On BioScience and Life and Such

Posts Tagged ‘blogging’

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Plastic Fantastic

In Uncategorized on September 5, 2019 at 1:44 pm

In my social media feeds, this picture has been appearing a lot lately:

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Image credit, instagram: @guarl351

Because I read “plastic trash” where it says “trash”, my mind entered the following train of thoughts.

First, please do not behave like animals. Animals may not leave plastic trash, but they are extremely unhygienic, and they behave violent towards each other. Why would disease and violence on the beaches be better than (plastic) trash ? For some reason the first solution often launched towards any man-made problem is to return to the natural state of things. But, “natural states of things” involve: Disease, Violence and early Death. Why is that so hard to remember ?

So in moving away from this natural state of things humans invented plastics. Which became so popular we created a pollution problem. This particular problem makes for very descriptive emotion evoking pictures of animals stuck in plastic products like Seals in fish nets and turtles in six-pack holders. Which is bad, and should be dealt with in terms of reducing our consumption of single use plastic products.

But for some reason plastic pollution is bundled together with environmental problems. Over-consumption is a problem where plastic products play a large part, yes. But, consumption is a general environmental problem because the energy spent making new products exhausts our resources and increases the CO2-levels in the air. Plastics as a specific product, is not in itself an environmental problem. It’s a pollution problem. There’s a difference.

Most plastic products break down very slowly. For all practical purposes it’s almost inert. It’s ugly yes, but except for the poor turtle in the six-pack ring, not very harmful.

As a result of its inertness, the carbon (that came from oil and gas originally) in plastics is not released into the air as CO2 unless we actively break it down. Which means that plastic products often are more environmentally friendly than alternative materials like paper. Especially if you reuse it a couple of times and don’t burn it afterwards.

So I’ll end my train of thought by quoting Susan Ruffo who points out another one of the pitfalls we humans constantly happily jump into.

“You know,” she says, “we have a history as a species of solving one problem with great intensity, only to figure out that we’ve created another one.”

And, conclude by appealing to everyone to be human, not succumb to animal behavior like over-consumption, and to keep using the (plastic) solutions that so effectively removes us from the natural state.

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Scapegoating

In Uncategorized on August 26, 2019 at 1:41 pm

My father wrote a book. It is about how a bureaucrat in the department for industry in my country was singled out and blamed for a mining-accident in the autumn of 1962. In this particular accident 21 people were killed. The book is in Norwegian, so unless you for some strange reason, are familiar with the language, you just need to go with the brief summary provided in this text.

Due to poor working conditions and I guess, a general lack of focus on safety, there were plenty of other accidents in the 50s and 60s in both the mining industry and other industries.  In my fathers book, which is one of many on the subject, the theory is that a combination of massive attention from the press, the current political climate and economical mining-interests, prompted the need for someone to take the fall for this particular accident. A strategic game was therefore set in motion where the bureaucrat in question was used to shift the blame away from those who were really responsible for the lack of safety: those with potential for political or financial gain.

I had discussed the book with my father many times before he finally sat down and finished it (he had begun working on it many, many years ago). It was a recurring theme in our conversations because it is not only an interesting case, it is a beautiful example of how using a scapegoat can be scaringly efficient. And because scapegoats are everywhere, – it seems we all need someone to blame for any/everything.

A scapegoat (like “the immigrants”, “the jews”, the term “INCEL” or any other cultural/ethnic/religious group/person/expression) is central to so many horrible events in our present and past. The abundance of the phenomenon suggests some kind of a societal/cultural/biological human reflex-response as noticed by thinkers much more schooled in philosophy than me (one of many many refs here). It has its own verb: “Scapegoating“, which can be explained as a societal/psychological responsive act efficiently giving someone else the blame that should have been yours.

Much more more important and scary though: Scapegoating works excellent if you want to avoid fixing the problem at hand with actual solutions. The true beauty/evil of scapegoating is that we fool ourselves into believing that the problem goes away with the elimination of the goat.

It doesn’t. Of course it doesn’t.

Scapegoating is in its essence, very efficient denial. We all need to fight our cultural/biological urge to accept blatant blaming (ha ! alliteration) and look hard at what, actually, in real life, caused the problem.

If I ever write a book, it will be as a sequel to my fathers book. It will explain how we fall victim to scapegoating over and over again. As a society and as individuals. It will include relevant terrifying historical examples of errors to stop us from repeating them. I want it to tell the story of the hero who has understood how he subconsciously feels the need to always blame someone, even when all it achieves, is to serve a bad purpose. It tells the story of how he has found a way to successfully suppress that urge in himself. The book shall inspire us all to follow his example.

I’ll never be talented enough to do that though, so if anyone out there are up to the task: go ahead – you’ll make the world a better place.

And please hurry, we need it soon.

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Memorial at Kings Bay. Photocredit: By Superchilum – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22725527

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I’m not sure why I blog

In Uncategorized on November 17, 2008 at 10:19 am

But I suspect maybe:


HOPE


(Which, I figured, is also the politically correct and trendy answer……..and……….there is poetry in it’s simplicity)

Syncroblogging link

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To change the world I need to program

In Uncategorized on August 7, 2008 at 9:34 am

Quotes from The Next Renaissance, A talk by Douglas Rushkoff

I am not a programmer. I thought maybe blogging would suffice in doing my part to change the world, – that has been, and still is, the distant goal of my blogging endeavor.

Computers and networks finally offer us the ability to write. And we do write with them. Everyone is a blogger, now. Citizen bloggers and YouTubers who believe we have now embraced a new “personal” democracy. Personal, because we can sit safely at home with our laptops and type our way to freedom.

But reading further in this piece in a recent Edge edition made me realize that to truly make an impact, knowing some molecular biology and writing about it, will not cut it.

But writing is not the capability being offered us by these tools at all. The capability is programming—which almost none of us really know how to do. We simply use the programs that have been made for us, and enter our blog text in the appropriate box on the screen. Nothing against the strides made by citizen bloggers and journalists, but big deal. Let them eat blog.

At the very least on a metaphorical level, the opportunity here is not to write about politics or—more likely—comment on what someone else has said about politics. The opportunity, however, is to rewrite the very rules by which democracy is implemented. The opportunity of a renaissance in programming is to reconfigure the process through which democracy occurs.

Since for the time being I do not have the time or the money to educate myself a second time around, blogging will have to do. And I still believe there’s some impact in that (maybe not in my blogging, but there’s without a doubt power in the blogosphere as a whole).

At some point however, since true future power apparently lies in programming, – off to school again, in a mission to rule the world.