Why I Don't Recycle Part 4: Final remarks and internet memes

I thought it was only appropriate to have my first opinion-based blog post be an elaboration on my last facebook wall post, where I mentioned as an example how I am morally opposed to recycling.  Unfortunately, I soon realized that I had a lot more to say about this subject than I thought, so I'm going to break this post down into four posts to make it easier to read.  You can check back here over the next four days to read it in chunks in order to prevent you, dear reader, from looking at six pages worth of material and saying "fuck that shit".  As always, feel free to comment.

Now like any of my opinions, they’re not perfect.  Some counterpoints:

If you’d rather keep this current ecosystem in stasis because you personally think pandas are super cute or something, then alright.  It’s the equivalent of me rooting for fungus at the expense of other species, and if you just admit to yourself and other people that you want to preserve this current ecosystem for its aesthetic appeal then I’m fine with it.  Just don’t be a hypocrite and say you’re actions are noble and sacrificing. 

You can easily say that all my talk of a world I want to see is irrelevant because neither I nor my children will probably be alive to see either outcome.  But then I can say the same thing to my opposition.  Chances are whatever you do with your life will barely effect the outcome of the situation.  But we might as well try; I’d rather be jousting at windmills then doing nothing with my life.

When I discussed the kind of resourceful people that will invent new technologies and lifestyles to save the human race from extinction once it’s a big enough threat, you might argue that a) it is threatening enough RIGHT NOW, and b) uhh, isn’t green technology the kind of advancements that you’re talking about?  First, we’re not entirely sure how bad humans are screwed right now.  While the current supply of fuel and gas will certainly run out by the end of the century, new technologies to find new oil deposits as well as alternate fuel sources and awesomely useful resources like nuclear energy make it hard to determine when and if we’ll ever be truly strapped for power.  As for global warming, it’s still unknown just when we’ll be severely negatively affected by it (and it certainly won’t be the day after tomorrow), and honestly I’m not too worried for survival of humanity because of increased floods and wild fires.  Even the most extremist, alarmist reports state that the world won’t go to hell until you and I are too old to care.  Secondly, current green technology is nowhere near enough to permanently save us.  Modern “environment friendly” technology and lifestyles are nothing more than stall tactics.  Here’s a good example of the difference between creating renewable resources the “green”, “smart”, “future-conscience” way that the general public currently thinking of, and the innovative way I keep talking about.  We think recycling is a great way to save the environment because reusing old materials to make new ones is a simple plan with an obvious beneficial outcome (not to mention it’s a very easy way to feel better about ourselves day to day, and that’s how Americans like their altruism- with minimal work).  However, if you think critically about recycling, it falls apart.  Even if every single person on the Earth recycled their recyclable goods then a) the non-recyclable goods would still be screwed and b) eventually everything would still run out because matter is lost in the recycling process, and even if just a few grams of matter are lost a day eventually everything would run out as material is burned up or blown away in the wind.  But we’re not even blessed with that situation in real life because most people on Earth do not recycle; meaning recycling is nothing but a stall tactic.  And even THAT isn’t the case, because most recycling plants are inefficient.  The current technology seems to consist mostly of sorting out the material, and then either wasting massive amounts of water and energy to create the new recycled products or just leaving the sorted trash in warehouses until we can think of better ways to recycle it (seriously).  On the other hand, the kind of technology used to mine trash for minerals and methane gas is being worked on right now (and as all Starcraft players know, everything in the future is built using only minerals and gas).  Using this Mr. Fusion-esque technology, we can mine our massive landfills for necessary materials efficiently in the future.  So if you really want to save our future, throw all your trash in a landfill.  In short, it’s much more likely for humanity to develop the technology to save ourselves under the pressure of looming extinction than the calm ignorance of thinking that the “green” lifestyle will save us.  Admit it, when you see a commercial from a big company promising new green technology, you feel a little more calm and complacent about the environment situation, and a complacent population is a doomed population.

Truer word were never said.

Now you can point out that the current green movement is a necessary step to those future innovations; they lead to better technologies, inspire young intellects to start working towards solutions, and most importantly finally make citizens and their governments recognize the problem so that the demand for the solutions are increased.  I would agree with you too, it’s always better to be prepared.  Except that those citizens and their governments are stupid as hell.  People will continue to panic about the environmental end-times like society is currently doing until enough businesses and politicians pledge to “make the world a better place for tomorrow”.  Give it 5-10 more years and people will feel like they’ve done enough to care for their environment, will grow bored, and worry about something else.  Scientists developing ways to harness new resources will get less funding, and nothing will be done as America wakes up with an empty Bread Basket.  So stop getting excited about the green movement’s ability to “save the world”.  All this greenwashing is going to lead to nothing but a content and lazy population.

Because this is your brain on green.

Finally, if you’d like to counter my argument about it being cool if humans could beat the record for biggest caused extinction with your own point that it would be just as impressive, if not more so, to be the sole species to stop the trend of extinction and death that this universe has lived with, then fine.  Many people would probably agree with you over me, and if not for my other points in the last paragraph, I might too.  That is, until I watched the show Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.  In this anime, the Big Bad villain of the show is the Anti-Spirals, a race who after realizing that the show’s metaphor for evolution and natural life processes in general will eventually cause the destruction of the universe due to life forms using up too much energy and resources as they evolve and advance their civilizations.  In response, they suppressed all other alien species in the universe and placed the survivors under strict control on their respective home planets, while the Anti-Spirals themselves sealed their entire home planet in an internal stasis.  This is the eventual outcome of thinking “green”.  While the Anti-Spirals plan might keep the universe and what little life there is alive forever, what kind of life is that?  An individual’s life, as well as the “life” of a society, a species, an ecosystem, a planet, and the entire universe all consists of birth, a long road of good and bad times, and eventually death.  Environmentalism, essentially, is a fear of this death; a fear of your own death and the death of other people and life forms.  If you want to “save the environment”, it’s probably because you find it hard to except that your life, your children’s life, and the world around you will eventually die.  But it will.  And we just have to except that, and look forward to the new life that death will bring this world.

Why I Consider the Morality of Modern Environmentalist Mindset Shared by a Majority of my Peers is Vastly Flawed Part 3: Am I a sociopath?

I thought it was only appropriate to have my first opinion-based blog post be an elaboration on my last facebook wall post, where I mentioned as an example how I am morally opposed to recycling.  Unfortunately, I soon realized that I had a lot more to say about this subject than I thought, so I'm going to break this post down into four posts to make it easier to read.  You can check back here over the next four days to read it in chunks in order to prevent you, dear reader, from looking at six pages worth of material and saying "fuck that shit".  As always, feel free to comment.

So why do I personally want to expedite the current extinction trend caused primarily by human actions?  First, I much rather allow mass extinction to occur within the next thousands of years and let new organisms evolve rather than keep our current ecosystem on life-support.  It may be a combination of nerdy/geeky desire to see crazy new species evolve to fill some sort of human blasted landscape, but it’s my desire nonetheless.  I consider wishing to save the current environment as a wish to perform an abortion on potential new species.  Secondly, it would be pretty impressive if the human species could ACTUALLY fuck up the earth at such a scale as to put cyanobacteria and natural disasters to shame.  Thirdly, I like the immediate side effects to a complete ecological disaster if it were in fact to occur relatively soon (like within a couple hundred years).  One side effect would be increased fungal growth and evolution, and as I stated before I respect fungi more than all other groups of life (maybe I’ll make a short nerdy post gushing about why I love fungus later). 

I don't care if they constantly produce deadly toxic spores, I want to live in a post-apocalyptic world
filled with huge forests of fungi as seen in Nausicaa:Valley of the Wind.  

More importantly, human technological and possibly even physical evolution would benefit greatly from a dire situation like this.  Contrary to common sense, life-threatening situations seem to do wonders for a population of any size or species.  That fight-or-flight reflex which is in all of us does wonders for getting rid of the weak and promoting the capable.  For instance, when a bacterial population is exposed to an antibacterial drug then most of the population will get killed except for that solidarity freak that is naturally immune.  That immune bacterium will be able to spread his resistance to the surviving population causing them to evolve into a newer, stronger, drug-resistant bacteria population.  To continue my ill-advised use of examples that end in outcomes that you don't want thus emotionally triggering you to disagree with me, this works in human society too.  When Germany got its ass handed to it in WWI, it was left with great shame and a big bill.  Being backed in a corner inspired the German people to develop a powerful fascist state; reenergizing their people, taking over a large part of Europe, and …killing a lot of innocents…. Errrr…. You get my point.  When stuck in a really bad situation, life knows to either put up or shut up, and those worthy will rise to the situation.  And with humans, this isn’t just limited to physical evolution but the innovation of new ideas and memes.  If humans are faced with a seemingly impossible problem (like living on an Earth with dwindling resources) then I guarantee that we will fight back with pioneering and hard work.  The genius men and women in this world that normally have their voices droned out when they’re not immediately need will be turned to in a time of panic.  They will save the human race from extinction.  And the only thing I desire more than seeing fungal evolution is human technological, scientific, and artistic advancement.  And if we can’t step up to the plate and beat our own extinction, then so be it.  We lost far and square.  So in order to create a future Earth where a massive extinction causes another fungal renaissance while our scientists become heroes saving humanity from destruction, and a far future with a fascinating new Earth and an efficient and advanced human society flung around the stars, I have to do my part to avoid “saving the environment” in the way the ascendant moral values of our society demands from us.

Why I Don't Recycle Part 2: Nature? I hardly knew her!

I thought it was only appropriate to have my first opinion-based blog post be an elaboration on my last facebook wall post, where I mentioned as an example how I am morally opposed to recycling.  Unfortunately, I soon realized that I had a lot more to say about this subject than I thought, so I'm going to break this post down into four posts to make it easier to read.  You can check back here over the next four days to read it in chunks in order to prevent you, dear reader, from looking at six pages worth of material and saying "fuck that shit".  As always, feel free to comment.

First, I feel like I should apologize for that terrible excuse for a post title joke.  In all fairness, I'm an idiot.  Anyway, now for a major point in my argument that I realized about 2 years ago; a point that no one has really countered yet seems hesitant to agree with me.  It’s the argument to end all “appeals to nature”, which in of itself is a vastly flawed argument.  In keeping up with my lazy-man style armchair philosopher, I will unabashingly quote the definition from its Wikipedia article, saving me the trouble of putting it in my own words.   “Appeal to nature is a fallacy of relevance consisting of a claim that something is good or right because it is natural, or that something is bad or wrong because it is unnatural or artificial. In this type of fallacy, nature is often implied as an ideal or desired state of being, a state of how things were, should be, or are: in this sense an appeal to nature may resemble an appeal to tradition.”  It’s a terrible argument in the first place because: “Several problems exist with this type of argument that makes it a fallacy. First, the word "natural" is often a loaded term, usually unconsciously equated with normality, and its use in many cases is simply a form of bias. Second, "nature" and "natural" have vague definitions and thus the claim that something is natural may not be correct by every definition of the term natural; a good example would be the claim of all-natural foods, such as "all-natural" wheat, the claimed wheat though is usually a hybridized plant that has been bred by artificial selection.  Lastly, the argument can quickly be invalidated by a counter-argument that demonstrates something that is natural that has undesirable properties (for example aging, illness, and death are natural), or something that is unnatural that has desirable properties (for example, many modern medicines are not found in nature, yet have saved countless lives).”  Yet people will still use this argument to justify their opinions regardless, whether it is an argument for “natural” foods by hippies or for “natural” marriage by the religious.  So to make this already flawed argument even more useless, I posit a question to those who make statements about what is natural or not: What the fuck is unnatural?

The term unnatural usually applies to three things: artificially made objects and outcomes like a building or a drought caused by a man-made dam; the supernatural like ghosts; and things that are the opposite of the norm like homosexuality.  First off, let’s get the irrelevant supernatural point out of this discussion because it’s mostly used in reference to things that are either natural laws yet to be discovered by man or the rantings of crazy people.   As for the other two- what exactly is unnatural?  An ax?  It’s made out of wood and stone from “nature”.  The White House?  Stone, wood, mortar, glass (made from sand, and totally found in “nature” sometimes too), etc.  The computer you’re reading this on?  Minerals, metals, plastic, electricity, all found in or harvested from “natural” products.  Ok, fine, how about the fact that they were made by humans, and not just created for “natural” reasons like survival and reproduction but stupid shit like Snuggies and plush Pikachu dolls?  Oh, you mean the humans that evolved from the same puddle of lipids and RNA molecules like every other living thing on this earth?  The tool use that plenty of animals and arguably plants have exhibited?  Or the complicated desires that humans have built up over the thousands of years of Homo sapiens evolution?  

"Complicated" would be a good way to describe
my own Snuggie-related desires.

What part of that is unnatural?  It’s not like a dimensional rift opened up one day and granted us extra-dimensional materials, knowledge, or ideas.  Some biblical god or gods didn’t one day bless us with extra-natural powers.  Our continued survival, technical knowledge, and need to paint ourselves arbitrary colors to support a group of men throwing a ball of swine skin around a field of painted grass are the outcomes of the natural processes of evolution, time, and luck.  Our needs, no matter how complex, are simply instincts made unusual over time and evolution.  And even the things that may not be the norm, or majority, in a collected population sample, like homosexuality, is not caused by anything not already found in nature.  Tools, human thought, and society are all natural.  And unless you’ve had personal contact with extra-dimensional beings, I challenge you to think of anything unnatural.  There is no unnatural.  There is only nature.  The appeal to nature is irrelevant.

So without the appeal to nature, the question of whether or not to protect “nature” is neutralized.  The loggers cutting down a forest are a natural occurrence, as is the protestors chaining themselves to the tree to save its life.   Which side you stand depends entirely on your personal choice, and shouldn’t be beholden to anyone else’s moral standpoint.

Why I Don't Recycle Part 1: Extinctions aren't that scary once you get to know them.....

I thought it was only appropriate to have my first opinion-based blog post be an elaboration on my last facebook wall post, where I mentioned how I am morally opposed to recycling.  Unfortunately, I soon realized that I had a lot more to say about this subject than I thought, so I'm going to break this post down into four posts to make it easier to read.  You can check back here over the next four days to read it in chunks in order to prevent you, dear reader, from looking at six pages worth of material and saying "fuck that shit".  As always, feel free to comment.

I hope that by now most of you reading this have heard the actual facts about global warming and not just the biased right and left viewpoints.  Scientists that aren’t being paid by a particular political party all agree on three things: 1) Global warming is definitely happening, 2) Global warming is a normal part of the Earth’s life cycle and we’re currently between a cold period (the “Ice Age” that everyone thinks of) and a hot period, and nothing will stop the Earth from eventually cranking up the heat to tropical levels, and 3) while global warming would be happening anyway, human actions are causing it to happen slightly faster than usual.  But before you curse modern humans with all their smokestacks and bottled water, you should know that human-caused ecological damage and extinction is nothing new.  As soon as our ancestors put themselves at the top of the food chain, they started to kill species at a massive rate.  You can actually trace the extinction of many species to just several generations after humans were introduced to the area.  For example, Wooly Mammoths aren’t as ancient as you might think- there was actually a tiny island called Wrangel Island around the Bering Strait with some miniaturized Mammoth relatives still hanging out until just 4000 years ago, until some of the local American Indian tribes finally checked out the island and finished the job.  At this point I probably have you thinking that humans are just natural killers, and might be siding with Agent Smith from the Matrix when he said “Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet”.   And while that might be partially true, let me give you some scope on the history of extinctions on this planet.

One great thing that my favorite college class (History of Life with Dr. Lassiter, the only class at Roanoke College with dinosaurs) taught me was just how close the Earth has come to getting royally screwed.  While most of you should know about the extinction that killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, and some of you know that decent sized extinctions happen a lot, I doubt most of you know some of the details.  Some of the most problematic extinctions have been: the aforementioned  K-T Extinction where a combination of a massive volcanic eruption and a meteor strike wiped out 65% of life of earth, dooming the dinosaurs; the Great Oxygenation Event where a population boom of cyanobacteria filled the atmosphere with poisonous free oxygen waste eventually triggering the biggest Snowball Earth ever (our planet literally looked like Hoth, just solid ice with some slushy oceans at the equator); and my favorite,  the Permian-Triassic Extinction (informally known as The Great Dying… holy shit that’s so metal) where a triple shot of a massive volcanic eruption, a meteor strike, AND massive amounts of built up CO₂ gas bubbled up from the oceans wiping out every animal, land and sea, that breathed it in.  That last extinction wiped out 90% of life on earth and ended the reign of our ancestors, the mammal-like reptiles, who were just starting to really get that whole warm-blooded thing worked out.  

Seriously, it was pretty badass.  And starkly depressing.

As you know, each extinction event totally wiped out all life on the planet Earth, the spirit of Mother Nature cried, and no joy was ever spread again.  Oh wait, except that didn’t happen at all.  Instead what occurred was (in order of extinctions I listed): the end of the long reign of the dinosaurs eventually let the mammals flourish by evolving to fit the now empty ecological niches, eventually even giving them the chance to PWN the last of the apex predator dinosaurs, aka the Terror Birds.  With a whole bunch of unused oxygen in the air, all it took is for one bacterium to evolve a way to evolve aerobic respiration, using the poisonous oxygen to create energy.  Boom!   Population explosion of our ancestors, aerobic organisms, which created a balanced system of anaerobic and aerobic organisms breathing each others’ air waste, a system that is still the most important cycle keeping the living world alive today.   And as for the Snowball/Slushball Earth side effect created by all that oxygen waste in the first place, the only livable zone on Earth became a small strip of cold water around the equator where only the strong could survive.  This Darwinian wet dream prompted multi-cellular life to evolve; without this strong natural selection situation, we would be chilling around as bacteria in puddles to this day.   The P-Tr Extinction had the same effect that the K-T Extinction did, except in this earlier situation it was the mammalian ancestors that got rooted out by archosaurs, the ancestors of crocodiles, Pterodactyls, and dinosaurs (didn’t know that the mammalian uprising 65 mya was actually just tit for tat, did you?  This kind of back-and-forth between animal taxa happened a lot throughout the history of life…..).  Also, all that death meant a whoooooole lot of fungi could flourish off of delicious dead matter, resulting in a sort of evolutionary renaissance for fungi (which are totally cool).  What can we learn from this?  That no matter how hard the Earth gets hit by something, it manages to bounce back.  To quote a cheesy but totally true line from Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park, “Life will find a way”.  One might also extrapolate from this history that it seems that extinction, like all death, is a natural occurrence in life and is needed for the life cycle to begin anew.  And finally, that while the current extinction rate has been blowing up 

Well played cyanobacteria.  Well played.

ever since we learned how to use a spear, we are certainly not the only single species to almost single-handedly cause a massive extinction.  We might be worried about man-made atomic bombs causing nuclear winter, but our earliest ancestors already beat us to the punch just by breathing out.