Aligning the present and the future - playing in the stars

I have two comments I’d like target to the growing chorus of people who believe that fundamental change is needed in many of the ways we approach food production, industrial production, and in general, the way that we in the present-day West tend to face life. Just to be clear, I'm totally part of that chorus. How to get it done, however, is a matter of strategy and communication more so than ideals.

The first comment is that change is almost guaranteed not to happen in a timely manner unless it can be framed in such a way as to be appealing to today’s corporate and political elite. The elites typically have an interest in maintaining the status quo, but can sometimes be tempted to change their ways if the benefits of doing so exceed the potential risks of trying to maintain things how they are. For example, corporate investors may be tempted by potential for profits in nascent energy industries or commercial opportunities in entertainment and/or communications. Another way to look at this is that the cost of doing business today’s way would have to be perceived as sufficiently risky to embrace tomorrow. Fortunately, this is inherently compatible with the philosophy of markets. All that remains to be done is to change the rules of the game to make it possible.

The second comment is that a ‘revolution’ of sorts could also be achieved through the court of public opinion. This is far more appealing in a democratic sense, and would ideally be used in conjunction with the first proposition. In fact, this could be an important step in creating the pressure to establish new rules to the game. However, I would like to point out that it is a rare thing indeed that revolutionary change succeeds without the consent or support of at least some significant portion of the political and commercial elite. I am aware of no contradictory examples in history. Ideally, a combination of consumer pressures and democratic pressures, coupled with new market opportunities in a sustainable society, will align the interests of a sufficient portion of the general public and the powerful.

Otherwise, I propose that our move into the future will happen in a haphazard and patchwork manner that is all too likely to degrade our natural capital to the point where technical progress will not be able to overcome scarcity, resulting in either a long economic decline or a crash. Fortunately, we humans have this thing called rationality, and are even capable of using it to consider the potential trajectories that our current actions can take.
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With a decent background in science, I do find it somewhat contradictory to make predictions about future developments. After all, evolution occurs in ‘response’ to (or rather, selection acts according to) environmental pressures, and does not by nature lead in any specific direction.

This poses two problems. The first is that we don’t really know where things would go if everything is left to its own devices (God knows the proponents of laissez-faire sure wouldn’t leave the markets to sort themselves out ... they’d be milking every cow in the field, teats or no). The second is that we don’t really know what ‘evolutionary’ pressures in future social and economic environments will be like, and thus have little ability to predict the effects that current trends, regulations or political outcomes may have on future events.

I was thinking today … as I’ve said before (a sort of upside down version of the concept of ‘survivorship bias’ in evaluation of financial management capabilities), that the best way to be wrong is to start making predictions. Then, I had a brilliant thought! But the best way to make correct predictions is to make lots of them! Anyways…my extensive use of the conditional and bracketed conditionalities may make this difficult to read, but also limit my statements to forms that are nearly self-proving. See the following sentence for an example…

In any case, what I’m saying is sort of self-evident, since it amounts to saying that if unfettered markets will lead to an environmental collapse, AND we do nothing about it, then there will be an environmental collapse. I happen to be very doubtful that markets will manage to align environmental and economic interests on their own, mostly due to the near impossibility of aligning the interests of current and future generations within the scope of a lax regulatory framework and a legal system which obliges CEOs to act in the interests of their shareholders’ maximum short-term profits.

The second of these need not be an inherent problem. Also, it would be unfair to set aside the potential role for technical progress. It will surely play a central role in some manner, but we may even demand more goods under greater efficiency depending on the elasticity of consumer demand. What this essentially points to is the need for political action to create pressures for a regulatory framework that will allow profit maximizing business to operate in a framework that makes some effort to align the interests of present and future generations, while stoking the fires of technical progress and entrepreneurship that will get us there.

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This brings us to the classic question of whether there can be such a thing as a priori knowledge, where in a sense, the contradictions in Hume, Kant and Kierkegaard are informative. Hume thinks all knowledge is fundamentally based on experience, which shapes our ability to think. (Interestingly, at a biochemical or molecular level, we can sort of say that his position more or less true, in a sense). Kant, however, claims that all metaphysical knowledge must be a priori, since if it required our experience of the thing for it to be a truth, then it could not be a truth in and of itself (his interest being the development of a logically consistent theory of morality). However, since there isn’t much question that Kierkegaard was correct that the finitude of the human mind can never grasp the complexity of reality (except perhaps the very tiny bits of it we are exposed to), then how could blind ventures into a priori knowledge ever lead to greater spiritual progress than ventures made in the confines of our material existence?

I agree with Kant, but only with the exception that he has charged us to do the impossible, which we must then accomplish. Otherwise, what separates us ‘questioning beings’ from the monkey?

Monkeys are totally cool. But hey … nature only favours species that are able to prevent their collapse, and we may be the first to be able to do so self-consciously, through intelligence or any other means possible. Wouldn’t the truly natural thing be to harness our economy so as to ensure the long term fitness of our species? (In case you think this smacks of the tiniest hint of eugenics, I will use this context as a stepping stone in my next entry to show how the concept of eugenics can be nothing if not fundamentally flawed. My statement here is somewhat far-fetched in that it suggests that we may need to actively make sure that we still have a functioning environment to operate in. Eugenics is infinitely more far-fetched, since it presumes infinitely more knowledge, as I will show, and so it should be pretty easy to knock this nonsense out of the park).

On a somewhat different note, I decided today that humans will colonize the galaxy. It’s really the only choice, since our earth will only last for so long. After all, the sun will probably explode in a few billion years. Then I became sad, thinking that it would be so interesting to see how things turn out. Oh well, that’s life. Then I read an article on the successes and challenges of accommodating Muslims in European cities, and how local political institutions were effectively meeting these challenges.

While faith may sometimes manifest itself as enlightened inquiry (I have none of the first, and perhaps some of the second), I then considered the effects of blind faith, which has been a mobilizing factor for conflict over the ages.

On balance, consideration of such conflict led me to think that humanity’s development is far more likely to follow the experience of the Vikings in Greenland. I would never say that we’d be better off if no one had faith, but faith and enlightened inquiry are a contradiction that few minds will happily embrace.

Given these theoretical and historico-empirical problems, I think I will have to settle for the following … I decided today that, if inter-cultural cooperation and mutual respect develop to the point where the major religions of the world can reconcile themselves to the fact that they are embarking on different, yet similar paths of spiritual develoment, all of which are legitimate and meaningful, then we may one day play in the stars.

The nature of a recent email exchange with a fundamentalist Christian who believes that God appointed Harper, however, leads me to believe that religion will be the primary force that prevents humanity from ever reaching the heavens.


Is this a reflection of experience, an a priori reasoning (where Manichean faith prevents cooperation or reconciliation), or an indication of the sheer impossibility of the individual mind to perceive the infinite complexity of reality? I suppose there is comfort for some people in saying “God knows” (which I consider to be a close equivalent to saying "reality is"), but it isn’t going to get me one iota closer to knowing.

OMG!!! As I wrote a title (the last thing I did), “We’re all made of stars” by Moby just came on. Here’s the chorus… “People they come together, people they fall apart, no one can stop us now, we’re all made of stars.” It was on random from a pretty large playlist. OK, I give us a 1 in 4516 chance. From an evolutionary standpoint, things are looking good!