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The Anthropocene

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DWill

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The Anthropocene

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You might have heard this term bandied about. It's a proposal to lop off part of the Holocene geological epoch and append Anthropocene as a new epoch to signify an period crucially influenced by the activities of our species. A lecture I'm attending next month has this as the topic.

Whereas there has been no moral judgment attached to previous geological epochs--the paleocene being no less worthy of approval than the miocene--the Anthropocene is a different story. According to many ecologists and others in the earth sciences, the era has been, and will be even more in the future, a planetary disaster. We're the ones driving the greatly accelerated extinction rate and the increase in temperatures. We lose scientific detachment because of our responsibility.

Others of course say there is a way out of that prediction and interpretation. But the overriding suspicion of such attempts has to be that they are self-serving. Naturally, we want to find a way to preserve our esteem for our species.

The range of gloomy opinions is given in this Discover article.

https://blogs.discovermagazine.com/coll ... UXL6jdQNLY
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Re: The Anthropocene

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Sounds interesting. I'll read it later.
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sonoman
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Re: The Anthropocene

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"Then God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth."--Genesis 1:28

It was only a few years ago that the environmentalist mantra was sang everywhere that GAIA rules while man is just one of many species in the Web of Life. Now we see the same people worrying that the Genesis idea is too true. Just goes to show you how vulnerable to fad thinking intellectuals can let themselves fall for. What's going to happen when the atheist predictors who repeating the same error in judgment their enviro predecessors did when they predict man being just one of many potentially intelligent species out there in the universe and come to find no trace of any others? Why haven't we heard ANYTHING, any signal sent across the universe searching for fellow intelligent life?

Like I did predicting dinosaurs never really died out but are here today as the birds, in my religious conversion experience in 1979, 34 years ago, I predicted the following:

"Since everywhere eventually becomes the same, there won't be many signs of Others*

"Because our universe is finite there is an end conceivable to the discovery of new places and new physical laws. There will not be many, perhaps not any, traces of other space traveling civilizations because at this point of understanding the only real unknown lies in the realm of the Spirit. Like the Bermuda Triangle, Black Holes stand as symbols to all scientists that the real ultimate mystery lies in that other realm beyond the physical."

With this footnote a later addendum:
* Famed alien hunter quits research center after 35 years of searching

Wed, 05/23/2012 - 10:33am
Los Angeles Times staff

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Astronomer Jill Tarter -- perhaps the best-known, real-life alien hunter around -- is stepping down as head of the Center for SETI Research, halting a 35-year career of actively searching for extraterrestrial intelligence."

When I say bicameral consciousness, a holistic consciousness that uses both brain hemispheres to receive and process information about our world, leads in human knowledge acquisition of major discoveries I can point to such evidence as Genesis confirmed by science today, and now my own prophesies that are also showing signs of confirmation, e.g. above example. There was another material universe prophesy in my 1979 experience, one in which I stated hydrogen atoms are formed through Black Hole transformation of star and galactic core material and forces. We'll see if that idea comes about.
It just stands to reason that a brain functioning well in both hemispheres will be better suited to "see" all the forms of material and immaterial forces composing "reality". Atheism shows a decided lack of right-brain type of consciousness and can only produce halfwits. Sorry, but it's true..and sorta funny because atheists haven't a clue to their disability.
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Re: The Anthropocene

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sonoman wrote:Atheism shows a decided lack of right-brain type of consciousness and can only produce halfwits.
:lol: :D :lol:
sonoman wrote:Sorry, but it's true..and sorta funny because atheists haven't a clue to their disability.
well you seem to be quite blind to yours. :D

an inability to see that many atheists are mighty fine people whether you agree with them or not.
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DWill

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Re: The Anthropocene

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sonoman wrote:"Then God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth."--Genesis 1:28

It was only a few years ago that the environmentalist mantra was sang everywhere that GAIA rules while man is just one of many species in the Web of Life. Now we see the same people worrying that the Genesis idea is too true. Just goes to show you how vulnerable to fad thinking intellectuals can let themselves fall for. What's going to happen when the atheist predictors who repeating the same error in judgment their enviro predecessors did when they predict man being just one of many potentially intelligent species out there in the universe and come to find no trace of any others? Why haven't we heard ANYTHING, any signal sent across the universe searching for fellow intelligent life?
This just ain't so, you've got it wrong and are making sloppy connections. I'm not shilling for GAIA, but that belief certainly didn't arise out of a la-di-da that GAIA was in her heaven, humans were fitting in harmoniously with all the other creatures, and all was right with the world. GAIA was an ideal that only came about from the recognition that we were screwing the planet because of beliefs that we are the lords over it, as the Bible says in that one place. So there is no error in judgment that you can liken to the error of atheists who think there could be other intelligent beings in the universe. What would it do to your accusation to hear of the many Christians and Jews who don't have a problem with we-are-not-alone thinking?
Like I did predicting dinosaurs never really died out but are here today as the birds, in my religious conversion experience in 1979, 34 years ago, I predicted the following:

"Since everywhere eventually becomes the same, there won't be many signs of Others*

"Because our universe is finite there is an end conceivable to the discovery of new places and new physical laws. There will not be many, perhaps not any, traces of other space traveling civilizations because at this point of understanding the only real unknown lies in the realm of the Spirit. Like the Bermuda Triangle, Black Holes stand as symbols to all scientists that the real ultimate mystery lies in that other realm beyond the physical."
Al Gore said he invented the internet, and it hurt his viability as a pres. candidate, so watch out about claiming you were the first to think of the dinosaur-bird connection.

The universe appears to be a middling-big place, so could it be that we haven't plumbed it all in 35 years?
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Re: The Anthropocene

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The article posted reminds me of Ronald Wright's A SHORT HISTORY OF PROGRESS, a great, terrifying book about human history from an anthropological perspective. It ain't a pretty picture, and reading it sometimes made me want to curl into a fetal position, but I always recommend it anyway.
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Re: The Anthropocene

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Hi DWill, thank you for sharing this fascinating and important article and discussion on the anthropocene. Of course we are living in the anthropocene. The essential mutation was the rise of language as enabling technology, especially industrial agriculture. Language makes humans different in kind rather than in degree from dumb animals. The coordinating memetic function of language means the Biblical concept of human dominion over nature is inevitable. Human control of nature has grown exponentially since the fall from grace got underway around 4000 BC. And yet, the Bible also contains a message of redemption and atonement, through the comment at Rev 11:18 that the wrath of God is against those who destroy the earth.

God is Gaia, purely natural. Mother Earth is storing up wrath against the alienated human fantasy that dominion means spirit is in control, separate from and superior to nature. If we imagine we are aliens from mother earth she will kill us. That is why supernaturalism is evil. But the anthropocene can shift gear from the harsh Biblical hostility to nature expressed in the fall dictum of ‘sweat of the brow’. Dominion should mean stewardship, not control. Dominion can change to a humble stewardship of nature, respecting nature as encompassing culture. We have the brains to deliberately mutate into a global civilization of universal abundance and peace and ecological harmony.

As we move into a new paradigm of respectful dominion, we need new values that enable human productivity in harmony with nature. My view is that the core problem is the political hostility of the alienated towards research and development into new energy technology. I contend that the leading candidate for a new technology to achieve climate stability is large scale ocean based algae production to replace fossil fuels and provide abundant food, fertilizer and fabric. The technological key in my view is use of bags of floating fresh water to innovate new industrial oceanic processes, using energy from tide, wind, wave, sun and current to churn the oceans and build floating cities and factories. By moving to the ocean, using technology to achieve this shift on a vastly accelerated scale compared to whales, humans can achieve a sustainable global population many times our current level while giving back ecosystems to the wild animals.

We do not need the sacrificial hair shirts of Will Steffen or the Jeremiads of Paul Ehrlich to transform the global economy. But we do need to recognise that these current apocalyptic problems are prefigured in the Bible, for example in the war in heaven between Michael and Satan, which can be reconfigured as the war between Gaia and the old paradigm.
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Re: The Anthropocene

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Robert Tulip wrote:. . . We do not need the sacrificial hair shirts of Will Steffen or the Jeremiads of Paul Ehrlich to transform the global economy.
Dig that sentence!
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Re: The Anthropocene

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Robert Tulip wrote:Hi DWill, thank you for sharing this fascinating and important article and discussion on the anthropocene. Of course we are living in the anthropocene. The essential mutation was the rise of language as enabling technology, especially industrial agriculture. Language makes humans different in kind rather than in degree from dumb animals. The coordinating memetic function of language means the Biblical concept of human dominion over nature is inevitable. Human control of nature has grown exponentially since the fall from grace got underway around 4000 BC. And yet, the Bible also contains a message of redemption and atonement, through the comment at Rev 11:18 that the wrath of God is against those who destroy the earth.

God is Gaia, purely natural. Mother Earth is storing up wrath against the alienated human fantasy that dominion means spirit is in control, separate from and superior to nature. If we imagine we are aliens from mother earth she will kill us. That is why supernaturalism is evil. But the anthropocene can shift gear from the harsh Biblical hostility to nature expressed in the fall dictum of ‘sweat of the brow’. Dominion should mean stewardship, not control. Dominion can change to a humble stewardship of nature, respecting nature as encompassing culture. We have the brains to deliberately mutate into a global civilization of universal abundance and peace and ecological harmony.

As we move into a new paradigm of respectful dominion, we need new values that enable human productivity in harmony with nature. My view is that the core problem is the political hostility of the alienated towards research and development into new energy technology. I contend that the leading candidate for a new technology to achieve climate stability is large scale ocean based algae production to replace fossil fuels and provide abundant food, fertilizer and fabric. The technological key in my view is use of bags of floating fresh water to innovate new industrial oceanic processes, using energy from tide, wind, wave, sun and current to churn the oceans and build floating cities and factories. By moving to the ocean, using technology to achieve this shift on a vastly accelerated scale compared to whales, humans can achieve a sustainable global population many times our current level while giving back ecosystems to the wild animals.

We do not need the sacrificial hair shirts of Will Steffen or the Jeremiads of Paul Ehrlich to transform the global economy. But we do need to recognise that these current apocalyptic problems are prefigured in the Bible, for example in the war in heaven between Michael and Satan, which can be reconfigured as the war between Gaia and the old paradigm.
How old are you, Robert? I was formulating the right environmental philosophical paradigm for embracing holistic sustainable social change before you were born if you were born after 1975. Climax Social Evolution Theory at: http://biomystic.org./climax101.htm. This is the secular paradigm needed that will "naturally" lead to the best, sustainable, technological answers to human impact on world eco-systems. I authored this theory when I was still an atheist but here's the rub, Robert. It was the same time I had chosen a new hippie name for myself that would identify me with my counterculture that was rebelling against mainstream Americana. In short, I was rebelling against my father's world and his name that I have. I was known in my community as Ariel for some 14 years and know that even my secular Climax Social Evolution Theory was part of my whole "Ariel" spiritual awakening. In other words, you have no idea about reality when you think there is nothing but measurable bits of stuff and fluff to existence. I'm sorry but once again spiritual consciousness has trumped secular knowledge and produced the right idea long before atheists arrive at it. We are the dominant species on the planet and there's no hiding now that fact that was predicted in Genesis I which is the Elohim and correct spiritual understanding of basic aspects of Creation put into metaphorical terms.
Last edited by sonoman on Sat Mar 23, 2013 12:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Anthropocene

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Not in the posted Climax Social Evolution Theory page are my many "climax civilization" notes from that period of time in my life. One of the climax evolutionary ideas I had were "mermen" and "mermaids", human beings who had genetically altered their forms to be able to breath under water so that millions of more acres of earth habitat could be opened to human civilization. The same principle applies to new planetary conditions for space colonization which is our inevitable destiny.
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