to growth – about the nature of the problem and how to go about solving it. I haven’t found a better framework for thinking about the subject than the “Buddhist economics” proposed by E.F Schumacher. In a collection of essays called Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered, Schumacher talked about the aim of Buddhist economics being “to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption.”
There are examples large and small of alternative economic structures that work, provide quality of life, and are sustainable. We may not be able to avoid the crash, but we can find a way to pick up the pieces afterward.
These are dark days for privacy.
Facebook is selling your personal information – and that of your friends – to the highest bidder. The Obama administration adopted the Bush policy of warrantless wiretapping, and demands even greater freedom for oversight. And a new policy of the TSA requires select passengers to be either body-scanned or submitted to humiliating pat downs. Even though the media hyped stories of outrage, with women and small children being subjected to what was clearly abusive behavior, the overwhelming majority of air travelers rejected calls for resistance. Over the holiday, most people I talked to had already lapsed into acquiescence: “it’s invasive, sure, but whatever keeps us safe…” Evidence that the scanners are both ineffective and hazardous is ignored. Dual fears of terror attacks and missed flights won out over civil rights. And so it goes.
Meanwhile, the latest WikiLeaks document dump is revealing the secrets of the global elite, including a US plan to spy on the leaders of the United Nations, Arab leaders begging the US to bomb Iran and a top Chinese official hilariously ordering a Google hack after finding disrespectful comments about himself online. What’s interesting about this is how it parallels the hack of climate scientists’ emails almost exactly a year ago. I for one criticized the people who hyped the so-called “Climategate” thing using a lot of the same terms that government apologists are using today: you can’t take private comments out of context, hacking an email server is theft, etc. And let’s leave aside whether the two events are reasonably comparable or the motives of the different hacker/leakers. Exposure is now a tool of asymmetrical warfare, rather than a power that only governments possess. And this leads to some interesting possibilities.
Back in the PGP days, smart kids like me advocated strong encryption for the masses as a sort of my-home-is-my-castle defense from government surveillance. And while that had – and still has – some merit for dealing with individual communications, key exchange never really caught on, and we’re exposed in so many areas of our online lives that encrypting your emails or even proxy browsing and avoiding social networking is little protection. I’m increasingly won over to the ideas on write David Brin, who’s been proposing something called “the Transparent Society” since the 1998 Wired magazine article (and, later, a book) by that name.
Basically, the idea is this: the increasing sophistication of surveillance methods makes the pursuit of privacy a cat-and-mouse game that average citizens can’t win (or, as Brin quotes Heinlein as saying, “‘privacy laws’ only make the bugs smaller”). However, rather than giving up on civil liberties, Brin advocates that this cut both ways: advocating ‘sousveillance’ of government by people as well as the other way around. Additionally, he uses the analogy of a restaurant to show the benefits of a more ‘transparent’ approach to privacy. When you are in a restaurant, Brin notes, other patrons are dissuaded from eavesdropping because you can see them leaning over, cupping their hands to their ears to listen in on you. If you were surrounded by screens, contrariwise, it would be easy for others to listen in on you without you knowing about it.
If you can watch them watching you, in other words, you at least have the power to know what information might be used against you. Moreover, you can have your own record of where you went and what you did to combat against government intentionally or (as is more often the case, accidentally) accusing you of something you didn’t do. There could be reasonable exceptions carved into the law for intimate privacy, for example, or to protect victims of abuse. But the idea that privacy is a wall that protects you has been revealed as a tragic fiction.
There’s gaps in the idea, obviously. But giving up the illusion of privacy in favor of real, genuine, verifiable accountability is something that free people should not be afraid to take a serious look at, in this age of porno-scanners and secret emails on the Internet. We need to open our eyes.
Michael Tobis wrote a response to Judith Curry’s posts on dealing with uncertainty. It seemed that the reaction to this was largely clouded by objections to the tone of the writing rather than the substance. As a “blogospheric experiment” if you will, I decided to take the loaded terms out of the essay, leaving only the argument itself, to see if the reaction might be any different.
This was done without consulting Dr. Tobis, so any errors introduced by my redaction are mine alone.
One brief note: I am turning moderation off in the spirit of allowing a freewheeling debate. This of necessity means that all of the posts on this personal blog will be unmoderated, including many that are of a fairly personal nature. I’d ask for your restraint in responding to any of those.
You can read her essay “Doubt” for some context on this:
Curry:
Lets frame belief, disbelief, and doubt in the context of the Italian flag, that was introduced previously on the hurricane thread in which evidence for a hypothesis is represented as green, evidence against is represented as red, and the white area reflecting uncommitted belief that can be associated with uncertainty in evidence or unknowns.
Let’s look at an example in the above-linked article:
Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.
This statement is often used as a litmus test for belief regarding global warming, i.e. you believe this statement (consensus) or you don’t (skeptic). Very likely denotes a probability of anthropogenic influence between 90 and 99% (lets pick 95%) and I interpret most to mean between 51 and 90% (lets pick 70%), with the remainder (30%) associated with natural variability. Hence, the Italian flag analysis could represent this in the following way: 5% assigned to uncommitted belief (white), 67% assigned to anthropogenic forcing (green), 28% assigned to natural variability (red). … my personal weights for the Italian flag are: white 40%, green 30%, red 30%. My assignment allows the anthropogenic influence to be as large as 70% and as small as 30%
This statement is often used as a litmus test for belief regarding global warming, i.e. you believe this statement (consensus) or you don’t (skeptic). Very likely denotes a probability of anthropogenic influence between 90 and 99% (lets pick 95%) and I interpret most to mean between 51 and 90% (lets pick 70%), with the remainder (30%) associated with natural variability. Hence, the Italian flag analysis could represent this in the following way:
5% assigned to uncommitted belief (white), 67% assigned to anthropogenic forcing (green), 28% assigned to natural variability (red).
…
my personal weights for the Italian flag are:
white 40%, green 30%, red 30%.
My assignment allows the anthropogenic influence to be as large as 70% and as small as 30%
As I have pointed out previously, that last sentence conflates a hypothesis (a proposition that must be either true or false) with a weighting.
Suppose, to be more specific, I believed (consistent with the above) as follows:
In the light of all this, let’s consider her most recent contribution, which begins
Historical surface temperature observations over the 20th century show a clear signal of increasing surface temperatures. Italian flag: Green 70%, White 30%, Red 0%. (Note: nobody is claiming that the temperatures have NOT increased.)
OK, is it fair to say that “Note: nobody is claiming that the temperatures have NOT increased” means that nobody claims that “Historical surface temperature observations over the 20th century show a clear signal of increasing surface temperatures”? I mean, if nobody can claim the contrary, then the signal must be clear, right? So what does that white 30% represent?
Goodwin was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.
Content © 2010 The Somerville News
Well, the pressures of a daily deadline, plus lingering exhaustion and aversion from writing a 50,006-word novel draft in November… and on top of that meeting a woman, falling in love and pretty much full-time cohabitating have played hell with my blogging schedule.
I’m planning on resurrecting this here blog so I can write more about subjects I have a genuine interest in, for two reasons: first, the not-making-jack-a-dull-boy angle, and secondly, the hopes that I can build up a portfolio so I can get paid to write about what I’m interested in. To that end, I’m crash studying atmospheric science and basic hydrodynamics so I can understand and write about climate issues. I’m doing dharma talks with my meditation group, and also beginning to think about societal theories I’ve been gestating over a long, politico-geek existence. So expect this hodge-podge of ideas and notes to get even hodgier and podgier in the coming weeks and months.
It should be interesting. At least to me.
Writing too much and living too large to make a real blog post… so in lieu of that, I just figured I’d do my part to spread the word about the new jun-ken-po, taking rock-paper-scissors to the next level:
How to play:
(I’m seven hours into a twenty-eight hour flight — it’s quarter to two in the morning, body-time, so I’m more than a little loopy; let’s see how much sense this makes…)
Bodhidharma: Self-nature is subtle and mysterious. In the realm of the inexplicable Dharma, not preaching a single word is called the Precept of Not Lying.
Dogen Zenji: The Dharma Wheel turns from the beginning. There is neither surplus nor lack. The whole universe is moistened with nectar, and the truth is ready to harvest.
Robert Chotan Gyoun Roshi: I take up the way of not speaking falsely. Speaking falsely is also killing, and specifically, killing the Dharma. The lie is set up to defend the idea of a fixed entity, a self image, a concept, or an institution. I want to be known as warm and compassionate, so I deny that I was cruel, even though somebody got hurt. Sometimes I must lie to protect someone or large numbers of people, animals, plants and things from getting hurt, or I believe I must. What is the big picture? “Buddha nature pervades the whole universe.”
In the same way that ” no stealing” is a version of “no killing,” the precept “no lying” is a version of the precepts that precede it. Lying is, as Aitken Roshi explains, killing the Dharma. It’s also stealing the truth from others – and from yourself – and taking what should be shared out of an immature selfishness.
We lie to protect the self… sometimes for personal gain, to take advantage of people, or to avoid looking stupid. Whatever the specific justification, bullshitting is another kind of violence.
When you lie to take something from someone else, something you don’t deserve – money, or property, or confidence – you do grave harm. When you lie to pretend you are someone you’re not, you lay mortar on the bricks of your own prison.
The Third Grave Precept: I Take Up the Way of Not Misusing Sex.
Bodhidharma: Self-nature is subtle and mysterious. In the realm of the ungilded Dharma, not creating a veneer of attachment is called the Precept of Not Misusing Sex.
Dogen Zenji: The Three Wheels are pure and clear. When you have nothing to desire, you follow the way of all Buddhas.
Robert Chotan Gyoun Aitken Roshi: Sexual intercourse is misused when it is an addiction rather than the peak experience of love between a committed couple. All the Precepts point to addictive behaviour, stealing, lying, using alcohol or drugs, slandering, even killing. Addiction reveals a lack of confidence, a need for something from others, the interdependence of all things inverted for just one being. It is no good condemning promiscuity as immoral behaviour, for it is only a symptom of general immaturity. Like anybody else, the addict needs guidance to find a way to forget the self.
Recovery is America’s secular religion. It has orthodoxy and orthopraxis, congregations and a whole social structure that surrounds it. One thing I’ve found throughout the years is that the people I trusted the most were people on some sort of spiritual path. Problem was – as with a lot of my evangelical Christian friends – that spiritual path had sides I strongly disagreed with. I have a number of friends in recovery, working the Steps, and they’re similarly people I can trust. And, at least so far, I haven’t found a problem with the program.
Addiction – the compulsion to overuse alcohol, drugs, food, indebtedness… and, yeah, sex, - is a problem of epidemic proportions in the West. Sex is maybe the most insidious of these, because it’s so closely bound up with – and so can be confused with – love, one of our highest emotions.
Aitken Roshi refers to misusing sex as taking something should be shared… that it’s a kind of pathological selfishness. And if there’s a drug more powerful than romantic love – or a rush more reliably satisfying than a good, screaming orgasm – I haven’t found it yet. And not for lack of trying.
I’ve grubbed around on the addictive side of sexuality, and done myself (not to mention innocent others) a lot of harm. It’s a big part of the reason why I am choosing to remain solo for the foreseeable future, and work on my spiritual growth. I’d gotten this immense feeling of validation from someone opening themselves up to me, and it became a buzz I chased after. And, you know, fuck doing that kind of harm. I’m not a fighter or a killer, but I did acts of violence just the same.
It’s an intense renunciation. If I can see the emptiness of attachment in this area, it might – it just might – make it easier to realize in other areas as well.
I mean, a brother can hope…
The Second Grave Precept: I Take Up the Way of Not Stealing.
Bodhidharma: Self-nature is subtle and mysterious. In the realm of the unattainable Dharma, not having thoughts of gaining is called the Precept of Not Stealing.
Dogen Zenji: The self and things of the world are just as they are. The gate of emancipation is open.
Robert Chotan Gyoun Aitken Roshi: This and all the subsequent Precepts are variants of the first, “Not Killing”. “I take up the way of not stealing” means I will respect the order of things – the paramita of harmony. Peasants who occupy unused private land in Central America are demonstrating their view of the fundamental order. “We are taking what is rightfully ours”, they say. The landlords say they are stealing. The question is, which view kills? Which view gives life?
Robert Chotan Gyoun Aitken Roshi: This and all the subsequent Precepts are variants of the first, “Not Killing”. “I take up the way of not stealing” means I will respect the order of things – the paramita of harmony.
Peasants who occupy unused private land in Central America are demonstrating their view of the fundamental order. “We are taking what is rightfully ours”, they say. The landlords say they are stealing. The question is, which view kills? Which view gives life?
It’s obvious to the point of triviality to say that we live in a materialistic society… it’s like saying water is wet. No duh. Usually what’s meant is that people put a high value on the material goods we accumulate: the car, the house, the 128-inch plasma TV that you need SPF 30 to watch in your living room. The philosophy of materialism, though, goes one step further and says that only physical things are real. Love, friendship, karma, the loyalty of a fine dog: these are thought to be inconsequential. Reality is what you can hold in your hand.
The Buddhist atomists of the 7th century held a different view. They imagined atoms as points in space made of pure energy, always changing. (Some modern views of physics would agree.) ”‘Everything is evanescent,’ … says the Buddhist, because there is no stuff,” was how the Russian scholar Fyodor Ippolitovich Shcherbatskoy would put it many centuries later.
No stuff.
So what if our whole conception of reality – that the things we surround ourselves with and the castles we build to protect them are what’s really real – is exactly wrong? How would that affect the way we relate to all this stuff? Would we feel OK having so much of it here in the developed world when there are people who haven’t got enough to even live?
The whole idea of “enough” is one that’s totally gotten lost in our world. In the last century, an economist by the name of E.F. Schumacher (not a Buddhist) wrote a book called Small is Beautiful, which described what he called “Buddhist economics.” Central to his concept of a just economic system was the idea that, “since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption.” The economic system of the world as it is celebrates consumption, and “growth” as a good in and of itself.
So which view kills? Which view gives life?
I’m planning to write about each of the Ten Grave Precepts of Zen Buddhism. Not sure if I’ll do one after the other or take breaks in between, but now that I write as a job, it’s more vital than ever that I write about what is important to me to me and not just what I’m told to write about. Stay tuned.
The First Grave Precept: I Take Up the Way of Not Killing.
Bodhidharma: Self-nature is subtle and mysterious. In the realm of the everlasting Dharma, not giving rise to the ideal of killing is called the Precept of Not Killing.
Dogen Zenji: The Buddha seed grows in accordance with not taking life. Transmit the life of Buddha’s wisdom and do not kill.
Robert Chotan Gyoun Aitken Roshi: This First Precept echoes the first of our Great Vows for All, “Though the many beings are numberless, I vow to save them.” The Precept is specific and negative in wording; the Vow is universal and positive. The emphasis in the Precept is upon protection and nurturing: the emphasis in the Vow is upon spiritual encouragement. Both are expressions of perfections: both enhance the process of perfection. Usually, nurturing a specific being is clearly also a matter of saving the universe, but sometimes options of abortion, spraying bugs, and trapping rats seem to offer ways to keep the world organism thinned and healthy. Such issues can become agonizingly difficult, and it is tempting to make decisions on the basis of persuasive arguments that are over-simple and reductive. They are koans and must be faced with a clear sense of proportion. Decisions about the quantitatively larger issue of war and peace have been clarified by the unprecedented technological capacity for killing which science has achieved. There is no longer an argument for a “just war”, or for “mutually assured deterence”. Incredibly murderous weapons are prepared to destroy all human life and almost all animal and plant life. The koan here is how to speak out appropriately and take action that is instructive in opposition to such weapons and their so-called rationale. Less obvious, but no less dangerous, is the probability of biological disaster through the destruction of forests, meadows, wetlands, lakes, rivers, seas, and the air. I vow to moderate my lifestyle and reduce its demands, and to encourage you to do the same, for the protection of all beings in their infinite variety.
Robert Chotan Gyoun Aitken Roshi: This First Precept echoes the first of our Great Vows for All, “Though the many beings are numberless, I vow to save them.” The Precept is specific and negative in wording; the Vow is universal and positive. The emphasis in the Precept is upon protection and nurturing: the emphasis in the Vow is upon spiritual encouragement. Both are expressions of perfections: both enhance the process of perfection.
Usually, nurturing a specific being is clearly also a matter of saving the universe, but sometimes options of abortion, spraying bugs, and trapping rats seem to offer ways to keep the world organism thinned and healthy. Such issues can become agonizingly difficult, and it is tempting to make decisions on the basis of persuasive arguments that are over-simple and reductive. They are koans and must be faced with a clear sense of proportion.
Decisions about the quantitatively larger issue of war and peace have been clarified by the unprecedented technological capacity for killing which science has achieved. There is no longer an argument for a “just war”, or for “mutually assured deterence”. Incredibly murderous weapons are prepared to destroy all human life and almost all animal and plant life. The koan here is how to speak out appropriately and take action that is instructive in opposition to such weapons and their so-called rationale.
Less obvious, but no less dangerous, is the probability of biological disaster through the destruction of forests, meadows, wetlands, lakes, rivers, seas, and the air. I vow to moderate my lifestyle and reduce its demands, and to encourage you to do the same, for the protection of all beings in their infinite variety.
The way of non-violence is a challenging one. It’s pretty damn near impossible to live in this world without doing harm to other beings. This isn’t to say that the effort of becoming aware of that harm, and doing what you can to limit and reverse it, isn’t a worthwhile or in fact a necessary effort. But you gotta have perspective. There’s a tendency to see the Vows and Precepts as absolutes. All concepts are relative, so the idea of a rule that covers all circumstances kind of falls apart when you look at it, like pulling on the loose end of a granny knot.
I’m not a vegetarian. I feel great when I eat meat. But I struggle with it. I do avoid factory-raised flesh food, for reasons of compassion and also health. However, I try to maintain awareness that this tasty, tasty strip of bacon was once an intelligent, sensitive being (I’ve met pigs, yo: they’re cool). Is it inherently more compassionate, though, to let animals live and instead slaughter vegetables? And if so, why? Are we so sure that, because we can’t perceive the suffering of plants, that they don’t in fact suffer?
Aitken Roshi’s call to moderate our lifestyles is, without question of doubt, the correct one. An America that ate only organic produce from Whole Foods would still be an America that burned massive amounts of fossil fuels, not to mention piling mountains of solid waste on our earth and dumping rivers of polluted effluents in our water.
Taking up the way of not killing cannot begin and end with avoiding war and the murder of animals. And the fact that it calls for a radical, radical change in the way our entire society lives is not a reason to do nothing. We take up this way with everything we do. There is a reason why it is the First.
