Regarding the Apocalypse

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Mariner’s alter ego Guru, responsible for wide ranging philosophical and futuristic insights, claimed in a recent post that the Apocalypse already has begun. There have been queries about definition.

From his safe house in Chicken Little’s hen house, mariner will lay out the timeline implied by Guru.

It all began innocently 2 million years ago when a new species evolved that had a growing brain. The species was Homo. 1 million years ago, Homo began splitting into variations. Many failed to sustain themselves and became extinct but a few with names like Neanderthal, Habilis, Australopithecus and Erectus survived into the age of humans. Together they would become Homo sapiens.

In those days, Homo had no choice but to live within the natural confines of their habitat. Living a plenteous life in an agreeable environment, a typical lifespan was about 40 years. Homo’s predators were meat eaters, infections and serious injury.

These characteristics are similar to the few indigenous tribes that still exist in remote areas of Africa and South America. These tribes to this day sustain themselves only with the restorative resources their environment provides.

About 10,000 years ago, Homo discovered how to grow more grain than he needed, hence the beginning of commerce by acquiring more grain than would be consumed by a local tribe. In a subtle way, this is the first abuse of the natural relationship between Homo and the environment.

Centuries roll by and Homo learns more ways to consume the environment beyond his natural relationship with nature. Homo extracted from nature other creatures like donkeys, horses, and wolves that would help expand the ability to acquire excessive amounts of Nature’s resources. Then Homo discovered iron, tin, lead and carbon-based energy. Now Homo could consume many times his need from Nature. Homo was consuming Nature faster than Nature could replenish itself.

This imbalance was the seed that has grown into the apocalypse we have today.

After I million years of living in accordance with the rules of Nature, in the last 1,000 years, Homo has trashed Nature; Homo has trashed the basic tribal society; Homo has trashed multiple generations that cohabit as a protective wall against difficult times. Homo quickly learned to ignore Nature and lived by the rule ‘If you can do it, do it’. He developed elaborate tools which, at every step, diminished the evolutionary potential of every Homo. For example, the use of coal and gasoline in the last 150 years has destroyed the security provided by extended family and tribe (town economy). Its method was to produce trains, automobiles, mechanized, oversized farms, superhighways and national and globally based industries.

In just 150 years the apocalypse gained speed. Isolated nuclear families became the norm – left defenseless without the human support of multiple generations and tribal support. Giant corporations became the norm, slowly eliminating local economies, local jobs and the existential satisfaction found in smaller towns and cities.

In the last 175 years, the apocalypse has shifted into a higher gear. 16,000 species are extinct because of Homo indifference. Around the world potable water is becoming scarce. Seafood from the oceans is 20 percent of what it was 100 years ago. And obviously the excess use of fossil fuel has launched serious changes in air quality and of the planet generally.

But in this century the chains are off. What easy transportation did to tribes, the Internet is doing to society. Communication technology makes war easier and more horrific; interpersonal skills and rewards are replaced by artificial behavior that dismisses 1 million years of evolutionary sophistication; privacy and security are fallacious assumptions.

Now a new age is upon us: artificial intelligence (AI). AI can emulate the entire reality of Homo. The final bridge to the apocalypse is that AI can reproduce itself. Who needs Homo?

Ancient Mariner

 

Climate change versus Tipping Points

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Everyone with a television or a radio knows the climate is shifting. Typically, scientists and weather broadcasters will cite old weather records that are broken by today’s storms, flooding, drought and heat, inching up in small amounts each year. Generally, the public acknowledges these unusual changes but often dismisses them as part of a slow and probably long-term condition.

Scientists have begun redefining ‘climate change’ as a series of increasingly disastrous events called tipping points. For example, Vermont, a no-news weather area, has had its second 100-year storm in roughly a decade. This likely could not have happened twenty or thirty years ago but the ‘slow creep’ of statistics has reached a point where new conditions permit sudden disruptions in climate that were not previously possible.

Several nations around the world have experienced economic collapse because of new levels of turbulence, drought or flooding. Rather than defining these news events as a gradual increase in the effects of global warming, scientists have recognized them as notable events that were not possible in the past and identify them as ‘tipping points’.

For the past ten years or so, scientists have used annual statistics to predict that turbulent times will occur between 2030 and the end of the century. Today, however, there is a correlation for climate change based on tipping points. In each instance tipping points become more disruptive.

To be metaphoric about it, we are accustomed to watching the weather train go by but that is no longer appropriate. We should be watching cluster bombs explode and consider the circumstances should the cluster bombs become nuclear bombs.

How can we cry “Uncle” to Mother Nature?

Mariner has his sunscreen, hard hat, flippers and an innertube ready to go at his apartment in Chicken Little’s hen house.

Ancient Mariner

Possession is nine tenths

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Does the reader feel a slight comforting breeze? Just for a second, nothing that will turn around climate or political heat. Whoops, it’s gone. Nevertheless, being able to see a cloud in a blue sky through bomb smoke can give hope for survival.

The breeze he mentions is the slowly shifting opinions of the electorate regarding the economy (inflation fading and a stable job market) immigration (least in two years), and the lowest crime rate in two years. Surely this is enough to cause a small breeze in these cynical times.

It seems this subtle improvement in democratic party performance has chopped the toenails off republican assaults on old man Biden.

Poor Joe. He’s almost as old as mariner. He has trick knees just like mariner. His accomplishments, just like mariner’s battle with rabbits, are an uphill battle.

But what would the electorate prefer – comfortable old, worn out slippers that have earned their trust or a pair of hard leather slippers with a sole of thumbtacks? (that means Joe versus the big D)?

Given a disease-infected republican party, given the lawsuits dragging on about Donald’s veracity, given the religious fervor of the anti-wokes, Joe’s old-style legislating may be a cloud in the blue sky until the rabid right fades.

The liberal side of the democratic party has chosen, wisely, not to go to war with the conservatives; they are waiting for a shift in political wind. That shift undoubtedly will come as Mother Nature continues to wreak havoc with human behavior.

Neither party knows what to do about AI or an economy without fossil fuel. Mariner suggests the electorate stay with Joe, a man who by himself overcame stuttering.

Mind you, this is the ONLY exception to mariner’s first rule of voting – given a choice, always vote for the candidate under 35 years of age.

From his apartment in Chicken Little’s hen house,

Ancient Mariner

Check the sky – is it falling?

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Mariner allowed Guru to offer a spontaneous thought about the state of things. Guru said, “Armageddon isn’t going to happen because there won’t be enough souls around for Jesus to bother coming back. However, the Apocalypse already has begun.”

Mariner has built a small apartment in Chicken Little’s hen house. He’ll be living there now. Amos has been put on leave.

Book to read: “Brief Answers to the Big Questions” by Stephen Hawking published 2018. Stephen Hawking is beyond reproach as one of history’s premiere theoretical physicists; he picked up where Einstein left off. He answers questions like:

Is there a God?

How did it all begin?

Will artificial intelligence outsmart us?

Will we survive on Earth?

And six other questions.

If the reader needs me, check the hen house.

Ancient Mariner

About Fabric

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Has the reader noticed that among cloth generally, there are many different fabrics? Each has a unique feel to it. For example, one can clearly tell the difference between silk and denim, or suede and wool, or nylon and hemp. What if, in fact, all cloth felt the same? Would that not really matter? Cloth is cloth and it’s the fashion that is important; it’s usability for whatever; it’s the style that counts; it’s what is popular that matters more.

In virtually every fiction book and film where mariner has observed ‘the future of mankind’, the plot is about humans becoming nondescript, that is, the fabric of life changes. It happens in a piecemeal way. Consider what effect the internal combustion engine had on daily society: Towns no longer had to be only twenty miles apart because that was the limit of a day’s horse ride; agriculture shifted from local market to national market; shared resources among large, stationary families shifted to independent career income no longer bound to the home town or the family.

Even the fabric of riverside cities changed from river shipping to rail, leaving dozens of river towns with dwindling resources. Today local business, the enjoyment of life, the vitality of society is a pale remembrance. Perhaps it could be said these towns lost their fabric.

Readers will quickly challenge loss of fabric versus endless increases in the economy, freedom of new life opportunities, better health services, etc. After all, it’s not about fabric, it’s usability, fashion and style that counts.

Several months ago he read a book, ‘The Way Home – tales from a life without technology’ by Mark Boyle. It is an accounting of Boyle, an economist, who deliberately spent three years without money – zero dollars. The only economy he had was what he could muster with his own hands. What gave him the idea to retreat from industrial society was that he was aware of what it took to pump a glass of water from the ground; it required steel, copper, plastic, dams and endless pipelines including what to do with wastewater. It wasn’t about Mark Boyle being thirsty nor was it about any other individual being thirsty. Individuals were nothing more than a device used to discharge water from a very large, self-important industry.

His key discovery was that the farther away a human is from his core, natural environment, the more damage is done to that environment. His second discovery was that the few families that were close enough to his cabin to interact, were genuinely friendly and willing to help Boyle survive in his stark environment. He and his few neighbors came first instead of last. They had human fabric.

For more philosophical insight into the idea that humans are at the center of life, not abusive corporate trashing of the biosphere, read Gandhi.

Ancient Mariner

 

About the ‘do nothing’ Congress

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Yes, it’s common knowledge that few citizens think Congress cares about them – about 74 percent on a recent poll, another poll had it in the 80s. Two large and lengthy articles have been written this week about new ways to redesign Congress and new ways to collect votes.

Fewer but larger state districts

If states had only two or three districts and each district had several representatives based on election percentages, this would make gerrymandering virtually impossible and would guarantee both parties (or more) would represent each district. Many countries already use this model, e.g., Australia.

Rank voting

This idea has been around for several years. Instead of counting votes exclusively for one party or another, the vote would include the total vote from all parties and the highest count would win. (For a detailed review, see ‘Ranked Voting – 2’ post published on April 2, 2022). Several states already have moved to this method first made by Alaska. This method does not change congressional seats.

What is new is the degree of angst among political writers that the two-party system will, in fact, destroy the nation. Now, party choice among the electorate is close to equal which means an evenly split Congress that can’t get anything done. Worse, the abuse of gerrymandering has become so extreme that minority races and opposing liberal-conservative representation do not have equal vote status – even when they vote.

The other condition is that if two weaponized parties continue to fight one another, both parties will move to extreme political positions. Does this seem familiar? This is the issue that bothers political thinkers.

These changes have a tough road ahead – especially in Dixie. Changing the structure of Congress requires changing the Constitution; while we’re at it, why don’t we change the Second Amendment as well?

Ancient Mariner

Does anyone have a plot line?

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By Wiley:

Is it possible that our eager scientists are consumed by the phrase, “I do it because I can”? Is Homo sapiens ready for an automated lifestyle? Is the biosphere ready for Homo sapiens to have an automated lifestyle?

Scientists have created Xenobots, computer cells that can reproduce. Even Steven Hawking predicted this will be the demise of humanity.

Over the millennia, humans have learned to adapt to significant changes in the biosphere status quo; everything from ice ages to rocket ships and nuclear bombs. But each epoch was singular – just one at a time.

It isn’t the same today. There is AI, collapsing nationalism, global warming, social abuse, over-population and the waning of Adam Smith economics.

Can we Homos handle it?

Ancient Mariner

Continuing Ed

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Everyone should make a point of continuing to learn new things about life and nature. Like exercises, we do it every day, right? However, mariner offers a few classes below that are interesting.

֎ From Scientific American, issue July/August 2023, is an article that suggests to us that bees are as intelligent as many birds. For example, they can problem solve both by trial and error and by learning from fellow bees; they also express emotional traits like happiness and PTSD.

֎ This coming Wednesday, July 5 on PBS a new series premiers called Human Footprint, a series that explores the creation and destruction caused by humans on the planet.

֎ Also on PBS online is the examination of the human mind as it is influenced by the subconscious. Mariner has recommended this film before but if you haven’t seen it, it explains the society we live in today. Look for ‘Hacking the Mind’.

֎ Science News has an article online that questions whether exercise is good for mental health. It suggests a yes and no scenario. The article gives an overview from which the reader can select more detailed information about exercise and health. See https://www.science.org/content/article/exercise-actually-good-brain

֎ What does ‘floccinaucinihilipilification’ mean? For those who may not know the meaning, it’s a bad habit.

Ancient Mariner

 

USMC and other acronyms

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On January 10, 2022. Mariner posted the following:

“Poignantly, mariner misses the word ‘gay’. It was a richly nuanced word that combined the sensation of friendly, entertaining and memorable into a three letter word.”

This still is true. There is no other single, simple word that conveys the experience where one would say they had a gay time – rejuvenation via pleasure. But this is a different time. ‘Gay’ virtually is extinct; it lingers only in a ridiculous acronym, LGBTQIA+ (LGBTQIA+ is an abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, intersex, asexual, and more).

The ‘+’ bothers him. Maybe the next letter will be ‘F’ for people who like to have fun at parties having only one sex as participants. Will women’s clubs have to become secretive about where and when they meet? Will the mariner and his buddies swear secrecy regarding their poker club or their Friday night at the corner bar? Will the mariner have to give a swab before he enters the men’s room?

The whole genetic prejudice thing is absurd in today’s world. Mariner is excluded from conversations because he can’t remember the acronym – let alone say it.

Thank goodness mariner is not a black Asian who speaks Spanish, wears a kippah, lives in an Arabian neighborhood and lives with a Somalian. What would that acronym look like?

Ancient Mariner

Phonemes

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For most readers, this is a new word. Roughly speaking, it means the set of sounds in a language. We are accustomed to using written letters to organize our language into words, grammar and the expression of meaning. But there are other ways of organizing a language: by its sounds, not its letters. For example, the ‘c’ in the word ‘cool’ is the same sound as the letter ‘k’ in ‘leek’. Though different letters, they are the same sound – just one sound in a phoneme ‘alphabet’.

Yes, this topic is extremely esoteric, Mariner is attracted to any topic that has to do with hearing and speaking. The marvel of science that could make a scientist the richest man in the world would be to emulate the mechanics of hearing.

His experience with hearing aids is subpar. It seems that trying to convert sound waves into human speech is flawed. Every human listening system is slightly different because brains are different, bone structure is different, language expectations are different (budder in the US is the same word as buTTa in England or ‘sar’ in Massachusetts versus ‘saw’ in the rest of the US. Mariner’s pleasing favorite is anything Fats Domino says; mariner’s favorites are ‘haut’ for ‘heart’ and the permanent replacement of a short ĭ with a long ē – My haut stood steel on Blueberry Heel).

He has noticed that in general practice, there is a human who translates sounds between two incommunicable groups – either a translator of language or a converter changing sounds to hand gestures. Hearing aids don’t have translators; they only hear sound waves without intelligent interpretation.

Perhaps hearing aids should have a phoneme lexicon built in. Computer storage can store a sound value on an atom these days. Why not build a phonemic dictionary into hearing aids; adaptability to parochial sounds could be as rapid as human listening.

Here is the difficulty: Phonemes are categories rather than actual sounds, they are not tangible things; instead, they are abstract, theoretical types or groups that are only psychologically real. (In other words, we cannot hear phonemes, but we assume they exist because of how the sounds in languages create a pattern.) For example, the word ‘kicked’ has two ‘k’ sounds but they are not identical. The first k is clearly thrust from the throat and the second k is a collaboration between the tongue and the roof of the mouth.

Nevertheless, mariner feels there must be some form of phonemic intelligence incorporated into hearing aids.

Ancient Mariner