Thirteen days between posts isn’t unheard of here, but it’s certainly noteworthy. This past month has been unbelievably stressful for us at the Tribe of Anthropik. Some of it got hashed out in public, but like an iceberg, what you got to see was only the smallest tip. Truthfully, most of it isn’t even related. Giuli & I are getting married at the end of July, and that comes with a lot of stress all its own–to say nothing of a lot of half-buried problems that it can dreg up in a family, things never quite resolved and left almost forgotten for years on end, until something like this happens to bring them all back up at once.

Science and society have a habit of crossing paths every so often. And when they do, the result is rarely good for either. Such is the case when scientific theories such as evolution are used as the basis for moral philosophies. Not only is the theory of evolution unsuited for the development of normative statements, but to do so seems to run counter to the very idea of ethical systems.

Philosopher David Hume first touched on this issue even before Darwin’s time with the is-ought problem. He writes,

In my short time on this little globe I’ve had the good fortune to meet a wide variety of people. Male and female. Rich and poor. Gay and straight. White, black, and Asian. Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, pantheist, and Wiccan. Geeks, jocks, punks, stoners, and pot-smoking hippies. Everyone from the most scholarly intellectuals to the most closed-minded bigots. From the most Communist of liberals to the most fascist of conservatives. And while I have not been what one would call “friends” with all of these people, I have been able to have mostly pleasant interactions with each of them. No matter how much we may have fought or disagreed, they have all, in some way, been my teachers. And probably the most important lesson they had to teach me was to pity the poor fool who thinks he has nothing to learn from any of them.

I think I’ve been pretty clear in the past regarding my intense dislike of President Bush. But lately, I’ve been doing some thinking. It occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, Bush isn’t entirely bad for America after all. Maybe he’s actually doing what he should be doing, in an evil genius sort of way. It’s no secret that my philosophy toward politics and government is extremely libertarian. As Henry David Thoreau once said, “I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least’; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, ‘That government is best which governs not at all’; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.” But that we have a strong government that does make use of its power cannot now be changed. That is a battle that was lost a long time ago. So the question then becomes, now that we have this powerful government, what do we want it to do with all that power?

Reports of our demise are greatly exaggerated.

I would like to begin this thread by apologizing to our readers. I am sorry you had to witness the unpleasantness that recently erupted here on Anthropik as a result of the outbursts of former contributors Benjamin Shender and Miranda Belcher. I could respond to their attacks on the members of this site as Shender chose to in his last post (deleted by myself, but reproduced on IshCon). I could share with you pieces of conversations we had in private that, I assure you, would be far more damaging to them than an e-mail by Jason “ordering” two people who were not even full members to repair the damage they had done to the group is to us. But I refuse to do that, as I have far too much respect for myself and for my readers to sink to such a level. Members of a group like ours do not sell each other out so easily, something that those leaving never seemed to quite understand. Rather, I would like to take this moment to explore the underlying issues at work here. What have we learned through all of this? What are the critical elements involved in forming a social group such as a tribe? And where did those things break down in this particular case?

Download new Excel spreadsheet

Burlay’s Foundation Diet challenges its readers to try the diet for four weeks, and judge the results for yourself. Four weeks out, and I’m already 25% of the way to my goal. Starting at 300 lbs, I want to reach 200, and after four weeks, I’m at 272.5 lbs. In four weeks, I’ve lost 27.5 lbs. Where most diets are content with a pound a month; I’m usually losing half a pound a day.

To accept the inevitability of collapse can be a thing of terrible despair. It has earned this blog a reputation as morbid, depressing, and pessimistic. It has garnered me, specifically, such titles as “macabre ghoul,” and far worse. Unfortunately, there are far too many that agree with Rob McMillin’s view that we’re “cheering on the iceberg,” or Wood Connection’s review, “The Anthropik Network has no worry about civilization : these guys are waiting for the collapse, and they think that’s funny. … [T]his global blog tackles the problem from a quite selfish point of view : I’m in the system, and i plan to get out of it as soon as possible.” Ironically enough, the assessment of our situation that I agree with most comes from Alfred Lotka, in 1925:

Toby Hemenway is a full-blown permaculture guru, and an Anthropik reader, but I really have to take issue with his latest essay, posted to the Energy Bulletin today, “Apocalypse, Not.” I’m not sure how much of it is a response to Anthropik specifically, but it would be pure hubris for me to suggest that we’re alone in our belief that peak oil is, if not the sole assurance of our civilization’s end, at least a contributor to the “perfect storm” brewing in the near future. Hemenway makes the argument that collapse is neither imminent, nor even terribly likely, because we’ve weathered such problems before. With all due respect, I think the problems we face are being underestimated in this analysis, and the problems we have solved, overestimated. I think the basis of Hemenway’s analysis is to misunderstand the classes of problems we face–in short, there are problems, and then, there are problems.

Scientific reductionism is the cornerstone of modern scientific thought. It is the axiomatic belief that everything can be understood by breaking it down into smaller and smaller components, so biology can be understood in terms of chemistry, which can itself be understood in terms of physics. Reductionism is the philosophical foundation whereby scientists try to reduce a problem to its most basic components, control for other factors, and test only a single hypothesis at a time. It is an undeniably powerful tool, but the exuberance of the Enlightenment has proclaimed it as the One Right Way to know everything. Like any other tool, reductionism has its flaws, and there are times when other ways of knowing are actually better.