Two Aspects of a Maturing Society

The human leadership has a strong desire to remain juvenile and adolescent.  There is fun and excitement associated with not taking responsibility as adults.  But reality is unforgiving: much of the world has reached full natural growth or development through excessive plundering of Earth's nonrenewable resources---the fossil fuel reserve.  We have only one option left, i.e., to use ripened judgement and cease to waste fossil fuel on the pretense that a substitute can be found via new technology.

A maturing civilization must correct two major abusive behavior of the 21st Century.
   (1)  To seek economic growth when it is clearly obvious that it is time to halt and cut back on all aspects of economic activities (lifestyle and population count).
   (2)  To recognize the death of a person as the natural ending of every human life.  The practice of health care for humans of all description regardless of the actual circumstances of each individual case must cease.

In future blogs I will expand and discuss the means for correcting the blundering paths taken by mankind.

Human Response to FF Gift--an Epochal Event

My last blog entry(May 1st) explained the reason why HCE is in a crisis state.  The successful people are just so happy and busy enjoying life that they don't want to be bothered with facing up to the truth.  But truth and reality will not disappear.  Our civilization is maturing, and drastic changes in our behavior must come to pass.  To understand it, the human race must recognize that the discovery and rapid consuming of fossil fuel is an epochal event.  This event stands in importance alongside such event as the modification of planet Earth's atmospherical mix suitable for life and combustion of power supply machinery.

In my book, I described this modification project  (which depended on the Creator's invention of photosynthesis with energy from a weak sunlight) as requiring at least 700 million years.  By comparison, the oil reserve of the world is down by 50% since its first discovery in 1859, in a mere 150 years.  This rapid rate of consumption makes the event epochal because this gift of God is a one-time only present---there is no repeat offer from here to eternity; and it did require epochal time for its accumulation.  Mankind should be far more careful in examining how we use it.

Let's take a break and I'll continue in another day...

Coming-of-Age crisis in HCE (Human Cultural Evolution)

The world dominated by humans is in a state of crisis because of the reluctance of human leadership to recognize the inevitable consequencies of the attainment of respectability and maturity through the coming-of-age in HCE.

Let me first define HCE.  Please go back to the flow diagram which I called the Jehovah Cycle in which the first miracle of Creation is described as the miracle of the living cell.  This is a completely reversible chemical process consisting of two pathways.  The first one is photosynthesis in which the CO2 molecule and the H2O molecule are combined with the help of an input of heat energy from sunlight to produce a huge array of sugars and oxygen in gaseous form.  The second one is respiration in which the cell life is maintained by the exact reverse of the first process: the carbohydrates of cell material is combined with oxygen to produce heat or work while the chemical process reproduces CO2 and H2O.  The miraculous net result is that the radiation energy of sunlight is harnessed and transformed into meaningful work performed by cells.

In the flowchart I designated the creation of the human mind as a separate and additional miracle.  Unlike the miracle of the living cell, which is well understoood, this mind creation is much less understood.  We know it involves the brain and the network of nerve connections.  But how a human thinks and reasons is still beyond understanding.

Interestingly evolution now can be subdivided into two separate tasks.  The original task was conceived and executed by God.  The basic unit of life is the living cell.  Evolution was God's work of building complex life forms from a wide range of differently functioning cells --- ending in the human animal.  At that point God may have dropped off any further duties in evolutionary management.  The task of cultural evolution was (and is) assigned to humans.  Hence the HCE.

A mature society or civilization is less fun and exciting to be in.  We can no longer seek action, seek growth.  Instead, we have to face the necessity of making cuts.  Here, there, everywhere.  But coming-of-age is unavoidable; it has arrived and we must face it.

To continue, dated 2/18/12

(It's been a little over two months since my last entry.  I had suffered a heart  attack, been rushed to a hospital by ambulance, restored to life by a stent procedure.  But two weeks later a complication of stroke-like "occular migraine" attack... I find it difficult to return to writing about a super-natural event of God, the creation of life and especially the creation of the human mind.  But there is no one else.  I accept the challenge, and I'm grateful that the internet is available to carry my message.)

The Fourth-Stage of Cultural Evolution - the human society had made progress largely through the gift of a God-like mind.  But in the most important experimental test for mankind---our response to the one-time-only gift of fossil fuel, we are failing in a most miserable fashion.  We know that this gift took hundreds of millions of years to accumulate; and also that no matter how large the amount of the gift, we humans can wipe it out instantly if we do not put a limit on our lifestyle and headcount.  The fourth stage then is a culture of maturity---putting a stop to economic growth and population growth.  We must begin a return to sanity.

(to be continued) 

Mankind is Entering the 4th Stage of a Cultural Evolution

{This is a continuation of the footnote (dated 2/15/2012) to my posting dated 7/24/2010, please use the J-Cycle flowchart therein as a frequent source of much of my future writings}

Recently when I coined the phrase "Cultural Evolution" I thought it was original. The idea was that biological evolution from the beginning of life was mandated by God. The life forms evolved from single celled entities to far more complex organs, ending in the appearance of Homo sapiens. At that point, God was satisfied with his crown creation and allowed no further evolution in life forms (but perhaps with the exception of new disease causing viruses). Any change in behavior with people then is non-biological; hence cultural.-

Hoping to get some fresh ideas, I searched the internet for existing writings about CE. I was surprised to learn that a large body of literature on this subject is available. In late 19th Century, Morgan and Taylor defined three basic evolutionary stages: savagery; barbarism; and civilization. Since that time, numerous scholars have contributed in this field listed under anthropology---human evolution; archaeology; language; and culture.



One particular thinker, Leslie White (b.1900-d.1975) proposed that mankind can measure their evolutionary progress in terms of the amount of energy that a society has learned to harness for its use. This is very close to my view of society---economic well being depends on sensible management of its resources. However, White's theory suffers from a fundamental flaw in that he failed to discriminate one type of energy from another; he only measured the amount harnessed per capita per year. Harnessing fossil fuel should be very different from harnessing the energy from agricultural produce: the former (at the rate we're using FF) is a one-time-only nonrenewable gift from God, whereas the latter is renewable as long as the sun-earth system remains stable in the form of the J-Cycle flowchart. Nuclear energy at the present state of technological development is again dangerous and a highly risky venture for producing electrical power. There is thus a need to differentiate energy usage according to the character or type of the source of energy. Lumping them together does not give us a true index of cultural advancement.

For this entry I want to advance the theory that mankind is entering a fourth stage of evolution---but doing it with great reluctance because of two things. The first is a blunder in the relative valuation of fossil fuel versus human population and lifestyle. The second is a miscue in all religious teachings established among human civilization.

{to be continued}

The Tyger by William Blake

Reprint
{This entry was about two years old, the date of February, 2012 may be confusing to some readers}

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
…….

…….

Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb, make thee?
…….
------- William Blake (1757 – 1827)

I was a high school student in Shanghai some 70 years ago when this work was selected for our English class. I could still remember the first four lines of this great poem, but had forgotten the two lines which I’m quoting as the subject of today’s discussion. In these days of instant internet access, old master’s pieces can be recalled with ease, which is a blessing.

The question raised by Blake represents a serious and basic challenge to religious thinking. If a Creator had created all life forms on Earth, it is unavoidable that he made both the tiger and the lamb. Much more, he also made the disease-causing viruses which modern human societies are struggling to destroy, or control, at prohibitive costs.

When I was writing my book, I did not have Blake’s “Tyger” at my disposal. But I did raise the same question with an accounting of the locusts plague in China. In historic records extending over 27 centuries, the occurrences of the plague more or less follow the growth of population. I explained in my book the plus side of these events: the crops are re-distributed as food for nature’s numerous life forms, thinning the human lifeline and fattening the lifelines of many other species through the mechanism of migratory locusts. The introduction of pesticides has diminished the effectiveness of this type of population control. Our over-populated world is still encouraged by government and religion leadership to seek growth in numbers. Are we making sense?

In the 200 years since Blake wrote his work, the world has seen vast changes. New knowledge forces new interpretation of God and creation. My God can be quite different from Blake’s God in that justice triumph over love, not the other way around.

Blake’s observation of the symmetry in animal design is interesting and worthy of praise. All animal possess the ability to move in a direction, which is best accomplished by a left-right symmetry about the plane of motion. This will be talked about in another day.

The Gates Foundation and Fossil Fuel Plundering

Today's WSJ carried a news article concerning Bill Gates pledging nearly $800 million to combat tropical diseases. I want to link this effort to my singular and penny pinching endeavor to try to stop the world from plundering planet Earth's non-renewable resources, especially the fossil fuels.

My theme has been to utilize mankind's knowledge explosion of the last 200 years to finally realize that God's one-time-only gift of fossil fuel is meant also to test the sanity of Homo sapiens by observing the rate of consumption we actually decide on. The G & R (government and religion) leadership has not addressed the problem of rate control---we're free to use it up at the highest possible rate that technology will allow! This is insane.

I must also point out that the bacteria or parasites that cause the diseases were also created by God. It was an effort to control a population explosion in Africa, perhaps. Are we challenging or declining God's help to a better world? Let us follow through what Bill's $800 million will do. About half of the total has been spent for delivery of the drugs to the stricken people. But every activity, from drug development to delivery, depends on using down non-renewable energy resources. The world is already in economic crisis because mankind is still trying to increase energy supply to meet the galloping increases in demand of out of control life style and population growth. (The correct conduct is to determine the total available energy resources we are reasonably allowed to use, and cut demand to that number. More on this later...)

Political Misstep Can Lead to Commercial Success

Today's headlines pay homage to Apple's past CEO Steve Jobs. The global sales of iPhone and iPad has set historic success in terms of revenue and profit. I would like to point out that these products are no more than expensive toys for the struggling adults of the middle class. These people need temporary escape from the stresses of a collapsing financial world, and these products are just cheap enough (through Taiwan and PRC labor cooperation) to become affordable. What is ironic is that all this is made possible by the engineering breakthroughs of the USA space programs which got a huge boost in funding because of a political failure by JFK.

President Kennedy received faulty information from the CIA concerning an invasion of Cuba by its immigrants in Florida. When the Bay-of-Pigs operation failed, JFK sought to divert attention of the people by announcing an ambitious moon-landing program. Although he did not live to see the fruits of his decision, it was his program that enabled live broadcast of the astrounauts stepping on the moon. Later on a network of synchronous satellites orbiting the Earth was established to facilitate the IT revolution. Jobs was a smart business man who realized this global network could be utilized at very little cost to Apple to sell his toys.

How do you like my new format?

On Dying

No one can claim to be an experienced "dyer", because death happens only once to each person. I want to make this a topic of today's blog, to explain why I'm trying to change my format of making entries to my postings. Being a perfectionist, I waste far too much of my precious remaining moments of life on trival presentation details. As I watch my mind rapidly declining in its ability to analyze and pinpoint the blundering mistakes of human leadership, I am alarmed by the passage of time---will the human race lose my considerable yet-not-understood point of view to procrastination of old age?

I still have flashes of inspirational perception. Sometimes I jot it down on a piece of paper (my notebook was filled to the last page about 6 months ago), but when I opened my computer to the "new posting" page, composing became difficult---ending in nothingness. So today I must resolve to kill the perfectionist, and let my ideas be recorded, in pigeon English if necessary, on the internet.

This is the end of my first "desparate" entry. See you tomorrow, if I'm lucky.