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Last login: 10 hours agoLaodan: laodan is a guy from Milford, Pennsylvania, USA.; Likes 1,599 pages, 24 videos, 8 photos • 228 fans • Received 65 reviews; Member since Aug 08, 2005

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The ScienceBlogs Book Club : Engineering Life: The Dog that Didnt Bark in the Ni…: Jun 9, 8:22am 1 review science
http://scienceblogs.com/bookclub/2008/06/engineering_life_the_dog_that.php; Breaking Boundaries
via The Loom / Carl Zimmer, in the Scienceblogs book club by Carl Zimmer

Imagine that mad scientists defied nature and violated the barriers between species. They injected human DNA into non-human creatures, altering their genomes into chimeras--unnatural fusions of man and beast. The goal of the scientists was to enslave these creatures, to exploit their cellular machinery for human gain. The creatures began to produce human proteins, so many of them that they become sick, in some cases even dying. The scientists harvest the proteins, and then, breaching the sacred barrier between species yet again, people injected the unnatural molecules into their own bodies.

This may sound like a futuristic nightmare, the kind that we will only experience if we neglect our moral compass and let science go berserk. But it is actually happening right now. Today millions of people with diabetes will inject themselves with insulin that was produced by E. coli.

The fact that no one is disturbed by this state of affairs says a lot.

Engineering Life: The Dog that Didn't Bark in the Night

[Picture: "The Young Family," by Patrician Piccini (2002-3). Wikipedia via "The Loom"]

The side-effects of Late-Modernity do not stop to surprise and one can't but wonder what is going to result out of all those side-effects. Since long I have the feeling that this bodes ill for the future of humanity. But who am I to downplay what some characterize as an immense potential for humanity?

I don't observe Late-Modernity from the vintage point of the moralist but with the critical eye of the pragmatist. A pragmatist does not judge. He simply observes what is working and what is not. He tries to figure out the possible outcomes in the future of human endeavors in the present. And as a pragmatist observing the side-effects of modernity I often get overwhelmed with nausea.

So what is it that I observe? The side-effects of modernity are displacing the narrow band where the interactions, between what the Chinese call "the ten thousand things", are balancing themselves out. But the placement of this narrow band, as we know it, was the fertile ground out of which human life emerged and developed to the present day. If this narrow band, where "the ten thousand things", are balancing themselves out, shifts away from what we know then what we know about human life simply disappears.

This is deadly for humanity... but it changes nothing to the balance of the "whole in which we are such tiny particles". Whatever happens the whole remains permanently balanced.

May 26, 5:56pm: .Sticky post
Daily shared articles .. My daily shared articles on Google Reader.

Crucial talk .. Personal blog about art.

Web Gallery .. Paintings, digitals, prints, tapestries, paper-cuts.

Photo Gallery

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Book .. About the meaning and societal function of visual arts.

I'm interested in the meaning of life and I think that it resides in thinking about what is human reality. Society being an assembling of individuals it finds its cohesion through the sharing by all of a common worldview (thinking about what is reality by the men of knowledge of the day). I use this blog as a tool to collect and store the most significant info about today's cultural, scientific, and economic changes that, I believe, are shaping the contours of an emerging post-modern "global worldview" that is humanity's best hope to cope with the accumulating side-effects of modernity. My comments are like first draft material that I later use when writing articles and those articles serve as the articulation of more elaborate works. (written or visual)

Low-tech Magazine: Is ecotech the new asbestos?: May 21, 3:03pm 5 reviews science, sustainability, modernity
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/05/nanotechnolog-1.html; Is ecotech the new asbestos?
in Low Tech Magazine by Kris De Decker

It's hard to keep track of the soon-to-be-implemented technological solutions that will solve our energy and environmental woes by means of nanotechnology - the science of manipulating individual atoms. ... Unfortunately, more and more research indicates that nanomaterials might become a severe health problem and an environmental nightmare.

Is ecotech the new asbestos? in Low Tech Magazine
Carbon nanotubes that look like asbestos, behave like asbestos in EurekAlert

Image/Low Tech Magazine

Observing the reality that modernity has unleashed upon humanity one can't but be stunned at the systemic impasse it has landed us in. What is even more stunning is to observe the religious like belief that has overtaken the rationality based community whose members are carried away by the absolute belief that science and technology are destined to solve all the problems unleashed by modernity forgetting that rationality and science and technology, as its functional instruments, have been driving modernity since its inception and are thus largely responsible for the numerous side-effects of modernity that we are confronted with today.

With much fanfare, the last few years, nanotechnology has been erected on the pedestal of the ecological, of the sustainable, and its applications have been presented as the solution to the energy crunch, climate change, the food crisis and so on. And one sees the same mechanism at work with other new scientific approaches as genetics for example. The potential of new sciences and technologies are always presented as worldchanging, never is there a thought for non-intended consequences. The implementation of the technology eventually is followed later by such consequences as has been the case along the last century with CO2 and all kinds of poisons that have crept into our food chain and the materials used in the manufacturing of our toys, tools and instruments.

The apologists of science and technology would want us to believe that these are founded in the absolute truth opened to us by rationality. But believing that rationality is the absolute in terms of access to the truth is a kind of fundamentalist belief in par with any religious fundamentalism. This kind of belief in rationality is simply making abstraction of history. How did rationality emerge? After merchants had been obeying the logic of capital for a few centuries that logic extended its influence among the academics. The understanding and application of the logic of capital was indeed conferring richness and power to the merchants. It was thus only logical that its influence would gradually be felt in the other fields helping thus displace religious belief as the ultimate access to the truth. This historic detour lets us understand that rationality is no more than the leading belief about truth that is gradually adopted by all societies entering modernity.

In late-modernity we start to understand that the truth about reality is something unattainable to humanity. We are indeed such extremely tiny particles in the whole that encompasses us that the whole remains out of our field of vision and out of our field of understanding. Once we accept our limitation we start to understand that we are interconnected with all the other particles in the whole. We start to understand that we are in a bind with all particles around us. We start to understand that the harmony between ourselves and with all the particles around us is the condition of our reproduction as a species. That's when we start to understand that we have to reduce drastically the footprint of our species for humanity to survive in postmodernity.

The New York Times & Log In: May 19, 7:43am 1 review economics, globalization
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/opinion/19krugman.html?th&emc=th; Stranded in Suburbia
in the NYT by PAUL KRUGMAN

I have seen the future, and it works.

O.K., I know that these days you're supposed to see the future in China or India, not in the heart of "old Europe."

If Europe's example is any guide, here are the two secrets of coping with expensive oil: own fuel-efficient cars, and don't drive them too much.

Greater Atlanta has roughly the same population as Greater Berlin - but Berlin is a city of trains, buses and bikes, while Atlanta is a city of cars, cars and cars.

And in the face of rising oil prices, which have left many Americans stranded in suburbia - utterly dependent on their cars, yet having a hard time affording gas - it's starting to look as if Berlin had the better idea.

...if we're heading for a prolonged era of scarce, expensive oil, Americans will face increasingly strong incentives to start living like Europeans - maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of our lives.

Stranded in Suburbia

It's all about the "cost of living" stupid!

1. Globalization is flattening incomes around the world: down in the West and up in the South.
2. Incomes were down in the West these last 2 decades for the majority of the citizens. Cheaper goods from China or other South countries at first mitigated the impact of real decreasing incomes. But the increasing incomes in the South are now passed along to Western consumers in the form of more expansive commodities.
3. Hard working bees in the South are saving high percentages of their incomes, their children are attracted to consumerism, and thus develops the middle-class in the South that, let's not forget this, represents roughly 85% of the world population. So its middle-class is weighing heavily on the world demand for commodities thus provoking a corresponding increase of the world demand for raw materials and energy. Result: the prices of oil and other energy sources and the prices of all raw materials are shooting up inexorably (meaning that there is no end in sight in their increase). Furthermore the demand for energy and raw materials is such that their availability is diminishing so do we hear about peak oil, peak phosphorous, peak this and peak that...

From those 3 heavy trends in the world economy a fuzzy impression starts to take hold for us all:
- Westerners will not be able to sustain their way of life a lot further and will have to make do with less consumerism... How will they take this?
- Southerners will want to taste the Western way of life, that they saw so often splashed in their window on the world (TV), but those images in their minds will be no more than a mirage... How will they take this?

The New York Times & Log In: May 17, 11:50am 1 review globalization
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/books/review/Gross-t.html; Cost of living
in the NYT by DANIEL GROSS

The timing for Jeffrey D. Sachs's new book on how to avert global economic catastrophe couldn't be better, with food riots in Haiti, oil topping $120 a barrel and a gnawing sense that there's just less of everything - rice, fossil fuels, credit - to go around.

Even congenital optimists have good reason to suspect that this time the prophets of economic doom may be on point, with the advent of seemingly unstoppable developments like climate change and the explosive growth of China and India. Which is why Sachs's book - lucid, quietly urgent and relentlessly logical - resonates. Things are different today, he writes, because of four trends: human pressure on the earth, a dangerous rise in population, extreme poverty and a political climate characterized by 'cynicism, defeatism and outdated institutions.' These pressures will increase as the developing world inexorably catches up to the developed world.

Cost of living
ARTICLES ABOUT JEFFREY D. SACHS

- Energy prices shoot to the stratosphere because many reasons but chief among those, these last few years, has been political uncertainty driving higher future prices. But peak oil threatens to be even more pressing that sees demand growing faster than the offer of oil products and this problem is going to amplify, for, without any serious alternative to oil coming to the market within the foreseeable future we will be left with always rising costs.

- The production of food has been kidnapped along the last decades by agro-chemical corporations and as a consequence small farming has been decapitated leaving agriculture at the mercy of chemical fertilizers produced from oil and from rock phosphate.

- In general all resources are under strain due to a huge increase in demand that, as writes Farid Zacharia, accrued due to the recent entry into modernity of the rest of the world.

Unfortunately the simultaneous rise of the cost of living is paralleled by the side-effects of some short centuries of modernity in the West that are menacing the whole of humanity of possible extinction. Humans are thus confronted with the absolute necessity to change their ways of living and possibly to abandon all the values and ideas that supported modernity.

But how will the countries of the South, that are in the process of entering modernity, respond to the need to curtail modernity?

The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand | The Failure of Networked Systems: May 15, 5:56pm 1 review systems, complexity, collapse
http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/3377; The Failure of Networked Systems
by aeldric in TOD Australia & New Zealand

Oil appears to be at or near peak capacity - exports are dropping. As for the food network - world grain reserves are at historic lows, and expected to drop a little more next year. And the environment? Climate change is clearly with us, indicating that the environment has already gone past its capacity.

When looked at in these terms it appears that the network is already in decline. Each of these three parts of the network is at or past capacity. If a span of years is the natural time-frame for a crash in this system, then it seems quite plausible that we are watching a very broad-based crash of our energy systems - right now.

Our actions in increasing the connections to the food and environment networks will not help, and may simply speed the crash.

The Failure of Networked Systems
Australia: What to do, what to do about our energy situation?

In the first article Aeldric argues that interconnected networks engender higher levels of complexity that eventually could lead to the collapse of the entire system.

In the second article he turns his mind to defining some "thought-starters" of possible solutions adapted to the conditions of Australia.

The comments on these 2 articles are fascinating and in an answer to one of those comments Aeldric states the obvious "Contrary to popular opinion, the job of a democratic leader is to be elected, not to take actions with a view to the long-term good of the people. Getting elected is about appearance, not substance."

Urgent societal decisions need to be taken at the political level but if "getting elected is about appearance and not substance" then we logically are driven to the conclusion that democracy is not the right political system for solving crises that are threatening societal collapse. Political systems based on meritocracy would assuredly be far more efficient. But when faced with cascading crises threatening such a collapse of our societies it is a little late to start thinking about changing the decision making process. In such times we can only expect doing something with the system we have... and "So we march forward SimplyHoping...."

WorldChanging: The Chinese Far West: May 15, 11:57am 3 reviews china, globalization
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008035.html; The Chinese Far West
in WorldChanging by Regine Debatty

Just spent 3 days in Rome to check out FotoGrafia, the 7th edition of international festival of photography which runs until May 25th in several venues throughout the city.

... one of the photo series was so striking (and so far away from what you and i would regard as "normality"), i spent the rest of my stay in the Italian capital obsessing about it. Chinese Wild West, a collaboration between photographer Paolo Woods and journalist Serge Michel, follows China's industrial neo-colonialism in African lands.

For the 500.000 Chinese who have emigrated to the 'dark continent' there is the promise of a 21st century Wild West. Some have struck gold and run large conglomerates that span whole regions of Africa, others are still selling their cheap goods on the burning hot roadsides of the poorest countries in the world.
For the Africans, the arrival of the Chinese is perhaps the most important event of the forty years of independence. The Chinese do not look like the former colonialists. They build roads, dams and hospitals and win over the people. They speak neither of democracy nor transparency and they win over the dictators.

Woods and Michel conclude their presentation of the work with these words: These are rare images: Beijing wants to keep a low profile for its conquest. But though it remains largely unexposed these photographs portray a phenomenon, a new dimension of globalization, that threatens to leave the West behind.

The Chinese Far West
Complete collection of photographs

The West came centuries ago. It captured Africans and chained them into slavery. As a result African societies were totally destabilized and so Europeans later tried to impose their own political structures in African lands. But this only precipitated the destruction of African ancestral societies while Africans at best only assimilated sketchy patches of Western culture. Europeans were thus responsible for the societal collapse of Africa and the confusion that resulted among Africans.

Needing more and more resources the Chinese started to invest in Africa after the year 2000 and within the short time span since then African countries are experiencing fast economic growth...
Woods and Michel photographed the visual reality of the Chinese presence in Africa and their words say all there is to say "For the Africans, the arrival of the Chinese is perhaps the most important event of the forty years of independence. The Chinese do not look like the former colonialists. They build roads, dams and hospitals and win over the people. They speak neither of democracy nor transparency and they win over the dictators."

I suppose that Eurocentrics will shout loud against what they see as a new form of colonialism that is irrespectful of democracy. But the only thing that matters is the perception of the Africans themselves. Woods and Michel's words leave no place for doubt...

321energy :: POWERFUL BULLMARKET IN US STOCKS LOOMS as the US prepares for GLOB…: May 13, 5:00pm 1 review energy-industry, energy, globalization, geopolitics
http://www.321energy.com/editorials/maund/maund042708.html; The US prepares for GLOBAL HEGEMONY
via Twine by Steven Wears, in 321energy by Clive Maund

Complete control of the Mid-East, which the United States and the major oil companies are now close to having achieved, of course confers massive power over the rest of world, in particular over rising economic powers such as China and India and the immense leverage that this will in time afford can be used to steer these countries in whatever direction is desired. The US is believed to be involved in a strategic race against time to corner the bulk of the world's remaining oil reserves, the control of which can then be used to dissuade countries like China from resorting to the wholesale dumping of dollars or US Treasuries, along the lines of "Try it and we'll cut off your oil supply"...

The US prepares for GLOBAL HEGEMONY

A must read that gives the reader to think really hard.

This article gives a general vision without proving each steps of its argumentation. For that reason we might be tempted to reject it. But the vision makes sense and it challenges our minds to open up to the unknown that possibly is fashioning our future.

We always should be aware that reality is not made of morality. Human reality, as far as our eyes can see along the road of history, is the outcome of games of power. There is always a winner and a loser. Even if it is difficult to imagine that the US is playing smart in Irak Clive Maund's article gives a plausible conclusion that the US appearance of dumbness could be a tactic to avoid its strategy being uncovered. I know, I know. BUT... if Maund's conclusion appeared to be verified by the facts a few years down the road then we would have to recognize that its present posture was plain genius.

The only shortcoming I personally see in Maund's argument is its US unilaterality. It's a plausible vision but it does not account for how other powers play. In a game there is never one player left alone free to take the road he wants; there are other players who counter his actions. And it seems to me that in his description of the present geo-political game Clive Maund forgot to account for the positioning of the historical masters of gaming that are the Chinese. Does he really believe that his vision has not reached the calculus of the Chinese? No way. If the game played by the US is as Maund describes it then the Chinese have been thinking about a counter play. But again only time will tell.

Tibet: dream and reality, by Slavoj Zizek: May 10, 1:40pm 6 reviews china, globalization, modernity
http://mondediplo.com/2008/05/09tibet; Tibet: dream and reality
in Le Monde Diplomatique by Slavoj Zizek philosopher at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and author most recently of Violence, Big Ideas/Small Books

The West is projecting not only its own spiritual fantasies upon Tibet, but its own economic fears upon China, imagining a power struggle quite different from that which has actually happened in Tibet. We have to learn to look at Tibet as it is - and China too.

Tibet: dream and reality

This simple "good guys versus bad guys" story that we are being fed about the relationship between China and Tibet is indeed troubling, for, it is such a far cry from reality. The nine points offerered by Slavoj Zizek are a useful reminder of some hard facts that debunk this simple "good guys versus bad guys" story.

What happens in Tibet is indeed no more than the imposition of modernity on a "pre-modern society". The same has been going on since centuries at the hand of the West while this time around the operation is conducted by China. We should thus be asking why the tyranny of modernity is never questioned instead of accusing the Chinese to commit a cultural genocide.

China enters modernity so abruptly and with such devastating consequences for the West that it is tempting to refer to it as "the bad guy" but we ought to remember that it is the West that initially bullied China on the road to modernity. The entry of nearly 25% of the world population into a game that for centuries has been played exclusively by less than 10% of the world population is world-changing, no doubt about it.

Without the knowledge that China acquired along its millennial experience in management of a huge bureaucracy the country could simply not have succeeded the rapid economic boom that we all are witnessing. Unfortunately the knowledge of this reality is not part of the Western analytical toolbox. Slavoj Zizek provocatively sketches this Western ignorance in the following question " What if the 'vicious combination of the Asian knout and the European stock market' proves economically more efficient than our liberal capitalism? Might it signal that democracy, as we understand it, is no longer a condition and motor of economic development, but an obstacle?"

The Archdruid Report: Not The End Of The World: May 1, 9:47am 2 reviews evolution, society, change, worldviews
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2008/04/not-end-of-world.html; Not The End Of The World
in The Archdruid Report by John Michael Greer

It's not the end of the world, or even the end of industrial civilization, but if history is anything to go by, we could be in for a couple of very rough decades. A crisis phase in the downward arc of catabolic collapse is not a pleasant thing to live through, and we can expect it to have social, economic, political, and (unless we're extraordinarily lucky) military dimensions that will transform most people\u2019s lives for the worse, temporarily or forever. That need not stop us from facing the emerging crisis with as much grace and humanity as we can muster, while doing our part to lay the foundations for the ecotechnic societies of the future - unless, that is, we allow premature proclamations of triumph or catastrophe to distract us from the work that must be done.

Not The End Of The World.

A most enlightened vision of societal change. This post is perhaps John Michael Greer's most influential one.

He is undoubtedly right that "Human societies are complex homeostatic systems that respond to changes in their environments by trying to maintain their equilibrium." Failing to understand this organic way of societies leads to simplistic interpretations of present events that contracts reality into its dualistic visions of doom and gloom versus technophilia. Those are unhelpful perception crutches at best and devastating at worst.

We are not close to the end of the world as the title of Greer's post states but we are at a societal stage of evolution that is going to displace modernity for something new often referred to as postmodernity. But the word has been twisted to say so many things that its meaning has often been lost on its users. Postmodernity is the stage of societal evolution that follows modernity and the transition is, for sure, going to be traumatic for most. Each stage of societal evolution has its own economic, social, cultural and other characteristics but what differentiates each of them is the worldview (understanding of reality) that is shared by the citizens within their societies. We observe 4 stages of evolution:
- animism: citizens of tribes share an animistic worldview.
- religion: citizens of kingdoms and empires share one or another form of religious belief and or one or another philosophic derivation of animism.
- modernity: citizens of nation-states share a common vision of rationality (derived from the logic of capital) and believe that science has technological answers to everything.
- postmodernity: citizens of the world will share a common vision of reality wherein humans are seen as interconnected minuscule particles of a whole that is unattainable.

The transition between modernity and postmodernity is a process of change that will take many decades to stabilize and, for sure, there will be ups and downs along the road. Before to tackle the causes of climate change we'll suffer its consequences. Before to tackle peak oil and other resources we'll be confronted with shortages in energy and materials that will oblige us to revise our ways of living. Before to tackle poverty we'll be confronted with individual and societal violence that will oblige us to care for the weakest ones among us. Our future is in ecotechnic societies interconnected through solidarity.

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