(OK. We have had a Wild Life Learning Event in a public orchard, a band in a park by the Bay and a Fathers' Day meal with family.)
A particular issue has arisen several times when discussing certain works by Poul Anderson. This issue relates to utopian-dystopian sf and has crystallized again in Miracleman: The Silver Age by Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham. Gaiman argues, through a character closely resembling Alan Moore, the original Miracleman script writer, that, if people are given everything that they want, then this will demonstrate that that is not what they need. Thus, for example, in HG Wells' The Time Machine and in Poul Anderson's Genesis, subsequent human generations inherit a utopian environment and therefore become passive, ceasing to create, invent or innovate. They dwindle in numbers and even, in The Time Machine, devolve until eventually they become extinct. Thus, what they might have wanted was not what they in fact needed.So what is the answer? Aldous Huxley's Savage concludes that complete contentment should be rejected in favour of a return to all the old discontents. However, Huxley later realized that there was another option which he expressed in mystical religious terms, "the immanent Tao or Logos, the transcendent Godhead of Brahman." Transcendence, yes. Human beings are essentially active. If we sit still physically, then we remain active mentally. Contemplation is possible but is not what most people should do most of the time. The ways of Mary and Martha: someone has to produce the food that is put into the begging bowl.
In any future social or environmental transformation, people in general, not just a minority, will have to be actively involved in understanding and acting on their environment which after all is always greater than anyone's knowledge or understanding of it. If some are unable to adjust to a more active role, then others will be able and they will inherit "...a new heaven and a new earth." All the myths are essentially true. They just need to be realized. SF writers can imagine more proactive utopias. Futuristic fictions can point to a potentially real future.
46 comments:
Well, for the first time in human history, the global fertility rate dropped below replacement level in 2023...
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And that will be very bad for the human race if it goes on like that too far and for too long!
The dystopian fate of mankind as seen in GENESIS seems all too plausible.
Ad astra! Sean
Surely the world needs population reduction right now? And all sorts of factors can affect future fertility?
Paul: if population drops because of low fertility, you not only get a declining population, you get a continuously -aging- population.
Because each generation is smaller than the one before.
They have a saying in China -- I was there recently -- "four grandparents, two parents, all supported by one child".
It also means children are raised with no siblings and very few relations of their own age.
In extreme cases, like South Korea and increasingly China, you'll get a population decline of 1/3-1/2 every 30 years or so, in a downward spiral.
Note, this is not a regional phenomenon; it's global. Kenya had an 18% drop in births in 2023, for instance, and it looks like a bigger one in 2024.
Does sound serious. The opposite of "overpopulation." Meanwhile, the climate crisis is already here. And maybe war escalation?
Kaor, Paul!
And Stirling's comments explains why I dislike the views of those who have such an anti-child, anti-human view of Homo sapiens. I had in mind the views and acts of woke crazies who dare to abort their own children in the name of reducing their "carbon footprints"!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Many people who are not crazy disagree with you about abortion.
I think that we do need to be concerned about our carbon footprints?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And they are wrong. Abortion is nothing but the murder of those who have done nothing to justify being slaughtered.
If human population is dropping too fast, as Stirling's comments implies, I don't give a cuss about "carbon footprints"!
Ad astra! Sean
One of Huxley's last books was "Island" in which he portrayed his idea of a utopian society.
Kaor, Jim!
I am familiar with some of Aldous Huxley's work, esp. his dystopian novel BRAVE NEW WORLD.
I've never read any convincing Utopian stories, because their depictions of human beings simply does not fit the actual facts of real life and real history. But I've found well done dystopias, such as BRAVE NEW WORLD or Orwell's 1984 all too plausible. I might include as well Robert Hugh Benet's LORD OF THE WORLD.
Ad astra! Sean
Dang it! I got the name of the author of LORD OF THE WORLD wrong. It should be Robert Hugh Benson, not "Benet."
Sean
Sean,
People who disagree with you are wrong in your opinion but they are not all crazy.
Do you not care about putting too much carbon into the atmosphere?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
When it comes to the monstrosity of abortion/infanticide what I said was not an opinion but a fact.
Not all who try to defend abortion are crazy, but the woke lunatics who abort their children to reduce their "carbon footprints" fills me with disgust!
Re carbon: we have discussed this before, with me citing the case discussed by Robert Zubrin in THE CASE FOR SPACE, how a maverick profession and a few Indians were able to remove a massive amount of carbon using plain old rust!
As long as the only methods I believe will actually help with our problems are not being seriously used,* to heck with what the woke Greenies say. I'll have nothing to do with futile, counterproductive, useless, PC "solutions."
Ad astra! Sean
*I mean nuclear power, plain old rust, a space based solar power satellite system.
Sean,
Your opinions are not facts.
Paul.
Incidentally, the First World is not driving climate change.
China and India are, with Indonesia and a few others coming up fast behind.
China emits more new CO2 than Japan, the US, Canada, the UK and the entire EU put together; they burn 2 -billion- tons of coal a year, and are increasing their coal output by 300 million tons and have 240 Gigawatts of coal-fired generating capacity in the pipeline.
India now emits about as much new CO2 as the US, or slightly less -- but more soon, because our CO2 emissions peaked in 2007 and theirs are heading skyward.
So, basically, it doesn't matter what we do. We could go to zero emissions tomorrow and it wouldn't accomplish a damned thing.
Sure. China and India are part of the same global economic and ecological system as the US etc. The problem is the system as a whole.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: It's fact abortion unjustly kills the unborn.
The problem is not the "system," but human beings.
Mr. Stirling: Exactly! Which is why I have no patience for futilities like solar panels, electric cars, or windmills!
Ad astra! Sean
Re: energy and climate change
I recently read "Why Nuclear Power has been a Flop" by Jack Devanney.
(Available free online)
The answer he gives is mostly the 'Linear No Threshold' (LNT) model of damage from ionizing radiation.
Which grossly exaggerates the harm (if any) from low level radiation since it assumes the cells do not repair damage to DNA from ionizing radiation.
Given that assumption, regulators impose outrageously expensive rules, which drive the cost of nuclear above the cost of fossil fuels.
Dump that assumption, and the cost of nuclear would be much less than fossil fuels and CO2 emissions would drop drastically & climate change would be a much smaller problem.
In part of the book he gives the history of the LNT mistake (or lie), and evidence that it is false. Then in other chapters details how he would regulate nuclear power.
I'm now quite convinced that LNT is wrong, but as a proper skeptic I want to know what is the 'steelman' argument for LNT.
So Devanney's thesis is that if one country dropped LNT for nuclear regulation, other countries would start to see that LNT is a mistake and the world would move away from fossil fuel to nuclear
Sean,
Value judgements are not factual statements. You can't just settle an argument by stating that your value judgement is a fact and leaving it at that!
(I am having problems with changes on the computer and might not be able to communicate fully for a while.)
Paul.
Kaor, Jim and Paul!
Jim: Very intriguing. And I am not surprised too many in the anti-nuclear faction are making dishonest arguments against nuclear energy. I expect that from our neo-Luddites!
Paul: I disagree, not all "value judgments" are factually empty statements. What is murder? The deliberate, premeditated killing of a human being. Which means deliberately killing an unborn human child is murder. Not a mere "value judgment."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Did A kill B? is a factual question. Did A kill B illegally? is a question of the interpretation and application of the law. (There was a time when there was no law.) Did A kill B immorally? is a moral question. People notoriously disagree about what is or is not moral or immoral. We can discuss these issues but not settle them simply by stating that our view is a fact. You need to open up discussions, not close them off.
I could state that it is a fact that women have a right to choose but I will not do that. Such issues require subtler discussion than that. Not this sledgehammer "I am right, everyone who disagrees with me is wrong" approach.
By the way, i disagree.
Paul.
In English law, murder is the unlawful killing of a reasonable creature in being and under the king's peace with malice aforethought, expressed or implied, death following within a year and a day. "In being" means the umbilical cord cut, the organism living independently of its mother. Thus, abortion and murder have always been differentiated in law, rightly or wrongly.
I intensely dislike the way such issues become completely polarized with each side clearly hating the guts of the other. I think that this is a function of the kind of society that we are living in. There are basic underlying conflicts that express themselves in different ways on the surface. People become apoplectic about a range of apparently distinct issues that I need hardly list.
I think that we can bring about a society in which women have control of their bodies and every pregnancy is both planned and wanted so that the question of abortion does not arise. We are a long way from that but we are a long way from a lot of things that are obviously worth having like an end to the arms industry.
I think that it is inconsistent to oppose abortions and not to oppose the slaughter of large numbers of men, women and children in war.
I was brought up in an anti-abortion tradition and would certainly prefer if no abortion ever happened but I have to accept the fact that very large numbers of women, men, doctors, voters and legislators simply have a different attitude to abortion.
That is where we are at right now. I think.
Kaor, Paul!
I still disagree. Some things, using reason alone, are always objectively wrong. And that includes abortion. Aslo, Blackstone, in his COMMENTARIES, stated that the common law of England always considered abortion a "heinous misdemeanour" (what we call felonies today). So English law did not tolerate abortion.
Disagree, what you said about war. I think it's far more inconsistent for pro-abortionists to oppose the execution of even the most monstrous criminals even as they support letting unborn children be slaughtered by the most savage and barbaric means.
Humans being what they are in real life, there never will be the kind of society you dream of. We are going to continue to need courts and prisons. Or corporal punishment could be used for some offenses.
Also, I disagree with excluding fathers from having a voice in their children's fate. I believe they have a right to object to them being aborted.
I will never agree that any direct abortions are right.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We are not trying to agree!
I try to clarify issues a bit. Abortion was never legally murder. Of course it was a serious offence.
Humans being what they are, they are capable of changing. We will not always need courts and prisons. Not when wealth is abundant and held in common so that no one "steals" it from anyone else.
As in the case of the laws of the land, there was no morality until there were rational beings capable of making moral judgements. A man is capable of murder. A carnivorous animal is not.
Opposing abortions and defending deaths of children in war is certainly inconsistent. If pro-abortionists are also inconsistent, then that is their problem and another issue.
If there IS to be an abortion - I know that this is questionable - then the woman alone should decide. I would certainly say that if I were the father.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Then all we can do is to state and clarify our disagreements. As in abortion.
Of course only rational beings can be guilty of murder. In the Technic history it would be murder if a human unjustifiably killed a Merseian on Terra.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
So propositions like "Murder is morally wrong" had not meaning or significance and, of course, could not even be formulated or expressed before rational beings existed. Morality is not inherent in the universe in the way that physics is.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I disagree because God is the Creator of the universe, and He is the first of all rational beings and the originator of reason and morality.
Ad astra! Sean
I disagree.
Sean:
If God wants humanity to know his moral rules, perhaps he could write them in letters of fire in the night sky, or in many thousands of copies printed on 'indestructium'.
Kaor, Paul and Jim!
Paul: Then we are going to disagree.
Jim: God had more respect for mankind than to use such crude methods. First, I believe logic and reason can enable men to determine right and wrong in many ways. One example of that being the NICHOMACHEAN ETHICS of Aristotle. Second, I also believe in divine revelation, God confirming and revealing to us much of what is known in such matters thru the Scriptures and the Tradition of the Catholic Church.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But I think that there has been a misconception if it was thought that the purpose was to arrive at agreement.
Strongly worded statements do not somehow substantiate or validate a point of view. They merely make someone one disagrees want to issue an equal and opposite statement. And such an exchange is not really any kind of discussion.
Paul.
who
Kaor, Paul!
Strongly worded statements are always going to be sometimes necessary. Monstrosities like all direct abortions being one example--followed by detailed explanations of why it is wrong.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But use of such language never terminates an argument - except maybe in the mind of the person making the statement.
Paul.
A problem with 'divine revelation' is that we get conflicting versions of revelation from different people claiming to be prophets. Part of why I am 99+ % convinced that anyone claiming to bring a revelation from God was either deluded or lying.
Someone arguing like Aristotle for particular actions being moral or immoral OTOH is something I can rationally consider & either be convinced or see weaknesses in the argument.
Kaor, Jim!
The Catholic belief is that the era of binding divine revelation on matters of faith and doctrine ended with the death of the last Apostle around AD 90-100. And that used to be the view as well of the more "mainstream" Protestants like the Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, etc.
Which means I do not believe Mohammed, Joseph Smith, et al, were prophets.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But the point, of course, is that other people do believe in later prophets.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, and Our Lord warned us that false prophets and false Christs would come to trouble the world. And He was right!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
And that gets us nowhere because anyone approaching these religions from outside has no way of identifying one as true and the others as false.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I believe the Resurrection of Christ to be the supreme proof of Christianity. Or, to expand this, there have been converts whose studies and prayers for guidance convinced them of the truth of Christianity. E.g., John Henry Newman's AN ESSAY ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE shows how he became convinced of the truth of Catholic Christianity thru study of the Fathers and Christian history.
And the miracles recorded at Catholic shrines like Lourdes were also meant by God not only as acts of mercy but also as a "loud" means of showing He is real.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I read Newman. He started from Christian premises. I read CS Lewis. I disagreed with his philosophical reasoning. The Lourdes miracles cannot prove doctrines that I disagree with on philosophical and historical grounds. Miraculous cures, like other as yet unexplained phenomena, do require some explanation.
Paul.
I am fairly sure that other Catholic apologists do not rely so heavily on Lourdes.
Kaor, Paul!
I think you are missing the point, I was trying to use Newman's case as a general example. I am aware he began as a low church Anglican who reluctantly came more and more to change his original beliefs because they did not match or conform to the evidence of what he discovered in his studies. My point being that same general pattern applies to different converts from very different backgrounds.
What happens at Lourdes is very simply explained: acts of divine intervention which cannot be explained by merely materialist means. I stress Lourdes because I believe God uses it as a challenge to people with more or less the same antisupernaturalist views.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Missing the point? I am responding to what you are saying. There are no "merely materialist means." There are simply phenomena, some explained, some not explained yet. Divine intervention does not work as an explanation for people who argue that monotheism is philosophically incoherent. The creator before the creation would be a self without other which is like a square without sides.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And other philosophers, from as long ago as Plato and Aristotle to as recently as Mortimer Adler, don't agree monotheism is allegedly "philosophically incoherent." And that shows how philosophy alone cannot definitely answer such questions.
I have suggested before that the revelation of the Trinity, God being three Persons in the one Godhead, answers your objection that the Creator is a Being without others.
In over 150 years nonsupernaturalists still have not falsified the Catholic belief that what happens at Lourdes were acts of divine intervention. Many simply don't want to accept the possibility the Catholics are right.
Occam's razor applies: if the simplest explanation offered for Lourdes, divine intervention, has not been falsified, that should be at least tentatively accepted by nonsupernaturalists.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Of course philosophy does not present an answer that everyone has to accept as if it was maths or geometry! We all have to think for ourselves and state our reasons. That is all that anyone can do. That is what Socrates and Plato did and what I, following their example, am doing.
I have replied about the Trinity before. The Fourth Gospel deified the Son and personified the Spirit yet remained monotheist. Hence, three divine persons but one God: Trinity. That doctrine follows from that Gospel. It was not a reply to a philosophical objection. If a subject of consciousness lacks both a body and an environment, then what is he conscious of, how is he conscious of it and on what basis can he respond to it? How does adding two more bodiless persons answer this question?
Scientists are obliged to try to explain phenomena but no one is obliged to falsify Catholic belief, to prove a negative. Many simply don't want...? How many don't want? If you impugn the motives of people who disagree with you, then discussion ends there. I could reply that many simply don't want to accept the possibility that Catholicism is wrong but that would be a pointless statement and I do not make it.
Divine intervention is not the simplest explanation! It is extremely complicated. Many of us still disagree with monotheism on philosophical grounds and disagree with Abrahamic traditions on historical grounds. If we need a lot of convincing that "God" is coherent, that God exists and has intervened in history and has revealed Himself to certain alleged prophets but not to others, that the horrific idea of the crucifixion as a blood sacrifice makes sense, that the Pope is infallible, that Mary was assumed into Heaven and so on, then it is not a simple matter to say, "Oh yes, of course that God is responsible for the Lourdes cures." (An Evangelical told me that the cures were Satanic.)
We are not obliged to falsify anything. We can accept phenomena as not yet explained.
Does God really do that, work miracles, knowing all the reasons why some of us do not immediately embrace Catholicism, and then hold us to account for sins like pride and wilful rejection of what we are supposed to accept as the truth? I prefer to continue looking for the truth with my fellow human beings.
I may be wrong but I do suspect that other Catholic apologists do not rely so strongly on Lourdes. An atheist doctor on a Lourdes committee acknowledges that there is no known material explanation for a Lourdes cure but does not convert to Catholicism. Is he guilty of intellectual dishonesty, closing his mind, "hardening his heart," in the OT sense, refusing to see the truth etc? Maybe or maybe he is an honest man who sees the issue the way I do.
I think that God, if He exists, must be far more subtle than you seem to think. He will be guiding that atheist doctor towards greater truth in ways that are quite distinct from this single issue.
Paul.
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