Re: Spimes, Bruce Sterling, sustain vs enhance

[John M <***>]

Dan F,
thanks for the consideration and reply towards the thoughts I raised. To
reduce archive-length I quote your paragraphs I try to reflect to - don't
just copy the prerequisits' 1000 lines.
Read please below. (">": your recentl posted text-parts, "> > " my previous
post remarks)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan Fiscus" <***>
To: <***>
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2004 10:51 AM
Subject: Re: Spimes, Bruce Sterling, sustain vs enhance
>
> John M wrote:
>
> >Dear Dan,
> >to the 2nd cent of yout 2:
> >you said "enhance". For whom? in what respect"
> >
> I try to consider the "for whom" to be "life itself" or life as an
> integral whole. Within this perspective a fundamental goal or
> value is persistence or survival, continuation or open-ended
> evolution. Within this view humans can play important roles
> that aid life as an integral whole - SNIP
[JM]: "who is that "LIFE" itself? are you talking about the narrow-minded
(reductionistically identifies) and  "C-H2O" (etc.) based so called biology?
doesn't the Cosmos (our universe) have a 'life' with birth, death, evolution
and functional changes induced and inferred?  Is the "integral whole" indeed
an interconnected PARTIAL VIEW of the total? of the 'complexity' nature? Do
you 'model' life as a substantial entity, - even
with a "fundamental goal" which I would deem (better: understand?) as
different from the 'rest of it'?
Persistence and survival are characteristics we observe in our time-related
views. Changes go on without ceasing and some are deemed (by us) as
'mutation of the same species' (if I restrict this train to conventional
biology) - while some are deemed 'emergence of new species' depending on the
aspects we use as our boundaries in the observation. If the boudaries are
close enough, the changes look like 'open ended'. How did 'life' fair before
humans and will after humans (I mean Gaia, or biosyphere, or even Earth or
Solar System - you may go all the way to the edge of universe <G>).
----(Snip the anerobes)----
>
> >If our suicidal wisdom finally eliminates the livable conditions for
homo,
> >it will be awfully beneficial for aother species that survive.
> >
> But I think self-destruction would be a setback for life as an integral
> whole in terms of a blown chance to do something great, like
> establish a viable colony off Earth with aid of fossil fuel legacy of
> ecosystems past.
((and later on)):>...consider the
> best possible contributions that humans could make - a kind of
> natural purpose of humans as one set or type of players in the
> context of open-ended evolution for all life.

[JM]: It seems you wear rosy glasses (just kidding). (Besides the 'life as
an integral' - again). One might look at the antipoles of all that "great"
and wonder: you want to export the politicians, injustice, violence, lies,
etc. to the 'rest of the universe' as well? And if you think of mentioning
Leonardo, Aristotle, Leibnitz, Einstein, Mozart, Buddha, Darwin,
Shakespeare, and another 1000 unsung mental heroes, think again, it only
increases the shame of the shameful 'other side' when those illuminating
stars were around as well.
I missed the understanding of your 'fossil legacy' - I rather think of
(future) non-fossil resources.
>
> >As I wrote in my post to Jack: I do not know.
> >
> I don't know either, but uncertainty can't be a cause for
> inaction or abdicating assertions on what kind of world
> we live in (objective or consensus) and what kind of world
> do we want (subjective and participatory). When in doubt,
> I go with the views gleaned from ecosystems as communities
> with complexity, teamwork, synergy and the precautionary
> principle all integral to open-ended evolution, i.e. survival of
> both the many's/parts and the one/whole that is life.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Dan
>
I find it dangerous to "act" upon 'uncertainty' (ignorance?) "gleaning" -
maybe by the wrong connotations - i.e. drawing the wrong conclusions. The
convetniponal scientific views are based on a reductionistic-style
observation made and explained in ages wirh much less information than
collected later on. These conclusions stayed in the "gleaned views" and
haunt to this day. We have to make fundamental reviewing -
a mental houskeeping - and this is exactly where RR's ideas can help.
It is hard to turn loose from a millennia-long meme-brainwashing. It sticks
in the mindset. Especially in one's learned profession plus daily
occupation. I never questioned the 'truth' in my polymer science activity
while working in it. Scientific schizophrenia is a hard thing to exercise.
And domain-shauvinism is hard to eliminate.

Best wishes

John M