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Biospheric Cognition
Biospheric Cognition
and biospheric awakening
If we are going to nurture into being an ecological civilization, or an ecological culture, we’re going to require what in this writing I will call “biospheric cognition”.
Cambridge Cognition offers a limited and insufficient first stab at defining cognition here.:
“Cognition is defined as ‘the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.'”
This is almost a fully adequate account of cognition, because it includes ‘understanding’ with knowledge. But it fails to give an appropriate place to invention and innovation in thought and understanding — because it doesn’t mention these.
Biospheric Cognition is a radical innovation in human cognition which is emerging now, and could only have emerged and evolved in our time in history. It could not have emerged or evolved in the ancient world, or before modernity, because the sciences which enable biospheric cognition to fully realize itself didn’t exist then.
“The term “biosphere” was coined in 1875 by geologist Eduard Suess, who defined it as the place on Earth’s surface where life dwells.” – Wikipedia, Biosphere
That we live within ecosystems has been well known by traditional people for a very, very long time, since a time even more ancient than ancient civilizations. But even the word and concept of ecology is modern. Modern (and postmodern, amodern, etc.) ecology is a particular kind of knowledge and knowing, and it differs from other-than-modern conceptual schemas. But this hardly means that non-modern people lacked ecological insight or wisdom. It was just different in the premodern and nonmodern context.
We now know things about our world which were not possible to know until recently in history. We know how the atmosphere relates to the ecosystems and the biosphere in a very rich and complex way which would not have been possible even two hundred years ago, or even a hundred years ago.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Victor Gorshkov: a life for the biosphere.
Victor Gorshkov: a life for the biosphere.
The basic concept of the biotic regulation of Earth’s temperature according to Gorshkov et al, 2002. The figure shows the potential function U(T) for the global mean surface temperature. Stable states correspond to pits, unstable states to hills. The modern value of +15°C (288 K) approximately corresponds to an unstable state (2, thin line). Physically stable states correspond to a frozen Earth (state 1) and a red-hot Earth (state 3). We are precariously living in a shallow minimum of potential energy that defines the habitable zone for the biosphere. This state can be created and maintained only by a healthy biosphere.
On May 10th, 2019, Victor Gerogievic Gorshkov died in St. Petersburg after a life dedicated to scientific research that he continued to perform up to nearly the last moment. One year later, I thought I could publish this small homage to his figure and his work. His longtime coworker and companion, Anastassia Makarieva, was also kind enough to write a summary of Victor’s life and work for this blog.
In many ways, science follows the 20/80 rule, sometimes called the “Pareto’s rule,” which tells that 80% of the work is performed by just 20% of the performers. Maybe Pareto was an optimist and it may be that science works because, as Newton said long ago, a small number of “giants” emerge out of the general mediocrity. One of these creative people, a true giant of science, was Victor Gorshkov (1935-2019), researcher at the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, in Russia.
Understanding Gorshkov’s work and ideas takes some time and patience. He was trained as a theoretical physicist and his approach was very different from the way most western scientists operate.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Workers’ Power vs. Climate Destroyers: What It Will Take to Save the Planet
Workers’ Power vs. Climate Destroyers: What It Will Take to Save the Planet
Humanity faces a multi-faceted crisis. Endless wars of imperial aggression, both overt and covert– from Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan to Yemen, Palestine and Central and South America. These conflagrations compel those at the bottom of the economic pyramid to fight and die to protect the wealth and privileges of those at the top. These wars destroy human beings and our natural environment, but also opportunities and resources that could be allocated to human betterment. Nuclear arsenals remain on hair trigger alert, with fearsome destructive potential, one accident or a single myopic policy decision away from wiping out the entire human race. Economic inequality, having already reached obscene proportions, is showing no sign of slowing down or reversing course. Racism, xenophobia, sexism and other forms of hate-filled discrimination are used to distract and divide those victimized by the current state of affairs and to hinder a united fight by all of the oppressed against our common oppressors.
And then there’s the matter of climate Armageddon. The world is heating up as a result of economic and energy policy choices. These choices have maximized profits for the 1% while threatening the very biosphere we all depend on for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We know that the burning of fossil fuels and the resulting additional carbon in our atmosphere are driving rapid planetary warming. We know this, not because a majority of climate scientists believe it to be true – that’s not how science works; after all, majorities of scientists have been wrong on occasion. We know this crisis is real because a substantial amount of data has been collectedthat corroborates the climate change hypothesis, and because key scientific predictions based on the theory of human-accelerated climate change have been born out by evidence and experience. Climate change has been directly implicated in:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Three Climatic Monsters with Asteroid Impact
Three Climatic Monsters with Asteroid Impact
Photo by Logan Fulcher | CC BY 2.0
Three monster climatic events are currently shaping up to collide. It’ll be like an asteroid collision. In that regard, this article, in two parts, explores real, already happening, indisputable climate change that is starting to take down ecosystems throughout the biosphere. It’s happening now.
For perspective on asteroids, the last one, 7 ½ miles wide, hit 65 million years ago (dinosaurs wiped-out), vaporizing sulfate rocks, filling the atmosphere with sulfuric particles, blocking out sunlight, temps dropped 18-29F, followed thereafter by vaporized carbonate rocks, emitting CO2 at the rate of 0.2 ppm over 100,000 years as temps increased by 5C.
Today, CO2 increases at the rate of 3.0 ppm after only 200+ years of anthropogenic (human) influence. Ergo, humans are 15xs more powerful than an asteroid! Try that one on for size mister extinction!
The three monsters are: (1) A State Shift in the biosphere; (2) Human-caused greenhouse gases –GHG- alter the planet, disrupting the Holocene Era of 10,000 years of Goldilocks’ climate, not too hot, not too cold, going away fast; (3) Collapsing ecosystems 100% due to human footprint, inclusive of excessive toxic chemicals galore, worldwide.
Monster #1, A State Shift has been detected in a landmark study by twenty-two biologists and ecologists (“Approaching A State Shift In Earth’s Biosphere,” Nature, June 2012), concluding that when more than 50% of ice-free land converts to crops, livestock, highways, schools, towns, bridges, cities or the human footprint in toto, the ecological web collapses. As of today, human impact is fast approaching that milestone, as the Great Acceleration smothers the planet with human footprint.
The crux of monster #1 involves inventory of ecologically productive land. How much and for whom? Estimates are 3-4 acres of ecologically productive land per capita for 7.5B people. The problem is: Twenty-five percent (25%) of the world’s population, i.e., the developed/industrialized countries, requires nearly 100% of ecologically productive land to support sustainability of lifestyles, like razor blades, automobiles, houses, and bread & butter and ice cream, beyond which natural capital goes into deficit.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Ecosystem is Breaking Down
The Ecosystem is Breaking Down
Photo by Richard Allaway | Public Domain
The ecosystem is the quintessential essence of life on our planet, and this crucial life system is showing signs of breaking down. It is likely a more pressing problem than climate change. Time will tell but time is short.
The ecosystem consists of all living organisms that interact with nonliving components like air, water, and soil contained within the biosphere, which extends from the bottom of the oceans to the top of the mountains. Although unannounced by authorities or professional orgs, it is already becoming evident that the ecosystem is breaking down. Alas, it’s our only ecosystem.
The evidence is too prevalent to ignore. For example, when (1) abundance of insects plummets by 75%, and (2) tropical rainforests mysteriously emit CO2, and (3) Mt Everest’s snow is too toxic to pass EPA drinking water standards, and (4) squid at 1,000 fathoms carry toxic furniture protection chemicals, and (5) ocean oxygen production plummets, then something is wrong, horribly, horribly, horribly wrong. But, nobody has announced it. Global warming gets all of the attention.
All of which begs the question: What does it take to determine when the ecosystem is losing it? After all, it surely looks like it is doing exactly that. For example, the loss of 75% of insect abundance in a landmark study in Germany (referenced in prior articles) released only last month is enough, all by itself, to indicate an extinction event is in the works. That is a monstrous wake up call.
Equally horrifying, recent studies show tropical rainforests emitting more CO2 than automobiles, which is kinda like getting hit repeatedly in the head with a wooden two-by-four, a deadly serious wake up call that says the planet is breaking down.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Why We Consume: Neural Design and Sustainability
Why We Consume: Neural Design and Sustainability
Exponential economic growth is rapidly destabilizing the biosphere. Among the many factors that stimulate such growth is the human tendency to consume goods and services far beyond what is required to meet basic needs. We have to grasp what drives this tendency in order to manage it. The brain’s core circuits were long believed to stimulate us to seek pleasure—greedily and selfishly—while higher cortical circuits try to rein us in. Neuroscience now shows that the core circuits serve not pleasure per se, but efficient learning. When we obtain a reward that our frontal cortex values highly, the core circuit delivers a chemical pulse that we experience as satisfaction—so we repeat the behavior. Satisfaction is brief and diminishes as a particular reward becomes predictable. This circuit design works well for pre-industrial societies in which rewards are varied and unpredictable. But capitalism shrinks the diversity of possible rewards, leaving the remainder less satisfying, and making stronger doses, i.e., more consumption, necessary. The path toward sustainability must, therefore, include re-expanding the diversity of satisfactions.
A Brain Circuit for Learning | Human Nature | Implications for the Great Transition | Endnotes
The evidence deepens daily that human activity is now imperiling the stability of the biosphere. The main cause is exponential economic growth, driven on the production side by capitalist competition, pursuit of profit, and financial manipulation. Yet persistent growth ultimately requires demand—that is, individual consumption. If people consumed less, stuff would accumulate and growth would slow. Economic growth far exceeds population growth, so if economic growth could be slowed, there would still be enough for all seven billion of us, at least if wealth were distributed more equally.
So why do people consume ceaselessly, far beyond the point of meeting basic needs? There are social factors, such as competition for status, and personal factors, such as shaping a self-image.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Shrinking the Technosphere, Part IV
Shrinking the Technosphere, Part IV
In the previous parts of this series, we started picking away at a very big subject: what a successful strategy for bringing about rapid social change would look like, such social change being necessary if we were to avoid the worst ravages of catastrophic climate change. This change must introduce “naturelike” technologies that would bring the technosphere back into balance with the biosphere.
To be effective, this strategy must rely on technology—but not in the usual sense of fancy gadgets or gewgaws, of which the following examples spring to mind:
• Smartphones and other such gadgets. (“Stupidpeople” no longer know how to get by without them.)
• Windmills that take plenty of coal and diesel to build and maintain, swat migratory birds out of the sky and produce energy in a form that cannot be stored effectively.
• Majestic sailing ships that transport fair trade chocolate, coffee and wine to delight effete foodies in “first world” countries.
No-no-no! The technology in question is political technology, designed to overcome the awesome force of social inertia and to cause society to move in a direction in which it initially doesn’t want to move.
Political technology offers ways of:
1. Changing the rules of the game between participants in the political process
2. Introducing into the mass consciousness new concepts, values, opinions and convictions
3. Directly manipulating of human behavior through mass media and administrative methods
Since the term “political technology” was new to most readers, we made a detour in order to put it in context. To recap, political technologies can be used to pursue the following aims:
1. To improve everyone’s welfare by pursuing the common good of the entire society, as it is understood by its best-educated, most intelligent, most decent and responsible members. Political technologies of this kind result in a virtuous cycle, building on previous successes to increase social cohesion, solidarity and setting the stage for great achievements. (These are the good kind.)
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Leaving Our Children Nothing
Leaving Our Children Nothing
Our generation has a unique opportunity. If we set our minds to it, we could be the first in human history to leave our children nothing: no greenhouse-gas emissions, no poverty, and no biodiversity loss.
That is the course that world leaders set when they met at the United Nations in New York on September 25 to adopt the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The 17 goals range from ending poverty and improving health to protecting the planet’s biosphere and providing energy for all. They emerged from the largest summit in the UN’s history, the “Rio+20” conference in 2012, followed by the largest consultation the UN has ever undertaken.
Unlike their predecessor, the Millennium Development Goals, which focused almost exclusively on developing countries, the new global goals are universal and apply to all countries equally. Their adoption indicates widespread acceptance of the fact that all countries share responsibility for the long-term stability of Earth’s natural cycles, on which the planet’s ability to support us depends.
Indeed, the SDGs are the first development framework that recognizes a fundamental shift in our relationship with the planet. For the first time in Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history, the main factors determining the stability of its systems are no longer the planet’s distance from the sun or the strength or frequency of its volcanic eruptions; they are economics, politics, and technology.
For most of the past 12,000 years, Earth’s climate was relatively stable and the biosphere was resilient and healthy. Geologists call this period the Holocene. More recently, we have moved into what many are calling the Anthropocene, a far less predictable era of human-induced environmental change.
This fundamental shift necessitates a new economic model. No longer can we assume – as prevailing economic thinking has – that resources are endless. We may have once been a small society on a big planet. Today, we are a big society on a small planet.
Read more at https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/sustainable-development-future-generations-by-johan-rockstr-m-2015-09#jxJCG5Y1RGemoPRF.99
‘An Ecomodernist Manifesto’: Truth and confusion in the same breath
‘An Ecomodernist Manifesto’: Truth and confusion in the same breath
I really do want to applaud the Breakthrough Institute’s recently released paper called “An Ecomodernist Manifesto.” It speaks with candor about the possible catastrophic consequences of unchecked climate change. It recognizes the large footprint of humankind in the biosphere. It wants to address both, and it wants to do so in a way that offers a positive vision for the human future that will attract support and, above all, action.
But, I can’t applaud it because of its underlying assumption: that humans are in one category and nature in another. The key paragraph starts with the key sentence:
Humans will always materially depend on nature to some degree. Even if a fully synthetic world were possible, many of us might still choose to continue to live more coupled with nature than human sustenance and technologies require. What decoupling offers is the possibility that humanity’s material dependence upon nature might be less destructive.
“Humans will always materially depend on nature to some degree.” This statement seems reasonable only if humans and nature are in different categories. But, they aren’t–a concept that is distressingly NOT clear to most everyone who styles himself or herself as an environmentalist. Humans and their creations are as much a part of nature as everything else. Humans don’t “materially depend on nature to some degree.” Humans are entirely and completely dependent on nature (of which they are a part) for EVERYTHING. Even every synthetic substance uses feedstocks and energy from the natural world.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
