Apology of (a form of) authoritarianism and inequality from an egalitarian

post by jyby · 2020-08-13T21:54:25.178Z · LW · GW · 1 comments

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Human population and energy consumption has risen exponentially in the last century, and is reaching various of the limits of its environment (in terms of number, but even more significantly in term of impact). Beyond traditional comparisons with mammals' populations over-passing their environments' limits, one can raise the comparison with two other caricature system of exponential growth: the exponential growth of a chick in its egg, and the equivalently exponential growth of a bacterial population in a (rotten) egg, both up to the limits of the egg. In one case the chick out of the egg growing into a chicken and exploring a universe much larger than the egg of origin; in the other the bacteria colony collapses at the explosion of the egg but spreads to infect neighboring sources of nutrients. Drawing on those two analogies might suggest two diametrically opposed perspectives on what could happen to humanity and its biome after earth's limits are over-passed, between one future where a united Gaia explores space (but potentially at the loss of personal freedom for its constituents), opposed to a future of individual freedom but limited autonomy outside of a planet turned inhospitable by the depredation of its resources.

I know that analogies are a very limited form of reasoning, but they sometime give the template for original problems. In this case, the real question I think is whether we have to choose between individual freedom and good stewardship of a spaceship (earth or else) able to reach across time and space. Albeit raised to abhor submission and love my personal freedom, the collapse of biodiversity and climate emergency makes me revisit my assumptions.

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