From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Carrying Capacity and Sanity
Distribution: world
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 92 06:55:42 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <1466601989@igc.apc.org> alanm@igc.apc.org writes:

 > If sci.environment were a forum like ECOLOGY-L it would be 
 > inappropriate to subject it to the kind of cage-rattling I 
 > sometimes use. But this isn't a place for discussing research 
 > findings -- there is no commonality of background among the 
 > posters here, so that is almost impossible, and basically would 
 > be worthless to do. The closest approximation to anything like 
 > that I've seen recently in here (or talk.environment) is Michael 
 > Tobis valiantly holding out against some guy who thinks that if 
 > treelines aren't marching up mountainsides everywhere, global 
 > warming must be hogwash. 

Ah, now that's the challenge, isn't it? Finding an appropriate level
of discourse which will produce astute insight into the reality we
face in endeavouring to manage this place better, *in spite of* the
lack of commonality in such places as here in sci.environment before
we enter South Africa, or Somalia, or somewhere else out there in the
real world.

Perhaps you simply can't handle anyone disagreeing with you; instead
of exploring with others where you agree and where you disagree on the
various issues as they emerge from time to time, you prefer to stand
rattling your cage in frustration. You are quite free to hate their
guts as you wish, as perhaps John McCarthy hates mine by now from the
tone of his dire threats against me. But all those others are there
whether you like it or not, so we are not quite here in Day Care to
play tiddly-winks, are we?

What matters to me is whether you have the guts to face your worst
enemies, to look The Dragon fair in the eye, roll your sleeves up and
spit, then sort through the issues with them over time that we might
finally come up with something even remotely resembling a mutually
acceptable management strategy for this planet.

If you don't think it is worth that sort of effort, you can just get
off any time you want. But you might as well understand that it is
going to get much worse over the next two-three generations before it
will begin to turn around for the better.

 > The fact is that sci.environment for years was a plinth for 
 > certain arithmetical professors to declaim against 
 > environmentalism and to try to subvert every discussion into an 
 > argument about nuclear power. When I began posting in the group, 
 > I decided I would be an idiot to play by their rules  -- so I 
 > haven't. I don't think the results have been altogether bad. The 
 > biology content has gone up. I don't want to be the rooster who 
 > claims credit for the dawn, but I think I had something to do 
 > with that. 

Let them have what rope they want, yes? It soon becomes quite obvious
whether they really do know their knots without you diving into the
pond head first to obfuscate every issue that comes up. It all just
becomes another pile of bullshit when you do that all the time.

 > As for whether controversy stimulates or represses "constructive 
 > thinking", I really doubt that anything I could write would 
 > influence a person's capacity to think constructively, or 
 > creatively, either positively or negatively. I try to provide 
 > materials, or at least germs of materials, but the thinking is up 
 > to the reader.     

From my reading of your material you have provided none of the above,
although this is perhaps where you and I disagree quite fundamentally.
I see it as part of my job very much indeed to goad people into using
their brains, to challenge their sensibilities and get them thinking
more deeply about real issues of life and death, which is what the
matter of environmental management actually does entail. Apart from
the poverty of your material, your continued refusal to engage real
intellectual battle with acknowledged adversaries who would seek to
tear your guts out had they the opportunity, leaves your campaign
insipid.

 > But this is an old argument, really -- I remember it well from 
 > the 60s -- should we try to "radicalize" people and risk 
 > polarization, or be careful not to turn them off? I was, and 
 > still am, for the "push-hard" approach. That's one element of 
 > youthful impatience I think was sound -- provided the times are 
 > ripe for it. I think they are, again. It's time to raise 
 > conciousness -- principally in the readers. The regular posters 
 > are not the object here, or at least the rare ones who can learn 
 > (and they *do* exist) are not so fragile that a posting-policy 
 > should be formulated around not turning them off. Most posters 
 > can't learn, and you don't formulate anything around them other 
 > than exchanges intended for the reader. 

Ah, a consciousness-raising flower child still with a hard-on after
all these years! Where are all the girls these days, married with 1.8
children per family and a mortgage right up to their no longer hairy
armpits? Maybe some new kids still wet behind the ears from college
are waiting there to be indoctrinated into the cause, to be made love
to and then sent to stand at night in Australian paddocks disguised
as kangaroos . . .

Ribbet! Ribbet!

--
Gil Hardwick                          Internet:  gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au
Independent Consulting Ethnologist                  Fidonet:  3:690/660.6
PERTH, Western Australia                         Voice:  (+61 9) 399 2401
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Newsgroups: sci.environment,talk.environment