Technology Addiction and Lessons

The Fernleigh Estate Stone Bridge

Why don't we learn lessons and then keep those lessons at the forefront in the mind of society? Primarily due to denial of reality and optimism bias. For instance, there is this Johnny Harris video that explains the world's longest border fence. Take a look at all the unintended consequences of our meddling with nature in an effort to engineer all the different things we would like to accomplish. What does this signify exactly? If you answered that solutions cause problems, you'd be right. However, it is also precisely how we arrived at this point in time. It is hardwired into our existence and part of our genetic and biological imperatives to be innovators. 

Going deeper, we discover that this imperative is uncovered with the Maximum Power Principle and that it doesn't just affect humans, but ALL organisms. The narratives we generate about ourselves attempt to rationalize the MPP, and this is known as wetiko. The solutions we attempt to foster into existence to resolve the issues that we caused from previous solutions is known as reductionism. Sadly, reductionism doesn't work holistically, so while the issues that appear to be resolved on the surface might seem "solved," in actual reality that is just an illusion that many people actually believe in.

If we truly learned from our lessons and integrated them socially, culturally, and holistically, we would function more like Indigenous cultures who actually learned from their mistakes and saw themselves accurately as being owned by the environment surrounding them rather than the other way around. They learned this the hard way after causing the extinction of multiple species due to overhunting. In effect, they learned about sustainability and resilience through removing those two qualities simply by living beyond their means (unbeknownst to them at the time).

There are Indigenous communities today who still respect the rules learned the hard way by their ancestors. Unfortunately, they have been mostly marginalized by the throngs of "civilized" humans who have long ago overpowered and subjugated them through colonization, although a few isolated tribes still exist. Sadly, they will be wiped out no differently than the rest of us through the effects of the symptom predicaments of ecological overshoot. 

The one thing this blog has done for me is to present my findings to others who correct me where I have been wrong or helped me improve the clarity of my articles. I must make clear that very few of these findings have been "mine" in any way, shape, or form. The findings came from other writers and scholars who studied this material before I did. For instance, one writer and professor who helped me understand the unsustainability of technology use is astrophysicist Adam Frank, who described why exoplanets and exocivilizations wipe themselves out the same way we're doing right now and that this is the basis for the Great Filter and the resolution of the Fermi paradox. This is why I comprehend that space aliens coming to help us is not only exceedingly unlikely, even if there are space aliens or terrestrial intelligent beings similar to us, the likelihood that they would have the technology to travel in space is even more rare. Why, you might ask? Because advanced technology use itself is unsustainable.

This is precisely why the idea of a sustainable or ecological civilization is an oxymoron and not an attainable goal. Wasting our time and efforts on goals that cannot be attained is the epitome of insanity. How many of you know an addict? An addict is someone who has become addicted to something - most people are familiar with alcoholics, cigarette smokers/vaping/nicotine addicts, drug users, gamblers, sex addicts, and even video game addicts. But in reality, we're ALL addicts. This is because we are ALL addicted to technology use, in one way or another. 

Why do I preach about acceptance constantly? Because just like any other addiction, giving it (the addiction) up is essential for life. Not giving it up is a death sentence. The idea of continuing civilization into the sunset (distant future) is impossible. Attempting it is ecocide, as extinction is guaranteed. There have been many people who think that if just a small population continues civilization, things will be fine. Nope. This is just more bargaining. Technology use reduces or removes negative feedbacks which once kept our numbers in balance with the surrounding landbase we lived upon. Negative feedbacks are one of those necessary items of life as our extreme overshoot condition proves. 

Without the negative feedbacks, self-reinforcing positive feedbacks took over the reins, allowing population growth to foster more people to create, build, and use more technology, eventually pushing us into overshoot. Ecological overshoot is the cause of all the symptom predicaments such as climate change, energy and resource decline, biodiversity decline, tree decline, cryosphere decline, pollution loading, population growth, collapse, die-off, and on and on. The symptom predicaments are all the outcomes of the predicament of overshoot, and all of it is caused by technology use, a behavior of ours.

George Tsakraklides writes this about this scenario of lessons, overshoot, and technology addiction in an article from last year:

"Economic systems are impossible to challenge once they become faith. Capitalism is the longest lived, most popular religion we ever created. But faith cannot win over physics. Neither technology nor capitalism can ever beat this impossible mathematical equation that is crashing before our eyes like a chemical reaction exhausting its substrate. What we call “capitalism” is a self-destruction machine keeping power, economy, religion and society hostage to the biggest dogma that has ever existed: Growth."

I know a large number of people who focus their efforts on resilience and sustainability. Their goal, of course, is survival. If one is focusing on short-term survival, such as over the next decade, then these ideas might be attainable and desirable. Being concerned for the future is only natural, after all. Many of these same people are focused on survival because they have children and/or grandchildren. I understand the connection very well nowadays. Unfortunately, survival depends upon habitat and we are wiping it out through overshoot faster and faster. Just because one works on building resilience means very little when one is forced to move. All that resilience won't help then. 

For examples of this, look at what has been happening in North and South Carolina recently (over the past 6 months). First it was Hurricane Helene that caused massive damage due to extreme rain and high winds. Then, drought conditions with a bit of wind added in turned sparks into huge firestorms, with many of the downed trees and other debris from last year adding fuel to the fire. Major flooding has displaced people in many communities over the past year and this will only continue to worsen. Wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, and other types of extreme weather events such as derechoes can likewise displace people from their homes. Sea Level Rise is yet another slow but sure way that will result in many people being forced to move.

Once again, these ideas are noble indeed, but they are just for today. Please don't mistake these ideas as "solutions" or "mitigations" for anything. Maybe they can help, but in many situations that we will be forced to endure, they also may end up being totally useless. Don't get caught up in the "solution" obsession, it's just more bargaining and hopium. From my perspective, focusing instead on mental preparation is far more important. Remember the illusion of control...these ideas for survival are based on conditions that exist today and even then some of them deny the reality that some conditions simply are not survivable. There are things one can do to make their life easier, more fulfilling, and happy. Getting to know your neighbors is one thing I would recommend, and discussing collapse and climate change with them can build a relationship that might come in handy in the near term future.

One series that focuses on things you can do brings many of the scenarios we will be facing to light. While it does utilize the popular survival theme, I find it more realistic than some of the others I have seen. Titled, "Brace For Impact," it details what upcoming articles will contain and I think it looks pretty good. What I like about it is that it doesn't push popular hopium and complete nonsense. 

I often get a lot of pushback from my articles from folks who just aren't thinking long-term. They are thinking in terms of how conditions are today and attempting to apply them to tomorrow. Unfortunately, tomorrow will not be like that, so the conditions that they are depending upon in order to accomplish the stated goals won't actually support those goals. They're suffering from optimism bias, the illusion of debate, and the illusion of control. The whole point of my articles is to get people to look towards the future and realize that we won't be in it. I don't mean "we" as in you and me; I mean "we" as in our species. This means that as we go extinct, survival will be highly over-rated. The survivors will envy the dead. At that point, survival might still be attainable but not desirable. I'm pretty certain that my regular readers will understand these concepts, but the casual reader who only reads parts of articles or doesn't follow links to read the "full" story (including the necessary evidence) will miss important details that would lead them to a much better conclusion based on facts rather than beliefs. An excellent article that describes this scenario was written by K. Dawn just a few days ago.

I point this out because I had an exchange with a commenter a couple weeks ago who talked about space aliens coming here to bring us minerals we need. She mentioned that ChatGPT told her this and that I should "check it out." I did, in fact, check it out, and it was filled with the usual garbage and half-baked ideas that I constantly see throughout the internet, most of which have no empirical evidence of reducing overshoot at all, and practically all of them actually increase overshoot instead. Initially I thought that she understood overshoot, but it became evident over the next several messages that she only partially understands it. Without a fundamental complete comprehension of overshoot, one will get nearly everything else about what should be done wrong. I can't stress this strongly enough. Depending on space aliens to bring us needed minerals is known as special pleading, a logical fallacy. If we don't have the minerals in sufficient quantity, the most logical conclusion would be to stop using them before we run out, would it not?  

The only idea with any real merit is degrowth which I spent a considerable amount of time explaining why voluntary degrowth is basically fantasy. My original article also contains some great info about the reality of the movement. Basically, though, until society is convinced that technology use must be reduced, degrowth in a global sense seems something that is destined to happen (due to energy and resource decline), but not voluntarily. 

As for getting the message out, as an activist I can testify to the fact that this only works for people interested in the message. Think of any scientific topic...now realize that most people will likely not be interested enough to spend time researching it. Without knowledge and experience, making decisions is not only tough, but the likelihood of making gargantuan mistakes is highly likely. More on this topic in my next article.

For now, I shall highlight Jonesboro and Section Eight Woods in Illinois. Enjoy!