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Fruit Flies in a Bottle
Posted by CrisisPapers in Editorials & Other Articles
Thu Sep 09th 2010, 01:17 AM
Ernest Partridge
The Crisis Papers
www.crisispapers.org
I
Place a few fruit flies in a bottle with a layer of honey at the bottom, and they will quickly multiply to an enormous number, and then, just as quickly, die off to the very last, poisoned by their wastes. Similarly, add a few yeast cells to grape juice, seal the bottle, and the cells will consume the sugar and turn it into alcohol. When the alcohol rises to 12.5% it will kill off all the yeast, and the wine will be ready for the table.
Fruit flies and yeast in a bottle are embarked upon suicidal endeavors. They can’t help it. They don’t know any better, lacking the cognitive equipment to “know” anything at all.
Human beings, we are told, are different. Humans can utilize their accumulated knowledge, evaluate evidence and apply reason, and with these skills and accomplishments they can imagine alternative futures and choose among them to their advantage.
Human beings have these capacities. But history teaches us that all too often, human beings simply refuse to apply them and, like the mindless fruit flies, march blindly into oblivion. For example:
**None of the antagonists in the First World War wanted the war. It was touched off by the assassination of an Austrian Duke in the Balkans. And when it was all over four years later and sixteen million had died, one German politician asked another, “How did it all happen?” The second replied, “Ach, if we only knew!” (Tuchman)
**When the Nazi pogrom against the Jews accelerated, a few wise Jews fled Germany, leaving friends, professions and all their possessions behind. The others, reflecting that “This can’t be all that bad, after all, I am a loyal German,” remained. When in January 1942 “the final solution” was decided at the Wansee conference, it was too late.
**Industrialized fishing techniques have drastically reduced both the quality and quantity of the world-wide catch. As Elizabeth Kolbert reports in The New Yorker, “In the late nineteen eighties, the total world catch topped out at about eighty-five million tons... For the past two decades, the global catch has been steadily declining ... by around five hundred thousand tons a year.” This is a paradigm example of Garrett Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons,” whereby “ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest...” While a global agreement to limit fishing might restore the take to sustainable levels, there are ominous indications that, in addition to over-fishing, climate change might be significantly responsible for these reductions. (More about this below).
Finally, consider Easter Island. When Polynesian explorers discovered and colonized Easter Island at about 900 AD, they arrived at an island that was fully forested, with huge trees that supplied essential resources for canoes, houses, food, fuel, ropes and textiles. With these resources, the islanders built more than eight-hundred stone statues (moai) for which Easter Island is famous. When the first Europeans arrived in 1722, they found a barren island totally devoid of trees. The peak population of this sixty-six square mile island is estimated to have been as much as thirty thousand. In 1872, only one hundred and eleven native islanders remained. (Diamond). Could the Easter Islanders foresee the consequences of the destruction of their forests? If not, then why not? If so, why did they not act to protect this essential resource before it was too late?
In his book, Collapse, Jared Diamond poses these questions in words that strike ominously close to home:
I have often asked myself, “what did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it? Like modern loggers, did he shout “Jobs, not trees!”? Or: “Technology will solve our problems, never fear, we’ll find a substitute for wood”? Or “We don’t have proof that there aren’t palms somewhere else on Easter, we need more research, your proposed ban on logging is premature and driven by fear-mongering”?...
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