Category Archives: Biosphere

Birth events have shifted

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The AP news service published an article today that is fascinating to think about. AP pointed to statistics that show women in their twenties have put off having children. Instead the average time for having children has crept into the late thirties and forties. In the grand scheme of things, why is this happening?

Wouldn’t our evolutionary processes prevail, that is, becoming pregnant as hormones and independence from parents become active? Mariner’s mother, certainly poor by any comparison, gave birth to him at the age of sixteen and his brother at age twenty. What has caused this move to not have children until the thirties and forties?

The statistics from AP: Fertility rates declined by almost 43% for women between ages 20 and 24 and by more than 22% for women between 25 and 29. At the same time, they increased by more than 67% for women between 35 and 39, and by more than 132% for women between 40 and 44, according to the Census Bureau analysis based on National Center for Health Statistics data.

Direct influences are related to finances. The importance of careers for women as security against uncertain times is obvious. In a related statistic, there is pressure for a financially stable household to be a two-income family. Who pays for childcare and related overhead for children while both parents work? Young families are forced to be practical and wait for more secure times before having a family. Yet, in mariner’s mind, his mother had no financial security but was not influenced to wait for better times; he wonders what is different today?

Another direct influence is pharmaceutical advances in birth control, something that was not available to his mother. Even with the advantage of birth control, why has the shift been so absolute? The statistics suggest that birth control made it easier to pursue a general conclusion to have children later.

Is the shift because Homo sapiens has become a four generation creature? Does this extra generation, largely not financially self-sufficient, add to the intuitive burden of their children?

Is this shift because Homo sapiens no longer has direct habitat-dependent requirements that lend themselves to tribal (extended family) society?

Is it because farming economy no longer is a slow, multi-generational experience that launches the process of gross domestic product?

Is it because modern technology has expanded the awareness of young people to a larger, more complex world?

How is this delay in building families related to falling populations in every industrialized nation? Is industrialized life too rapid and short-funded to allow for a society based on family-centric value?

From a broader perspective, do the planet’s rapidly shrinking resources cause an unconscious awareness that there isn’t enough to go around anymore?

Give this subject some thought. It’s certainly better than the general angst provided by cable news.

Ancient Mariner

Another world on this world

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Mariner is judgmental about most things happening in the world today but every once in a while he discovers a different world. This time it is the Ashaninka indigenous people living in the Amazon River wilderness where the Amazon crosses the Peru/Brazil border. They are the subject of an article in Scientific American Magazine/May 2022.

Aside from their lifestyle, which is in true balance with their rain forest habitat, they have mastered keeping the modern world away by shrewd dealings with government agencies, logging companies and drug entrepreneurs who illegally would clear the forest to grow coca, yet at the same time the Ashaninka have preserved simple religious practices, have a simple government comprised of a dozen elders and a stable economy that sustains their natural environment. The strength of their culture was demonstrated when twenty members laid down in a road that loggers were illegally attempting to build, finally forcing the loggers to retreat.

The Ashaninka negotiated the land in 1992 as a protected reserve for indigenous people. The land had been logged and was not a balanced ecology. Since then the tribe has restored the natural forest, encouraged indigenous animal life including two threatened species, the jaguar and the woolly monkey.

Alas, the Ashaninka live in Nirvana. One thousand members survive in an area of 335 square miles (214,800 acres) and 247 miles from the nearest and tiny town of Pucallpa. As a planet, seven billion people share 37 billion acres, about 5 acres per person compared to each tribe member having 214 acres.

These indigenous people live contemporary lives; they believe that all of the elements in their natural realm are family members – including stars, Sun, vegetation and animals; they maintain a guarded relationship with governments and charitable institutions; they keep a wary eye on the capitalist corporations that want to take their family away.

The culture is maintained by a handful of shamans whose job is to interpret the value of existential events.

Our human wisdom has brought us so much. Humans have landed on the moon, invented nuclear weapons, have periodic wars. Fortunately, humans are moving to metaland where acres need only be a few million electrons.

Ancient Mariner

 

It is about the times

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Mariner’s wife has a desktop Zen calendar. Most of the time mariner struggles to grasp the point of the quote but today it couldn’t be clearer or more apropos to these times:

“The dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its meaninglessness.”

We must find our dignity within ourselves – in the world today the reader won’t find it anywhere else. There is no news outlet broadcasting good times. Even marginal advances in humanism and technology are fraught with negatives and controversy. There is the Putin war, the totalitarian legislatures, the republican autocracy, the uncontrolled metaverse, the age of misinformation, global warming, pandemics, housing shortages, inflation, skyrocketing medical expense, China, North Korea, societal disintegration, the age of mass murders, the destructive influence of venture capital, uncontrolled private equity, growing plutocracy, Christian-based Trumpism, abusive tax structures that protect the wealthy, ignorance about the disappearing biosphere, disrespecting the very immigrants who will bolster the national population and its GDP.

Okay, mariner will stop. Oddly, it seemed almost like good news when the news outlets broadcast the passing of Madeline Albright; it wasn’t, of course, but it seemed better because it carried no angst. Bless her; she helped run a more civil nation in a different time.

Within ourselves we must find stability, sameness, a reason we exist. We must use behaviors that show responsibility for others, by doing what we can to help victims of our age.

We must separate our emotions from our thinking. Pure, educated thinking is in short supply today. We must act with vision and wisdom.

As the Zen quote implies, we must search for a world with meaning.

Ancient Mariner

 

Thoughts on Evolution

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Mariner writes this blog to avoid picking the last apples to make a year’s supply of apple butter. Why does he defeat himself with laziness? His thoughts turn to what evolution has created in the 900,000 years of creating the hominid line. It certainly hasn’t stood still. Everyone has seen the ascent of man chart. Mariner provides a variation below:

Paleontologists often identify key transitions that mark different physiological species. The most common are when –

֎ Early monkey species came down from the trees. Groups or tribes of the new ape species began to have a more stationery society and expanded their diet to more insects, small creatures and additional low vegetation like roots.

֎ In Northern Africa there were periods of drought that forced the ape-hominid to forage more widely. The demands of this long lasting period demanded the ability to range even farther, taking more energy and stamina to sustain the species. Two key evolutionary improvements were the ability to perspire and a brain that could take charge of basic visceral functions when hunting, thereby allowing man to outrun animals by wearing them down.

֎ But something new was happening. Evolution was changing the brain. By the time these early hominids left Africa, frontal lobes were growing rapidly in the brain. Early man began to have the ability to surmise beyond physical reality. There was a new smartness that required logic to perceive advantage. When the early hominids arrived in the Fertile Crescent, the area had perfect weather and a robust ecosystem. Man surmised, “If we’re going to eat so much of this grass (Kamut/Khorasan, an ancient version of wheat), why not collect the seeds and grow it more conveniently”. Because an excess of resources could be created, this was the beginning of agriculturally-based society and feudal capitalism as well.

֎ Evolution had provided man, by then called Homo erectus, the advantage to breed rapidly and consequently H. erectus had to expand territory across whole continents in order to sustain what was considered a safe survivability. Evolutionary ethics promotes successful survivability; expansion is possible because of a certain advantage to the species. This is not new; today consider the Lionfish, a flourishing invasive species in U.S. Southeast and Caribbean coastal waters. The difference is that Lionfish do not have frontal lobes. Humans, on the other hand, know full well the relationship between investment and profit: “chop those trees down, damn it, there’s money to be made!” or maybe, “Kill those savages, they aren’t Christians!” Both logical in evolutionary terms.

֎ Since Roman times in the West, Human frontal lobes have taken over ethical control of what used to mean ‘survival’ to the planet’s ecosystems – themselves a product of evolution but without frontal lobes. Humans with their ever growing frontal lobes have expanded into Einstein’s universe of time and space and they are eager to expand beyond this planet to leverage the profit motive even while significant numbers of the human species languish on Earth.

– – – –

Mariner stops here to pick apples. What about these frontal lobes? Are they a self-destructive error on evolution’s part? Thousands of species including many Homo precursors have gone extinct because of unintended shortcomings.

Have a happy holiday season!

Ancient Mariner

 

In Pursuit of Global Warming

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The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26, begins this week. The United States and China are responsible for 40 percent of all carbon emissions. But hopes for successful U.S.-China engagement have dimmed since John Kerry’s preparatory meetings in China produced no results and ended by Chinese Foreign Minister WANG YI claiming climate cooperation can’t be separated from the overall situation of China-U.S. relations. China, in fact, will not attend the COP26 meeting in Glasgow.

When China and the US compete, one isn’t reminded of pole vaulters or curling, one thinks of sumo wrestling. Any number of issues in politics, civil rights, trade negotiations etc. can stop progress in important unrelated fields such as global warming.

For example, consider Taiwan. The brief history is that Japan possessed the island for fifty years until the end World War II; the peace settlements placed the island under China’s management – at the time the ruling party was Kuomintang (KMT). Then in 1949 China had a civil war that drove the KMT to retreat entirely to Taiwan, declaring Taiwan to be the seat of the Chinese government. Of course the new communist government never accepted this claim. Several political conflicts between China and the West kept Taiwan in an unsettled state until 2000 when on its own Taiwan began to seek full independence from China.

Today, in fact every day, squadrons of Chinese fighter planes fly over the island; warships cruise just offshore. The rhetoric between China and Taiwan is heated. Taiwan lies only 90 miles from China mainland. The US says, “Don’t worry Taiwan, we’ve got your back.”

What does any of this have to do with COP26? Nothing. Somehow though, mariner thinks the planet is winning. Check your inner tube for leaks.

Ancient Mariner

Immigration, Climate Change and Housing

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These three subjects eventually will be at the center of political, economic and cultural life not only in the United States but around the world. ‘Eventually’ means in about ten to fifteen years from now.

Immigration. The current increase in immigration along the Gulf Coast and Mexico largely is Central Americans escaping brutal, terrorist-controlled nations. But recently it includes Haitians – a first of its kind wave due to global warming. Each year the number of immigrants easily could grow by a power of ten (10, 100, 1,000, etc.) as coastal areas around the world force inhabitants to relocate due to flooding and sea rise. In Bangladesh already 4 million people have been displaced. The coastline between Houston, Texas and Pensacola, Florida already has suffered extreme and prolonged weather conditions that are permanently displacing thousands of families. Austin, Texas, a city only on a river and away from the coast,  had to buy large acreages from the public to let the land return to a wild state that will protect shorelines.

In a few years American migrants will outnumber foreign immigrants. The current Congress and Administration tinker about trying to retain reelection leverage rather than facing a rapidly growing dilemma for which there is no plan, no allocated resources and no idea of a solution. The issue is so dire that mariner suspects eventually the Government will create an independent, apolitical commission to deal with the issue. Of the three topics in this post, Immigration/migration will be the most disruptive in the shortest amount of time.

Climate Change. It isn’t just flooding by rising seas and turbulent storms. Between 2040 and 2060 extreme temperatures will become commonplace in the South and Southwest, with some counties in Arizona experiencing temperatures above 95 degrees for half the year. The entire southeast sector of the United States will be too warm for current farm crops. This affects a significant part of the agricultural economy and in its own right will force thousands of farm workers and farm owners to migrate north – even into Canada.

Still, it is flooding along the coasts that will drive large migrations. As many as eleven major metropolitan areas in the U.S. will have to deal with total destruction or major Dutch-style dams and walls. The exact number is hard to project given all the variables but several estimates suggest that as many as 13 million Americans will be displaced in the next few decades.

Housing. Mariner remembers inflation during the 1970s. Housing costs rose by 17 percent; many entrepreneurs became millionaires just by buying and reselling their homes every six months. Climate change will induce a similar inflation in the cost of homes. Anyone can guess how bad inflation will be but it will be significant and disruptive. Even today there is inflation in housing cost because there aren’t enough homes due to the impact of Covid and the reorganization of large corporations.

Concern. Recent polls of the younger population indicate that climate change already is the number one concern. Second is lack of confidence in any U.S. government – which they blame as the cause of global warming. Mariner will cite only one of many telling clues that Congress has no idea how overwhelming global warming is: One Senator from a small coal mining state willfully prevents funding for climate change because he won’t be reelected by his coal mining electorate. Multiply this attitude by all the elected officials in this nation. Who to blame – the official’s greediness or the electorate’s ignorance?

Ancient Mariner

Today’s News

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This excerpt is taken from a Politico news item today. The survey was taken by several elite colleges and was peer reviewed:

“HUMANITY IS DOOMED” — Climate change is taking a toll on the mental health of teenagers and young adults in a way that could be broadly damaging to society and even democratic institutions. That’s among the findings in a first-of-its-kind survey of 10,000 teens and young adults aged 16 to 25.

“The numbers: 83 percent said people have failed to care for the planet; 75 percent called the future frightening; 39 percent said they’re hesitant to have children.

“Most worrisome in the big picture was a widespread mistrust of government. Among U.S. respondents, only 21 percent said government could be trusted, the worst showing of any country. In India, nearly 3 in 4 teens and young adults said humanity is doomed. In Brazil, 78 percent said the government lies. Ninety-two percent of Filipinos called the future frightening.

“We’ve heard this story before. Teen activist Greta Thunberg took on former President Donald Trump. Teenagers are marching in the streets. Young adults are suing the U.S. government in a case that could go to trial next year. Large employers say they’ve been forced into climate action in part by demands from their young workers.

“The survey is the first time climate anxiety has been quantified and documented in young people.

“You needed the proof? OK. Here’s the fricking paperwork,” said van Susteren, a forensic psychologist. “The era of denial and disconnecting is over.”

– – – –

Mariner was in a doctor’s waiting room today. Five others were in the room as well. He overheard the following short conversation between ‘Bob’ and ‘John’.

Bob – Hello, John. It’s been a long time. How old are you now?

John – too fuckin’ old.

You must at least be in your 90’s. What’s your secret?

John – I fucked everything I could get my hands on, ate everything I could get my hands on, did whatever I wanted and went anywhere I wanted when I wanted. [Mariner assumes this was a stock bravado answer that evolved because everyone kept asking him that question.]

Bob – Wow. That’s how to do it, John. How are the wife and kids?

John – ‘Mona’ died 7 years ago. The older boy lives in Panama; haven’t heard from him in years. The younger one lives in Dallas; he calls me every Christmas.

Bob – That’s tough. Where do you live now?

John – I live in Mona’s niece’s converted garage over on ‘South Street’.

The conversation dwindled.

– – – –

And that’s the way it is.

Ancient Mariner

 

How are consumers in charge of global warming?

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A few posts ago mariner wrote a post in response to an article that suggested “If everyone in the Nation would stop eating beef for one day each week, the Colorado River disappearance would be reversed.” The implication was that private citizens, as consumers, can have a more immediate effect on global warming than is possible through government and corporate politics, which are burdened with self-interest and ignorance.

The idea of consumer-managed reversal of the causes of global warming extends to other causes as well. If each citizen would not use air conditioning or heating for one day each week, carbon dioxide emissions would be reduced by a notable percent. The same applies to automobiles, airplanes, buses and trains. Perhaps if everyone wore each day’s clothing two days instead of one thereby using less water for laundry, the amount of potable water in the world would stabilize.

These observations are relatively true and the impact would be significant. The fallacy is how does one ensure that 350 million citizens participate? Nevertheless, as an old trope says, ‘A dollar has 100 pennies.’ Even if a small percentage of citizens accept this responsibility, it helps.

In that recent post, mariner cast about looking for substitutes for beef one day per week. He thought Friday may be more acceptable because of various religious traditions of meatless Friday. He was dismayed that so many seafood options are suffering from overharvesting; one source cited that only ten percent of the world’s original large fish population exists today. Wild salmon and tiger shrimp have become a delicacy.

The vegans have the moral high ground with the meat issue. Still, mariner thinks our ancestors may not have made it without meat, if only carrion. Isn’t it true that the bone marrow, liver, heart and brains were the magic sources of protein that allowed today’s human brain to develop? . . . Maybe the vegans have a good point.

However, dealing with global warming is not a game. Around the world already weather and flooding have caused trillions of dollars in damage, wiped out family sustainability for billions, leaving not even a home or possessions. The rich nations have been able to hold their own in covering the obvious financial cost to the economy but certainly have no means to restore lives and families of those who suddenly have been wiped out.

The United States is in a cantankerous mood today. Irrelevant political conflict prevents the governments from performing with rationality in the face of a worldwide global crisis beyond any that humans have faced. In the US alone, millions will be forced to move away from disaster at a time when housing is inadequate, expensive and likely the economy may suffer accordingly, suffering a severe stagflation.

While wearing one’s clothing for two days is admirable, it is inadequate. Disaster will come anyway. The electorate’s job is not to stop beef or automobiles; its job is to elect rational individuals who will turn the politics around and start doing the representative job they are supposed to do.

Ancient Mariner

Commemorating the Rock

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There are good things and bad things in the world. The biosphere is built on survival and sustainability in an indifferent world. Virtually everyone has had bad days, maybe very bad days in their lives. The seasons of life can pass through trying, perhaps unfair, certainly unpleasant and hurtful times.

But there are sound foundations, sound existential guarantees that prepare everyone to stand up and to survive. Evolution has fine tuned us to possess the requirements needed to be successful and happy. There are virtually magical experiences that prepare everyone to know happiness and joy; to know compassion and empathy; to have belief in ourselves.

We are fortunate to belong to a group of species that can judge virtue. We are mammals. We are given time to grow under the protection of family, of sharing life with siblings and having time to know ourselves.

At the core of this sophisticated, complex and strengthening experience is the Mother – Mom – the Rock that sustains our civilization.

Ancient Mariner

Environment

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We humans have become increasingly aware that we live in an environment not as a dominating owner but simply as just another renter who tends to trash the apartment. Perhaps it’s the global warming issue that helps with human awareness; perhaps it’s the growing scarcity of food resources for the planet; perhaps it’s the cost to farmers when they plow the soil which strips the fields of all nutrients and plants, especially in regions where there are strong winds that carry away the soil farmers just tilled and fertilized and put weed killer down – producing poor yield in the fall.

Evidence of growing awareness is all about. TV broadcasts about gardening, farming, waste management, and collaborative sharing with the environment are frequent. Extension agencies, libraries and garden clubs sponsor programs about collaborative gardening. Mariner has a relative whose hobby is planting colorful plants around the base of trees along New York streets; mariner has a friend who has decided to let violets stay in the lawn. And mariner himself is tinkering with a number of collaborative projects in his own garden.
֎ One example is the cursed Creeping Charlie, a very rapidly spreading weed that defies elimination. It still is a killing pest in the lawns but in some garden beds mariner has decided to experiment with Creeping Charlie as the ground cover to keep other weeds out and at the same time add to the décor of the garden. It turns out that Charlie has taken hold of his new job with relish. Not even the dreaded crabgrass can sprout beneath a robust covering of Creeping Charlie. In fact, mariner is saving money because he doesn’t have to buy mulch for those areas.

֎ Another experiment is mariner’s tolerance of a rambunctious mole. He must protect against the mole’s burrowing in vegetable beds where seedlings are emerging but otherwise he has let the mole venture about. Tolerance by the mariner is an experiment to see how many Japanese beetle grubs can be eaten; mariner has many fruit and ornamental trees on a property surrounded on all sides by large concrete pads and accompanying large garages. All beetles come to mariner’s garden.

An unexpected reward is the mole gradually aerates the lawn. Typically, a lawn keeper occasionally will need to rent an aerating device to pull plugs from the lawn so it can grow and accept water. Mariner keeps his lawn a bit high (another anti-weed collaboration rather than performing the typical buzz cut) so the lumps from the mole burrowing aren’t noticeable.

Mariner has mentioned in past posts that his town has lawn Nazis. It is of a different spirit, certainly not one of collaboration with nature but comparatively speaking takes more time, labor and cash to maintain. This difference between collaboration with and dominance of nature has existed throughout history from the first scraping of the ground to cast wheat seeds to the large open mining pits and deliberate elimination of forests today.

In just a few years many farmers have proven that any way to collaborate with the environment is more productive, less expensive, saves waste and is good for surrounding atmosphere, water and wildlife. One common practice by farmers that has been implemented for many decades is a natural easement by creeks and rivers rather than plowing closer to the water’s edge.[1] It is entertaining to work with nature as a partner – both existentially and philosophically. What projects does the reader have?

Ancient Mariner

 

[1] An excellent documentary on collaborative farming, ‘Kiss the Ground’, is available on Netflix but the reader must search ‘The Littlest Farm’ – the title is in error. The Littlest Farm also is an excellent film about how a family uses nature to transform virtual wasteland into a productive farm but mariner could find it only as a rental or purchase. 3 minute trailers are available online for both films.