Category Archives: Extinction

On Lack of Literary Greatness

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Mariner has one comment on the results of the 2018 midterm elections:

Republicans expanded their majority in the Senate to 51+ seats — even though 10 million more people voted for Senate Democrats than for Republicans. The Senate was never intended to be a democratic institution. Today it is a hurtful political influence when our nation, indeed the world, needs desperately to deal with human issues, scruples and a new democratic vision.

– – – –

Of more immediate interest, Mariner will never be an author of insightful literary works. The post, “A Future of Oneness,” was written as an allegorical work depicting life without human friendship, love, bonding, compassion and even argument and disagreement – between authentic human beings. Alas mariner’s crude prose left readers only with a literal interpretation of the future, either a gushy basketball or extinction.

In truth, the distant future doesn’t matter much if at all. Our only relationship to the distant future is our disregard for our own wellbeing today. What is missing from this allegory is physical, three dimensional, person-to-person respect and affection, and a desire to participate in these intimate experiences above the need to engage in electronic distraction and convenience.

Many times mariner has witnessed couples sitting beside one another foregoing mutual conversation and the exercise of hippocampus engagement in favor of some nondescript, certainly inhuman distraction on an electronic device. Allegorically, we are adapting to a future as gushy basketballs needing only a port connection to the gushy network.

Similarly, foregoing real experiences intertwined with real human beings, even loved ones dear to one’s heart, so that one can talk to an electronic box full of faux confederacies interested only in manipulation, seems headed for gushiness as well.

Mariner read a psychologist’s article that said android devices are an escape from the energy and commitment required to relate to fellow humans. Yet, that is what living as a human is all about. The commitment we choose to escape is the authentic experience of being human.

As to the second allegorical reference of extinction, two elements are of supreme importance: breeding and environment. One won’t have many children copulating with various sex toys and realistic androids. It is easy even to include smart phones as a distraction from human interaction and the commitment required for foreplay or just having an interesting conversation. Surely, after ninety million years of evolution, the intimate practices between humans has become the most important experience we can have and to which we owe priority over electronic circuitry no matter how disguised.

On the matter of environment – just as with the ease of preferring the convenience and laziness provided by electronics – wealth, physical comfort, and the avoidance of what a real human life is all about, distract humans from their obligation to maintain their environment. A major premise in the study of creatures of all kinds, including humans, is that there must be a net zero relationship with the source of life – environment. Only humans can deliberately alter the net zero relationship: we burn oil for money, convenience, distractions like war, the convenience not to physically weed millions of acres of crops, and so forth – even though our environment is no longer under our control. The planet itself has taken charge. Will the planet allow us to survive or will it choose extinction?

Ancient Mariner

 

A Future of Oneness

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Mariner mentioned that he took a trip recently to visit friends and family. He has been traveling the Pennsylvania Turnpike for many, many, many years. Do any readers remember the service stops alongside the turnpike where one did not have to exit the toll road? If the reader hasn’t traveled I-76 recently, these service stops have been upgraded to modern facilities. They are pleasant, much roomier, with up-to-date restrooms and the stop incorporates several chain stores chief among them Starbucks and Burger King along with tourist trap stores and gasoline stations.

This was mariner’s first experience with order kiosks at Burger King. A customer doesn’t need to interact with another human being to have a meal; just push buttons and pay with one’s transaction-tracked credit card. Mariner chose to interact with a fellow human being and ordered lunch at the traditional counter by talking with a pleasant older woman who shared in an aside that she didn’t like the kiosks, either.

This isolation of human beings appears to be a trend. No longer does one need a checkout clerk to kibitz with or an aisle clerk to tell one where Mexican catsup is. Increasingly, a customer checks themselves out now with the conversation limited to a muttering to one’s self about checking out alone. Even more isolationist is the ability to order one’s groceries over the telephone and have them delivered to one’s home. The US claim of “In many one” will soon be “In many none.”

Walmart and Amazon are well on the way toward social isolationism. What happened to a human’s natural relationship to environment, time invested and store clerks visited? Then there’s Facebook. Lack of government regulation about privacy and security aside, there are members of mariner’s family whose only family relationship across years of time is digital; digital photographs are shared to remember what a human lifeform looks like.
And of course the smartphone and Alexa. Mariner is quite sure that soon humanlike robots will be purchased so real humans will have someone to dance with when they ask Alexa to play some oldies.

Mariner has read some marginal futurists who claim the human being will evolve into a brain with a few key visceral organs – all of which are sustained by AI food supply, medicines and communication – a lot like Facebook now but much more sophisticated and very, very, communist. Even the five senses will be replaced with electronic sensory imitations. In other words, the end of Homo sapiens is a gushy basketball attached to a port in a massive network of gushy basketballs.

But mariner doubts this scenario. He listens to Amos, who says the entire Planet is in a death spiral; the Sixth Extinction means humans too, not just tigers and giraffes.

Have a pleasant election.

Ancient Mariner

 

FYI

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Tidbits from mariner’s email:

֎60 percent of vertebrate species

According to a new report from the World Wide Fund For Nature (formerly the World Wildlife Fund), there has been an average 60 percent decline in vertebrate animal species population — you know, like mammals, fish, birds, etc. — between 1970 and 2014. “Earth is losing biodiversity at a rate seen only during mass extinctions,” the report reads. The cause? “Exploding human consumption.” [BBC]

֎2,681 planets

The Kepler Space Telescope is dead. Long live the Kepler Space Telescope. The NASA craft discovered 2,681 planets since its launch in 2009, along with many more promising outer space “blips.” Kepler ran out of fuel. It will be missed. [The Verge]

֎1 million lost users

Facebook saw zero growth in the U.S. and Canada and lost 1 million users in Europe last quarter. God bless you brave million. Go outside. Dance. Sing. Frolic. Be free. [TechCrunch]

֎The Democratic Divide:

New York progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did better in gentrifying precincts than she did in working-class neighborhoods. Do blue-collar Democrats really want what the far left is offering? [David Freedlander, Politico Magazine]

֎How much will summer temperatures in US cities change by 2050?

Des Moines, Iowa:             2018 – 85.4° ….. 2050 – 91.1°

Los Angeles, California:    2018 – 83.5 ….. 2050 – 87.1°

Baltimore, Maryland:         2018 – 82.6° ….. 2050 – 92.3°

Denver, Colorado:             2018 – 86.4° ….. 2050 – 91.7°

New York City, New York: 2018 – 83.1° ….. 2050 – 87.9°

Billings, Montana:              2018 – 85.4° ….. 2050 – 90.7°

Miami, Florida:                   2018 – 89.9° ….. 2050 – 93.4°

Phoenix, Arizona:              2018 – 104.7° ….. 2050 – 109.2°

[VOX]

֎Worried about voting? Here’s what to know before you go:

Double Check Your Registration

Know Your State’s ID Requirements

Know Where You’re Going

Beware of Misinformation

Find Out What’s on Your Ballot Right Now

Access to the Ballot if You’re Disabled

Vote Provisionally if You Must

If All Else Fails, Call For Help [ProPublica]

Ancient Mariner

 

Environment as a Change Agent

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65 million years ago during the early Paleocene, the first primate-like creature evolved from the family Plesiadaptis. It was a small tree-climbing mammal that looked more like an insect-eating tree shrew. It was the beginning of the great age of primates and especially the branch of evolution that led to Homo sapiens – us.

This isn’t so long ago, actually. The dinosaurs existed for 230 million years until the biosphere was rudely interrupted by a meteor strike and to a lesser degree by some growing genetic deficiencies. Even so, such long timelines expose the role of the biosphere as a major player in evolution. Humans would not have been happy living during an earlier era of Earth’s history; the continents would have to spread out a bit to permit acceptable weather patterns and ocean currents; a few intense ice ages would be required to transition to fresh water so land creatures could evolve.

The reader is aware of the old, trite puzzle, ‘what came first the chicken or the egg?’ The puzzle hangs around because there are two logical answers: immediately, the answer is the first chicken hen must exist before there can be the first chicken egg; the other path of reasoning is that the genome of the chicken first occurred within the egg – a composite of several generations of genetic shifts. But another question precedes: What came first the chicken or the environment? Inevitably, the environment must be suitable for chickens in general to exist.

Environments normally change slower than creature evolution. Still, creatures have no choice except to adapt or disappear. On the other hand, creatures will modify the environment to fit their needs. For example, ahermatypic coral draw calcium from their environment to build homes for themselves; the beaver rearranges trees and leaves to build a dam which makes a pond, which enables a home safe from predators by placing the home in the middle of the pond. Neither creature has created a new biosphere but has rearranged a few conditions to better fit their needs.

So it is with humans. What humans sense about the environment is that it does not guarantee safety or longevity. In the great migration of pioneers across the western US, the environment was a threat, not a means of sustenance; the great gardens of the British Isles and Europe which require constant maintenance and an appearance of tight control also stems from an innate sense that the environment is not necessarily man’s best friend and must be mastered. One can imagine that the whole science of astrology is an effort to place meaning into an indifferent cosmos.

Innately, humans have sought to make life better and more secure by rearranging the environment. It started in earnest by collecting iron, copper, coal, nickel and other minerals; humans have always been aware of magnetic resonance in some fashion (electric charges in fish were documented in 2750 BC) but did not begin to extract magnetic forces until 1600 when William Gilbert identified the phenomenon and coined the word ‘electricus.’ Throughout the next 300+ years, humans were able to organize electrical resources to make life easier with motors, tools, light and energy in many forms. In the early 1900’s, Einstein and Fermi expanded electrical knowledge by entering the world of nuclear physics and quantum theory – the very building blocks of the biosphere and the Universe itself.

Humans are rearranging the biosphere to fit their species’ needs – nothing more than super intelligent beavers. But there is a difference. The human brain is a genuine mutation. A new branch of evolution’s tree is emerging. It is a species that will survive as the planet’s environment experiences significant changes.

One marvels at the synchrony between environment and evolution. We humans live lives and have known families in just a hundred years or so; written history goes back only a few thousand years. Modern Homo sapiens has existed only about 90,000 years. Our scale of change isn’t worth the blink of an eye. On the planetary scale, environment and evolution are changing every moment but at such an insignificant pace that it takes eons to notice.

Serendipitously, we live at a time where both the environment and the world’s specie profile are changing more rapidly than usual. The question to ponder is how much change is forced by our beaver habits and how much is caused by planetary shifts and cycles? Mariner suggests the combination is algebraic, changing more rapidly and more drastically than a normal curve of change would suggest.

Speaking in broad terms, it appears the human brain prefers the world of artificial intelligence, that is, an environment less dependent on mammalian characteristics and more dependent on an environment of electromagnetic existence. As our brains wrestle with this odd transition, the mammalian behaviors still hold on to make life awkward; sort of having one foot in and one foot out, so to speak. CBS news covered the fact that electronic giants like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs limit the use of smart phones by their children; just one small incident of struggle between the mammalian instincts and the brain’s preference for electronic communication.

We have pondered the end of the Earth and Sun since primitive times. The idea of Armageddon and the idea that we can escape to a heaven reflect our awareness that the mammalian age will not last forever. Will a life of artificial intelligence enable survival for a longer time as the Earth moves through ages of growing disruption to the mammalian environment? Perhaps the forces of environmental balance push species survival – invoking evolution one day at a time.

Ancient Mariner

 

Man’s Role on Earth

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It’s the year 1870. Two American Bison are talking. One says to the other, “It doesn’t look good for us, Bill. We’ve been hit with the Man parasite.”

Yesterday, two Parrotfish are cruising along the Coral Reef. One says to the other, “Did you hear they’re shutting down the whole reef? It has a Man infection.”

A Bengal Tiger and A Silverback Gorilla are resting by the waterhole. The Tiger says, “My cub came back to me the other day and said he couldn’t find a place to live and that he’d have to move back with me. I don’t have enough room as it is.” The Gorilla replied, “Tell me about it. That Man infestation will be the end of us all.”

Two wild Salmon are swimming up the Chuit River in Alaska. One says to the other, “You know this is the last time our families will swim up this river – The Chuit open face coal mine and gas wells will cause Man poisoning.”

Mother Nature finally had to call a meeting of the Living Creatures Task Force. The Man parasite had eliminated 600 major species in just 100 years and thousands of species were complaining of disorders from gentrification, disease, poisoning, starvation and unnecessary violence and murder.

In the past, Mother Nature had been a bit conservative, surmising the Man parasite had enough intelligence to curb its excesses. Now she had to concede that things were out of hand. Mother Nature presented to the task force two subcommittee reports; one from the planet climate subcommittee and one from the Committee on Species Population.

“The climate report doesn’t look good,” she said. “Both the atmosphere and the oceans are out of balance from Man infections.”

A flatfish piped up, “I heard Man plans to dredge the ocean floor for increasingly rare minerals – where can I go?” There was a growing rumble rising from the task force.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Mother Earth said. “The Climate report says the damage is irreparable as far out as the next ice age.”

She switched to the report from the Committee on Species Population. Her face grew pale. “The report says species are becoming extinct at a rate higher than the first five extinctions – and there hasn’t been a Solar System catastrophe.” “Except for the Man parasite,” a beaver shouted. There was a general response to the beaver and discussion centered on the overpopulation of the Man parasite at the expense of other species.

Mother Earth turned to the Chairman of the Solar System Committee, an Andean Condor. “Do we expect any surprises from the Solar System?”

The Condor replied that Jupiter and Saturn are in syzygy which likely will cause an ice age at some point. Further, the Condor suggested that a reversal of the Earth’s magnetic field is due. “At least the Sun’s eleven-year solar cycle has been uneventful.” Condor added.

“I saw in the climate report that the world’s estuaries will be flooded by rising water levels,” a mud puppy commented. “To say nothing about shellfish,” a Maryland crab whispered.

Mother Earth gaveled the task force to order. “I’ll have to give this some thought,” she said. “I am concerned that the cure will be catastrophic; we will all suffer mightily.”

She gaveled the meeting of the Living Creatures Task Force to a close.

Ancient Mariner

 

The Apocalypse is Nigh

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Mariner often has touted the joy of being married to a professional librarian, serious poet, and bibliophile of the first order. Yet again, reading through the many books by her bedside, his wife came across this amazing likeness in C.S. Lewis’s book, “The Problem of Pain”, published in 1940. The quote below is found in the chapter on hell:

“. . . . Picture to yourself a man who has risen to wealth or power by a continued course of treachery and cruelty, by exploiting for purely selfish ends the noble motions of his victims, laughing the while at their simplicity; who, having thus attained success, uses it for the gratification of lust and hatred and finally parts with the last rag of honor among thieves by betraying his own accomplices and jeering at their last moments of bewildered disillusionment. Suppose further, that he does all this, not (as we like to imagine) tormented by remorse or even misgiving, but eating like a schoolboy and sleeping like a healthy infant – a jolly ruddy-cheeked man, without a care in the world, unshakably confident to the very end that he alone has found the answer to the riddle of life, that God and man are fools whom he has got the better of, that his way of life is utterly successful, satisfactory, unassailable. . . .

“. . . . Even mercy can hardly wish to such a man his eternal, contented continuance in such ghastly illusion.”

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In Apostle Paul’s Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, he describes the antichrist:

“And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will destroy with the breath of his mouth, annihilating him by the manifestation of his coming. The coming of the lawless one is apparent in the working of Satan, who uses all power, signs, lying wonders, and every kind of wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion, leading them to believe what is false, so that all who have not believed the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness will be condemned.” [Thessalonians 2]

Is who we think we’re talking about the antichrist? Is his base the nonbelievers deceived by his message? He is eager to use nuclear war. Is the Apocalypse nigh?

“And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the Earth: Blood and fire and pillars of smoke. The Sun shall be turned into darkness,  and the Moon into blood, before the coming great and awesome Day of the Lord, and it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the Name of the LORD shall be saved.” (Joel 2:30-32)

Ancient Mariner

What is it?

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You can feel it. Everyone can. It is similar to flying through the Universe faster than the speed of light. It feels like a tennis match using a dozen balls instead of one. It whirls you about like a carnival ride. It feels like you are crawling under barbed wire in the mud while bullets fly around you.

It is change. Change in religion; change in life style; change in deep-rooted national values; change in economic dependability; change in the Earth’s environment; change in self-confidence; change in the workplace. It is change. Change happening faster than ever before. Change so pervasive as to leave the entire world in disarray.

War is changing. Fresh water is disappearing. Work is changing. Seas are rising. Vital food chains are disappearing. Human life lives too long to be supported. Changing weather drives millions out of their habitat into starvation. The mammalian age is fragmenting. Sea life is dying.

If you are older than the Millennials, it feels like passing out in a spinning centrifuge. If you are a Millennial, reality is a hodge podge of artificial experiences that lead nowhere.

Change is so disruptive it begs the question, “How can we change change?” We can’t. Change is not arbitrary; change has no speed control; change cannot be reversed. And, to identify the cause of change, as Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Broadcast news services cannot bring us all the changes. There are too many changes from too many diverse sources. News agencies are busy chasing down nothing more than political frivolity and gossip. Most viewers aren’t interested in change; viewers are interested in viewing frivolity and gossip which require little thought and action. Yet change rumbles the ground beneath us. Rock solid virtuosity is changing to flowing currents of ineptitude. Human life is in the midst of the largest quake in human history.

Ancient Mariner

 

Global War already has begun

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On last Sunday’s broadcast of Global Public Square (GPS), Fareed Zakaria covered the prospect of modern warfare. The point was raised that the new bullet is hacking a computer system. Just as the world is tackling fossil fuel as a global conflict, nations of the world are moving from gunpowder to cybernetics.

The US had a good taste of modern warfare in the 2016 election. Obviously, great harm can be visited on a nation if any adversary, nation or otherwise, can disrupt basic political functions, electrical grids, economic status, or major services like health care. Ronald Reagan had a project that was to invent a bomb that would kill people but not hurt buildings. Today, why bother; a single hack can shut down the whole of Manhattan.

The key adversaries capable of a cyber invasion are Russia, China, Iran and North Korea – setting aside the European Union, Canada and Australia who can hack against the US but don’t. Frankly, none of these nations, including China, would be better off after a conventional war with the US. But now war is ongoing: recently it was reported that North Korea literally has stolen billions of dollars from other countries and corporations around the world. Here in the US, we take great umbrage when a citizen fraudulently claims tax refunds belonging to another citizen; think what a cyber invasion from a nation could do . . .

Amos thinks the antiquated Congress (and the President) has no idea how to fight wars anymore; two recent useless wars (Iraq and Afghanistan) were launched by a Congress unaware that global economics, cyber warfare and international collaboration were capable of containing internal religious conflict to be settled internally whether by war or better means. Yes, oil was a major reason for meddling but the Middle East, oil and all, could have been managed differently than with tanks, land mines and gunpowder bullets.

Many, especially veterans, remember battling for territory. Maps were important because wars had battlefields. A few veterans have had a large influence in the nation’s handling of wars; think about Eisenhower, Kennedy, the Bushes, and John McCain. A new movie is out about LBJ and how he knew the Viet Nam War was unwinnable. Barack believed he was elected to get out of wars. Donald, never a veteran, never a statesman, has no idea what war is (nuclear, gunpowder or cyber) and may cause one for useless reasons.

Today, one knows the Internet has no map. It is ubiquitous. In fact, there is a new phrase, ‘ubiquitous computing’[1] that allows anyone, any nation in fact, to wait until a situation presents itself then take targeted action against that situation. Simple example: cash transfers between nations. Technical example: jamming signals coming from military satellites. Social example: interjecting false information into major broadcast networks about a spreading disease or the decorum of a political candidate.

Who needs gunpowder when one can control information? Reminds mariner of all the movies about controlling the weather.

The new bullet is an automated transaction fired from anywhere, anytime for rational and irrational reasons. Information is the new cloud over the battlefield. Pun intended.

Ancient Mariner

[1] Ubiquitous computing (or “ubicomp”) is a concept in software engineering and computer science where computing is made to appear anytime and everywhere. In contrast to desktop computing, ubiquitous computing can occur using any device, in any location, and in any format. For us old timers in programming, it means platform doesn’t matter; that an application will adapt to platform and to data status.

Heaven is Taking a Beating

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Way back in time, before mariner was a grandfather, he worked for a living. He had an interesting job as a consultant who designed computer system upgrades for large corporations then developed the project parameters for accomplishing that upgrade.

It was a busy job that had a lot to do with stress, timelines and budgets. Consequently, for a number of years in January, mariner would take the family sailing in the Caribbean Sea – specifically up and down the Lesser Antilles. Mariner often has said that the Lesser Antilles is where Heaven touches the Earth.

But storms have taken a devastating toll on the northern group of islands, the Leeward Islands. Most of us know about major islands like the British Virgin Islands and the US Virgin Islands but there are many dozens of smaller islands that virtually are uninhabitable at this point. Populations on these small islands always have been fragile and originally consisted of Arawak and Carib Indians who migrated from South America. During the period 1990-2000, there was fascination and joy in sailing to various islands to discover differences in dialect, cuisine, and subtle, unsophisticated economies. The islanders mariner met then were survivors of centuries of brutal colonialism beginning with Columbus and the Spanish invasion in the early 1500’s. Even today, most islands are protectorates of many European nations and the United States.

Sadly, at least to mariner, a new age of colonialism has invaded the Antilles from Puerto Rico to Granada: tourism. Over the past twenty years wealthy folks have purchased whole islands, destroying the cultural uniqueness of those islands. Further and even more damaging to uniqueness, large tourism corporations like cruise ships and spas (one example is Sandals) buy up habitable portions of islands thereby completely wiping out Carib culture.

When mariner sailed the Lesser Antilles, there was a sense of experiencing a natural bond between nature and humanity. Though meager, the islands were balanced in the needs both of humans and the island ecology.

Mariner finds it painful to watch the cruise ship and spa advertisements on television. It is profane. It is an artificial and ecologically expensive reality that humans continually create. It is arrogance and disrespect.

The new rule is, whether technologically or economically, just because you can do it, you must do it.

It’s not mariner’s rule but he’s a grandfather now; He isn’t in the game anymore.

Ancient Mariner

The Fullness of Time

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The phrase, Fullness of Time, is an official term among historians depicting great expectancy in history that goes beyond the norm. Sometimes one waited hundreds of years with expectation as in the 600 years describing the plight of Israel as it waited for the fullness of time when God would send a mighty king to save the citizens of Jerusalem.

We don’t have to wait 600 years this time. Unfortunately, God isn’t the Great Decider – it is Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, two egomaniacal leaders who cannot prevent the demise of civilization. With regard to the Korean Peninsula, China has a block of influential politicians very similar to the GOP Congress in the United States: they are from another time; they remember the brutality of the Korean War and the threat to their homeland if MacArthur had had his way and bombed across the Yangtze River. This time, it isn’t Harry holding the reins, its Donald.

Mariner is reminded of Philippe Petit, a French high-wire artist who walked a high-wire between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. This time, it is civilization walking the high-wire with Donald and Kim each holding an end.

An intervention that would eliminate the bravado between the dysfunctional leaders is hard to imagine. It would require Xi Jinping, President of the Communist Party, to imagine and execute an intervention that could literally take Kim’s finger off the button for good. The same is true of the US Congress and the Department of Defense, which must literally remove Donald’s authority and ignore his command to attack or retaliate.

Many would think retaliation is justified. It would be the end of mankind. This is a nuclear war, not Syria. Every human being would be affected whether they wanted to be or not.

Of all the nonsense our President causes, the North Korean issue is one he should not have the authority to engage. It is up to China to save civilization with the full acquiescence of the US. Making that possible requires China overcoming something similar to Congress resistance to immigration, racism and voter suppression in the US.

It is the fullness of time…

Ancient Mariner