{"id":1172,"date":"2015-05-30T20:57:18","date_gmt":"2015-05-31T01:57:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=1172"},"modified":"2015-05-30T20:57:18","modified_gmt":"2015-05-31T01:57:18","slug":"from-egypt-to-left-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2015\/05\/30\/from-egypt-to-left-field\/","title":{"rendered":"From Egypt to Left Field"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Egyptian correspondence<\/a> leads to an off-topic point on my part.\u00a0 First, I’ll reiterate the correspondent’s innocent remark:<\/p>\n

I was channeling Jared Diamond when I wrote that — a non-optimistic version of Jared, that is. Right — 100 years ago we were divinely (innocently?) naive and innocent. And the earth could recover from the damage we had done. Today, at 7 billion plus strong, it’s a far worse story — but we like to pretend it’s not there or not so bad. You should read Diamond’s “Collapse”. It’s long and wordy, but very informative.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

… but the entire “recover from the damage” remark is interesting in its implication that there’s an ideal “natural” state which we humans have damaged.\u00a0 I don’t\u00a0 believe there’s ever an ideal natural state in isolation from humanity, nor do I generally feel we humans are somehow outside of Nature.\u00a0 Until we re-insert the human viewpoint into the conversation (and I believe that it’s very important that the viewpoint be explicitly stated), there are simply states, which can be characterized in any number of ways – species diversity, population densities, mineral presence, etc.\u00a0 Once we restate with the human viewpoint (or interest), then it’s possible to credibly say, “Well, it’s ruined for human<\/em> occupation because of xyz …”<\/p>\n

Perhaps it’s all a fine point, but to me there’s this confusion of the first statement implying that the Universe was made for humanity’s use – because we attach value statements to state perturbations of Nature – while, to me, the proper detached viewpoint requires not attaching a value statement to an observation until the proper interest – humanity’s – has been established.\u00a0 The implicit – and unstated – assumptions can really twist a deductive series until the final conclusion doesn’t really bear any connection to the original set of observations, particularly if prescriptives are suggested.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Egyptian correspondence leads to an off-topic point on my part.\u00a0 First, I’ll reiterate the correspondent’s innocent remark: I was channeling Jared Diamond when I wrote that — a non-optimistic version of Jared, that is. Right — 100 years ago we were divinely (innocently?) naive and innocent. And the earth \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1172"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1175,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172\/revisions\/1175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}