To Save Humanity from TOTAL Extinction, Flap Your Wings

"On the Way to Armageddon: Could We Make a Detour?" which I wrote in
May2004, was published by NY Transfer on July 29, 2004.
http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20040726/004197.html

The article was recently posted at http://msrb.wordpress.com/

Greg, who recently visited the site, wrote: 

I often think of the bumper sticker that reads, ~IF YOURE NOT
OUTRAGED, YOURE NOT PAYING ATTENTION. Based on a small census of the
lunch-time conversation at my work, most people are not paying
attention (even though I find, for example, the price of iPods
outrageous, but not even that fazes them). 

"Me and my wife, to be sure, ARE outraged, but are forced by urgency to
minimize our study of ~the news -- which is full of reasons to give up
on our politicians -- and maximize our study of how to reinvent our
lives off the grid and away from the (present/future) mire. The most
difficult part is maintaining our motivation while caught between
ignorance on the one side and negativity on the other.

"I recommend both thinking and acting local " extremely locally --
having cast a wish for better days globally."

My reply to Greg:

To Save Humanity from TOTAL Extinction: Flap Your Wings!

People are not outraged because they have been/are being emotionally
desensitized systematically. Neither I nor any of my colleagues owns or
uses an iPod [nor a Facebook account for that matter], so we are
****elded against its [direct] cost and consequences.

Reinventing your and your wifes lives off the grid might seem like an
obvious ~win strategy; however, for as long as we share the same
atmosphere, air, soil and water, we share a common future. The ~escape
to wilderness option is, therefore, an ineffective long-term strategy.
We live in a closed system, for all intents and purposes. A strong
relation****p exists between the forces acting upon all of us: Every
action has an equal and opposite reaction; any attempt to break free
from a common destiny would face its own nemesis.

What to do: Flap your wings to bring about the ~radical changes that
are necessary to save humanity from total extinction.

There is a concept out there called "sensitive dependence on initial
conditions in chaos theory," which means tiny variations in the initial
condition of a nonlinear dynamic system could result in large
variations in the outcome/behavior of that system. Put simply, a
butterfly flapping its wings in China might create changes in the
atmosphere that could ultimately cause [or prevent] a category five
hurricane off the coast of Louisiana. Had the butterfly not flapped its
wings, the systems outcome might have been entirely different. 

Humans, too, could create initial conditions that would cause a massive
corrective change in the system, for example, revolutionize the
economy, or equally feed the large positive feedback loops to wipe all
of us off the face of the earth. 

Poverty in Africa, droughts in Australia, poisoning of land and water
in New Zealand, bloodbath in Iraq, human rights abuses in Israel and
Canada, government corruption in Saudi Arabia... excessive energy
consumption, overproduction and pollution in the US and China and all
other human-induced catastrophesare triggering the big ~hurricane
that would destroy everything in its path.

Our lives are too interdependent; we are all caught in the same
crossfire. Yes, we have to act locally, but we must think globally and
intergenerationally. NO solution would work for any one of us, in the
long run, unless it works for each and every one of us, and our
children, too. 

And so it shall be!

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