How civilised
November 17th, 2008 at 3:29 pm (anthropology, environment, self-sufficiency)
I just saw this video which was referred to on Keith’s ‘Unsuitablog‘
I love this video - and it pretty much sums up why I feel so uncomfortable with the level of greenwash that we are subjected to on a daily basis. The whole ‘civilisation’ game is a very finite game and is defined by how long we can get away with unbridled over consumption, relentless extraction of resources and exploitation of labour. Industrial civilisation is pretty much doomed to be no more than a blink of an eye in terms of how long it will be around in the history of Homo sapiens but it could well be the very last chance we get. In our haste to convert everything to liquid assets and to extract every last drop of energy we can dig out of the ground - we are probably going to royally fisk it (it being earth) up for our unfortunate successive generations who will be forced to deal with our incredible short sightedness.
Today, some of our main arguments are whether or not it is worth our while to turn off domestic appliances when not in use, or whether we should eat food flown in from the other side of the planet, or whether wind-turbines have a place in our countryside…
If we carry on asking stupid questions like those, in the future the big question will be whether we reproduce to preserve the human race or whether not to bother in order to preserve the rest of life on earth and quite possibly the solar system and universe at large!
Time to start honing those self-sufficiency skills?
Here’s a Ferengi quote for Trekkies:
Quark: I think I figured out why humans don’t like Ferengi—
Sisko: Not now, Quark.
Quark: The way I see it, humans used to be a lot like Ferengi: greedy, acquisitive, interested only in profit. We’re a constant reminder of a part of your past you’d like to forget.
Sisko: Quark, we don’t have time for this.
Quark: You’re overlooking something, Commander. Humans used to be a lot worse than Ferengi. Slavery, concentration camps, interstellar war… we have nothing in our past that approaches that kind of barbarism. You see? We’re nothing like you… we’re better.
