SUNDAY, JAN 15, 2023: NOTE TO FILE
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: ALTERNATIVE REASON , FROM THE WIRES, SELECTED EVIDENCE
Abstract: As Jack Albert pointed out to me, only modern (truly educated humans) can understand (contrary to all evidence and reason) that 2+2=5. Other bits are from a conversation between William Rees and Nate Hagens. I'm maybe 6 minutes into making a readable transcript to consider, so possibly more bits to come.
COOS BAY (A-P) — 2+2=5, bitches (I use the "bitches" meme, so I am among those bitches who have been educated to believe 2+2=5).
Common sense, our genes, the outcome of hundreds of millions of years of evolution, inform us, and other species, that if you pick up two apples, but them in an empty bag, and a bit later you add two oranges to your bag, then you have four pieces of fruit in your bag. If you get to the cashier and they charge you for five fruits, you'll ask for a recount. Corvids, et al., can count up from zero. Nothing extraordinary to see here folks. Humans typically can understand 'zero' by age four.
But in Econ 201 class the professor puts the symbol '2' on the board with a '+' followed by another '2'. After twenty minutes of clarifying what these symbols mean, an '=' is added. This is a tricky concept being symbolized, one that has taken generations of economists to fully understand. Then a '5' is added.
You know, as everyone else also knows, that '2' is the number of eyes or ears most people have, and '5' the number of fingers on each hand most people are born with. Your difficulty in understanding that '2+2=5' is common, but those who get Nobel prizes in economics, and all who teach the subject in over 22,000 colleges and universities, know that '2+2=5' is one of the great discoveries of modern science (that humans are the only rational animal, one that is different in kind from all life on Earth is another). You don't quite understand, you'll keep trying, and as promised, your efforts eventually pay off. You understand, you graduate, you get a high-paying job working to serve the growth hegemon.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” ― Upton Sinclair 1934.
If you know what money is, value it, likely have some, then you are a product of and serve the now global monetary culture whose non-viability you cannot understand because your salary, your willing enthusiasm to serve, depends on your not understanding it. The consensus narrative is 2+2=5, and you know it is true because, as everyone knows, you better believe it. Mention is sometimes make of someone who begged to differ (e.g. Bill Rees, Garrett Hardin), and no one ever says what happened to them (a wry smile and roll of eyes implies), as some consequences are unspeakable, horrible beyond imagining. You just know that you know the truth of 2+2=5. It is written (somewhere).
You know that the concept of "carrying capacity" applies to animals, but not humans, that Julian Simon won his bet with doomster Paul Ehrlich in 1980, and that as Simon assured all right thinking people in 1995, "We now have in our hands—really, in our libraries—the technology to feed, clothe, and supply energy to an ever-growing population for the next seven billion years."
Some know that doomer Al Bartlett tried to mitigate Ehrlich's humiliation by using simple arithmetic to show that at a mere 1% rate of growth in the human population for 7 billion years that the number of humans would exceed the number of 'atoms' in the observable universe (but he wasn't so sure about the whole universe). The concept of "overshoot" does not apply to modern techno-industrialized clever-beyond-belief humans, so stop with the chicken-little stuff already.
Humans (modern techno-industrialized ones) are exceptional, uniquely maladapted: We are the only form of animal that tells stories of the 2+2=5 sort and believes them against all evidence and reason. Only modern humans have this ability, so thank the modern educayshun system for all your higher abilities and humanity's glorious accomplishments.
And yes, we are just getting started (doomsters prattle about "fossil fuels," and fail to note that there is plenty of energy out there—we haven't even started to exploit zero-point or dark energy yet—all for the taking in this, our cosmos for the taking). Just take the gobbledygook out of science (and the science out of the gobbledygook) and realize that underpopulation is the problem, one that we can and will overcome to fully realize our Anthropocene potential.
The short of it: You are the product of 50,000+ years of an expansionist culture, a take-and-hoard culture; you know that the civilization you serve, the one true civilization in all its forms (the backward San, and maybe Kogi, being the only exception), the one that your existence and way of life depend on, is the meaning of it all. The expansionist (growth) economy (whose "bread" you eat) will climax this century. You will sing its song of 2+2=5 until you can't.
Welcome to the Anthropocene, and enjoy life while you can (but, being properly educated, you already know to do that, so never mind and it don't matter).
Could modern humans renormalize? Of course, all we need to do is:
Epilogue: I've given expression to a similar vision before, one inspired by George Orwell's room 101.