Re: globalization:poor design?

[tom abeles <tabeles@tmn.com>]

Marasigan . Vicente wrote:
 
> But those several HUNDRED years of transition will be made up of
> micro-transitions, each maybe about 30 or 40 years long.  This may give
> each generation enough time to educate the succeeding generation about
> lessons learned from the flawed mindsets of the previous generation.
> 
> Corporations of the next generation may become more open to a policy of
> optimizing (rather than maximizing) gains - for the long-term survival of
> a finite planet.
----------------------------------------------
Marasigan . Vicente wrote, in part:
 
> But those several HUNDRED years of transition will be made up of
> micro-transitions, each maybe about 30 or 40 years long.  This may give
> each generation enough time to educate the succeeding generation about
> lessons learned from the flawed mindsets of the previous generation.
> 
> Corporations of the next generation may become more open to a policy of
> optimizing (rather than maximizing) gains - for the long-term survival of
> a finite planet.
--------------------------------------------
Vincente's hope is based on the "Myth" of progress- that we are moving
towards some ultimate goal which would be an evolution of humans to some
ideal which is in harmony with the earth, a meshing of machines in some
equilbirum based on an ecological balance, a return to the "Garden" and
innocence.

What is of greater concern is the hope that corportations would become
more enlightened and see long term progress of greater benefit than
short term gains.

We should look at the second proposition, first. Corporations are
collections of people and they can not exist without people to make them
work and to consume their products. It starts with individuals. Until
the public stops measuring their well being by the accumulation of
material goods, there is little incentive for change to happen. It
starts with one person and grows from that point. Until we, as
individuals, break the habit, change can not occur. And we can not
afford to put a suburban assult vehicle in everyone's garage, or even to
give everone a garage before we stop-

The idea of a finite planet is another "Myth" made strong by a few
pictgures from outer space. Its a nice intellectual exercise to draw a
circle around the system- a result of Enlightenment physics and
equilibrium mathematics. First, as Julian Simon pointed out before his
death, he has proven all the doom sayers wrong on all their predictions
about resource exhaustion and environmental collapse. We do not know
this planet and what its capabilities are, given human ingenuity. And
secondly, the fact that we have been able to take a picture from space
says that we do not know what the limits are, given the universe. Humans
are a relatively young species on this planet and probably have been
around for less time than it took the dinasauers to disappear.


Who knows what humans will look like in 100,500,1000 years? Maybe we
will have gills and have returned to live at the bottom of the ocean.
Maybe we will have added microchips to our brains and have wireless
modems hooked into our neural systems and Maybe we will be transported
to the starship Enterprise in a galaxy far far away or Maybe our life
spans will be for several hundred years and we will have four arms and
webbed feet and make food from molecues with nanobots. And maybe we will
wander to and fro in white robes speaking of Michaelangelo

whatever the path, it will not be in microsteps forward to some
predestined goal. Babel Tower will not rise out of the hopes generated
by either Disney or some Ecotopian visionary.

thoughts?

tom abeles