Entry 2119, on 2021-04-12 at 21:30:00 (Rating 2, Comments)
If you read the news today, or even read this blog, you might conclude that humans have caused a lot of problems, and that the world might be better off without us. If you read some of the nonsense in the more "woke" news sources you might limit this to western society, or the patriarchy, or some other poorly defined group within humanity, but the overall criticism remains.
So my first point here, but not my main one, is that apportioning blame solely to "western colonial, white men" is nonsense. There are very good reasons to believe that other cultures are at least as bad as western culture is, and that traditional societies, countries run by women, or any other "alternative" forms of society cause just as much harm.
So if we are going to blame some societies for their negative effects on the environment, etc - which is a case not entirely without merit - we really should blame them all about equally. Traditional cultures in most countries caused as much, or more, damage to the environment, to other groups of humans, and to disadvantaged members of their own societies.
But as I said, that's not the primary topic of this post. What I want to spend more time on is a defence of human culture in general. I am going to primarily defend Western culture here, but similar arguments could be made for others as well, to varying extents.
So my point here is that, despite the obvious negative effects of human culture, there is a lot to be proud of as well. In fact, humans are awesome! Why do I say that? Well, let's move past the bad and look at some of the good...
My first claim would be that humans have been responsible for a lot of great art in various forms, including visual arts, such as painting, sculpture, etc; music; and movies and books.
While you might stretch the definitions and claim that other species also create "art" I think that is, at best, an exaggeration. Only humans really create original art with any degree of sophistication. Sure, most art, music, etc is rubbish, but the best of it is something worth celebrating.
My second claim is primarily about abstract subjects, especially maths and philosophy. There is something magical and beautiful about maths. I don't know enough to understand extremely complex maths, but even the simpler stuff that I can deal with is cool, and the proofs of complex math concepts, which might go on for many pages of equations are awesome achievements.
The species which makes these fundamental discoveries about the nature of reality, by using maths, deserves a lot of praise. There really is something fundamental and irrefutable about maths, and a mathematical proof is something of value forever.
My third claim concerns science. Any species which can make discoveries of deep significance, and build machines which somehow transcend mere physical existence, is amazing.
Some of examples of these extraordinary scientific achievements are having an incredibly precise model of matter at the smallest scales with quantum theory, measuring the value of physical constants to great precision, and understanding the structure of the universe at the highest level using relativity.
Then there are the scientific instruments built to help with this understanding, for example the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory), and the HST (Hubble Space Telescope). These are masterpieces of scientific and engineering achievement, and what they can do is almost impossible to believe.
I don't want to go over the details here again, but you can read my blog posts on the LHC (a post titled "Favourite Things 6" from 2013-05-15), LIGO (title "Bordering on Impossible" from 2016-05-07), and the HST (title "Favourite Things 3 Part 2" from 2013-01-30) for details.
If you don't want to read those posts, my argument is based on the incredible ingenuity in how those systems work (the HST is in orbit but can point with the accuracy equivalent to the width of a human hair seen at a distance of 1 mile), how amazingly precise they are (LIGO can measure gravitational waves with a precision of one part in one hundred million trillion), and just the overall scale of the projects (the LHC is 27 kilometers in circumference).
Finally - and I know this is a little bit crass - we should acknowledge the existence of those more mundane creations, which are both awesome and somehow useful as well, and might be owned by normal people.
For example, the iPhone is a common device which a billion people own and, while its not cheap, it is affordable by many (obviously) and provides functions which would be almost unimaginable ten years ago. And about a week ago I walked around a corner and there sitting in front of me was a Lamborghini Aventador LP 750-4 SV. This car is just stunning to behold, and what it is like to drive must be almost unimaginable. It really is a work of art, yet it does something useful too (OK, that's debatable). Any society which can create objects like that is awesome!
Finally remember that we are learning and getting better. Western culture in particular is often responsible for fixing, or at least minimising, the problems it is often accused of causing.
For example, climate change. Europe, the US, and other Western nations have reduced their carbon emissions greatly in recent decades. It is mainly China and India which are burning a lot of coal still.
And while Western nations are often accused of having colonial pasts, usually with associated claims of bad behaviour such as slavery, remember that democracy comes from Western philosophy, that Britain was largely responsible for eliminating slavery, and that Western culture created environmentalism. And please don't believe the garbage about traditional cultures being great caretakers of the environment, being equitable and fair socially, etc. That is almost always wrong.
So yeah, I think there is far more harm today from the negative narratives being peddled by the media and well-meaning but extremely ignorant leftists than there is from actual harmful practices from advanced nations.
Could we do better? Well, yes, there is plenty of room for improvement, but I still have to say this: humans are awesome!
Comment 1 by Anonymous on 2021-04-13 at 01:35:25:
I am siting here at 1.30am with a hand so sore I cannot sleep. Shortly I will have surgery on both hands. A short time ago I had two hips replaced. You should have mentioned the marvellous advances in the medical and surgical fields humans have achieved.
Comment 2 by OJB on 2021-04-13 at 07:43:50:
Yes, that's another example. I only mentioned the stuff which interests me most in the post. Thanks for the comment, and I hope your surgery goes well.
Comment 3 by Anonymous on 2021-04-13 at 09:19:29:
I don't think anybody would deny the inherent cleverness of the human race, however, we can also be pretty dumb (short sighted) at times as well. Whether that dumbness is a result of market forces that encourage short-term destructive behaviour, or some sort of built-in attribute is another question.
I do sometimes think that traditional cultures' (as you name them) affinity for the environment flowed from a limited ability for destruction (in terms of destructive technology, size of population etc) rather than a deliberate, caretaking nature. It's easy to deplete a fishery (as we have witnessed) with huge, bottom trawling ships, not so easy with a small number of subsistence fishermen/women. However, I'm quite happy (wrong word, but you get the idea) to be reminded about the severe negative effect on resources that greed and short-term thinking has (gotta maximise that RTS - return to shareholders).
Comment 4 by OJB on 2021-04-13 at 09:43:51:
Yes, I agree with all of that. There is no doubt that our current economic system does a great job in many case, but also results in some real problems, especially regarding what economists call "externalities".
And your point about traditional cultures is also accurate, in my opinion. Their lesser impact on the environment was simply because their populations were lower and the technology they had for exploiting the environment less efficient, not any genuine difference in their intrinsic nature.
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