An Extralogical Analysis of Popular Environmentalism

The crux of the environmental debate is a disagreement over the relationship humans and animals have with the planetary environment and each other. This debate includes but is by no means limited to evolution. Although humans are a grave threat to their environment and themselves (at least over a geologic/evolutionary timescale), the popular/layperson’s pro-environmentalist position isn’t much more scientific than their counterparts’. Ironically, they reveal their ignorance in part by their UNDERESTIMATION of humankind’s threat. Also interesting is the fact that the best summary explanation for humanity’s threat is simpler than most of the “scientific” ones generally offered by lay environmentalists. 

 

It all comes down to this: The health of ecosystems depends on their naturally-selected physical, chemical, and biological compositions and interactions; and humankind’s lifestyle alters environments in vast excess of what evolution can keep pace with. 

 

Since the modern World has been a time of near-unrestrained parasitism, few appreciate how profoundly humans have altered--and continue to alter--Earth’s ecosystems. They’ve depopulated or made extinct huge numbers of species for the purposes of consumption, medicine, commercial products, and the creation of space; they’ve directly and indirectly transplanted countless species across continents and into foreign ecosystems, altering both the origin and destination environments; they’ve dumped astronomical amounts of waste into rivers, oceans, and the atmosphere; and their ability to consume more than their fair share of ecological resources have allowed their own population to swell way beyond what the planet was meant to support, reinforcing the magnitude and rate of these alterations. 

 

Therefore, over the long-term, reducing pollution from recycling alone comprises a small percentage of the necessary sacrifices. Moreover, treating recycling and the like with such importance obfuscates the true rigors of being ecologically responsible, which would require strict population controls, among other things (the World's human population is no less than fifteen times too high).                  

   

This is a complexly-theory-based explanation; given Earth’s environment is an archetypal complex system, offering any other would be like explaining the human body as if it were a single-celled organism. Complex systems are characterized by the inability to understand them by reductive or reductionistic analysis: That is to say, they can’t be understood just by straightforwardly analyizing the parts (or only the most important ones). One must look at HOW THEY FIT IN WITH EACH OTHER. The downside to discussing specific consequences of human ecological behavior like the melting of the polar icecaps (due to increased temperatures relating to co2 pollution) is that it promotes a reductive perspective. There’s nothing inherently “bad” about higher global temperatures or co2 levels; it’s just that the present and predicted values aren’t what Earth’s current ecosystems are designed for. There was a time when oxygen was apocalyptically lethal to Earth’s biosphere; now, countless species can’t survive more than a few MINUTES without it. 

   

Unfortunately, since complex systems have countless known and especially unknown variables that interact in unpredictable ways, one can only guess as to how they fit in with each other--and, ultimately, what to expect from their longterm behaviors. However, since such systems obey various laws (in this case, ecological and biological) and maintain their approximate identities over prolonged periods (at least on human timescales), many things can be known or guessed.

 

The following is a list of relevant complexity theory principles: 

One, in a complex system, man INFLUENCES almost everything but CONTROLS almost nothing; two, it’s much easier to HARM a complex system than AID it; three, the evolution of the system and its constituent parts will follow the path of least resistance, only reliably selecting for traits that are “just good enough”; four, although general or “all-purpose” adaptability will be selected for on some level, the health of complex systems and the survival of thier constituents require approximations of their ideal conditions, including their respective memberships; and five, complex systems are robust and adaptable (what Nassim Taleb calls “antifragile”), but in order for the WHOLE to be antifragile, it must have fragile PARTS (natural SELECTION within ever-changing environments requires its counterpart--ELIMINATION).   

 

The PREVENTION of disease, especially if achieved merely by avoiding harmful behaviors, is not the same thing as TREATING the disease. You can prevent yourself from getting certain types of lung cancer by not smoking; that’s not at all the same thing as concocting an effective treatment for it. Likewise, while preventing harm is certainly physically possible, “curing” an undesirable environmental condition or “saving” the Planet from one is unlikely. 

While complex systems are far from infallible, they are "self-omniscient." Due to the number of unknown variables and the complexity of the interactions within major complex systems, no arbitrarily large group of humans could ever have as much relevant information as the systems themselves. Since the health of systems are highly sensitive to their naturally-selected conditions and interactions and since humans can't fully comprehend them, any active or aggressive attempts to "help them" are way more likely to do harm than good. Thus, effects tend to be largely irreversible. Species are now going extinct at a THOUSAND TIMES the rate as they were prior to the rise of modern humans. Due to the conditional dependency of ecosystems, this makes extinction a positive and exponential feedback loop.  

 

Quickly figuring out what seems to work and proceeding to way over-rely on it at the expense of mediocrity and vulnerability is such a common theme of the path of least resistance you could almost call it the path of least resistance itself. Engineered systems can put in failsafes, but because evolution follows the path of least resistance, it allows for numerous vulnerabilities, excessive dependencies, and weak-links in the system and especially its parts so long as they can perpetuate. Something that’s initially lethal can, given enough geologic time, establish a niche function that eventually becomes so essential its absence attains equal or greater lethality, such as atmospheric oxygen. Furthermore, even if a system was engineered, since evolution requires culling and no environment remains in the same state for any prolonged period of geologic time, the parts would still have to have a minimal level of fragility to ensure the antifragility of the system. 

 

Large and numerous weak-links make a system prone to “runaway” devastations.  

   

Due to the alterations that have already been made, humanity’s fate is largely sealed. WHEN the catastrophe will happen is another matter. The mere “guess-ability” of complex systems makes this difficult to know. Some argue, “People have been talking about stuff like this for a while, and nothing has happened yet.” These people have no concept of geologic/evolutionary time. This is like saying, “It’s 12:10 AM, and it hasn’t rained; so the weatherman was wrong that it’s going to rain today.” If it happens in two thousand years, it’s soon.

 

But forget about whether it’s too late for a moment—or say, go back to the nineteen eighties when it might not have been. How likely do you think it is that society (and not merely SOME people) would make the necessary sacrifices? 

 

Human societies are also complex systems and, therefore, predominately self-organized. But what about human “Free Will”? It is a scientific fact (as has been discussed exhaustively in other posts) that peoples’ decisions and general perspectives are far less influenced by their intellectual beliefs than they are programmed to believe (both inherently and by society) and much more by their PHYCHOLOGIES. The psychological factors that affect their behaviors includes a tremendous tendency toward numerous forms of conformity (not just ideological). Human beings, like the constituent elements of other complex systems, tend to follow the path of least resistance and predominately look after their PERCEIVED self-interests, not necessarily their ACTUAL interests. Actions are determined by PERCEPTION, not reality. Getting people to believe in environmental concepts intellectually is far easier than getting them to perceive them as “real enough” to make major sacrifices prior to when it becomes part of their “perceived reality.” 

 

The idea that INDIVIDUAL people might be willing to make the sacrifices is one thing; the majority of BILLIONS is something else. I feel compelled to remind the readers that no one’s been put to the test. Talking a big game in the hypothetical is a bit different than walking it in reality. Furthermore, an ecologically responsible World would be quite different than the present. Like all movements, there are social and psychological aspects of environmentalism that motivate even the sincerest of people. The social and psychological dynamics of INSTITUTIONALIZED environmentalism, or those of a society moving swiftly toward it, would be entirely different; and they would include factors that would DETER the environmentalists in today’s World, not just fail to attract them.    

   

Anyone who understands human societies knows that no human endeavor of any appreciable scale can perpetuate unless it’s driven either by oppressive force or what people PERCEIVE to be in their own self-interests. Oppressive force is, and ought to be, anathematic to Western ideology—and, resultantly, unconscionable except under the most exigent of circumstances--and there’s nothing that prompts perceived self-interest more than short to mid-term profits. By the time environmental circumstances are sufficiently exigent and/or profitable, it will be far, far too late.       

 

The less scientifically ignorant environmentalists might understand the complexity of ecosystems, but they either fail to appreciate the complexity of human society, and/or fail to fully employ it due to psychological factors. Such people are motivated by guilt, social pressure, the religion-like benefits of environmentalism, and/or martyrdom. 

 

Because people are programmed to overestimate their own rationality and the influences of their intellectual beliefs, they project undue rationality and predictability into the actions of other people and institutions to varying degrees, and commercialism has made these misconceptions a pillar of modern society. Awareness of the true extent of their effects impairs a person’s functionality. A person’s beliefs and especially their sentiments need to be at least reasonably compatible with their goals, motives, and circumstances; if not, their motivation, happiness, and relevant thinking are comprised. People aren’t designed for philosophy; they’re programed to achieve what they PERCEIVE to be their own survival (and those close to them). Today, since mortal survival is all but guaranteed, people think of survival as making a good living. 

 

To be more specific, humans are designed to pass on their genes. Being stripped of the right to have children, which most would be under the requisite fifty plus years of strict population control, doesn’t exactly jive with people’s programming, either. Last time I checked, animals are programmed to reproduce.   

 

Being what humans imagine themselves to be is not defined by superior intellect or the absence of anthropomorphic flaws; it’s having enough awareness of them to create a working reasoning system that sufficiently manages them. Extralogical reasoning postulates that this would allow beliefs to have the requisite effect on decisions. Such a hypothetical species could, in theory, make humanity’s intellectual contributions to the Universe and still be ecologically responsible. They could fully comprehend their capacity to parasitize Earth into a mass extinction while managing to live in relative harmony with it over a prolonged period of geologic time.

 

But it’s tricky business. Scientific progress appears to require both rationality, and irrationality. Many things in the Universe benefit from competition—businesses, the evolution of ecosystems, sports, and academic fields. It’s a scientific and historical fact that most scientific theories throughout history have been horribly wrong, and not just in hindsight or in light of subsequent discoveries; they were questionable even at the time. But in order for the right—or closer to right—schools of thought to get the right competition and catalysts, you need intelligent people believing in questionable ideas. Secondly, scientific discovery and the like require a myopic doggedness that isn’t entirely rational.  

 

In other words, such a species must, according to extralogical theory, have a very precise mix of rationality and irrationality. As humans illustrate, intelligence in excess of rationality and wisdom is dangerous. History shows that as human knowledge grows, society tends to become MORE ecologically irresponsible, not less. Whatever the right mix of rationality and irrationality is, it’s certainly not one possessed by modern humans.