#techno-optimists

[collapseofindustrialcivilization]

Last Rites for a Dying Civilization

When the Black Death struck Europe in the Middle Ages, the fundamental values that held society together broke down. Husbands and wives abandoned each other and mother’s abandoned their children. This void of ethics that overtook the population is described in Boccaccio’s Decameron, considered a masterpiece of Italian prose and a documentary of life during that time. The book describes the…

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[arcticdementor]

When the two proposals that arise from an issue where modern institutions conflict with (well-established) human behavior (which extends well beyond humans, or even mammals, and has sound evolutionary explanations) are:

Evolution, shmevolution, there is no “human nature,” everything is socially constructed, we just need to figure out the right social pressures to reshape people to behave the way we need them to; or

Yes, this isn’t amenable to any mere social pressure… so we need to get >50% of all reproducing couples to use IVF (and somehow find a way to pay for it) to adjust the population balance…

[evokit-notes]

Techno-optimists such as Steward Brand suggest that 'we are as gods so we might as well get good at it.' Agreed, industrial civilization has given us awesome powers, but a better characterisation of how we handle those powers is made by Braden Allenby and Daniel Sarewitz in their reflection on what they call the techno-human condition: 'We are gods? No, for we have created the power but not the mind. We have got used to even blase about, the possibility of nuclear winder, in the way a two year old gets used to a loader .357 magnum lying on the floor within easy reach.'

Caspar Henderson | Dark Mountain - Issue 3 | p163