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I liked the read despite its predictable, unoriginal, oft-repeated decry of technology with respect to its (perceived) environmental burden. There are several r

I liked the read despite its predictable, unoriginal, oft-repeated decry of technology with respect to its (perceived) environmental burden. There are several replies by Berry's contemporaries which vocalize their disagreement with his position and his justification. With the distance in time to this piece, I think the point to add to the discussion is that a key implicit assumption of Berry (and in fact even to his opponents) is false. The assumption that the default mode of civilization is prosperity for all. Same mistake we make till today on all levels of politics and education. Poverty is the natural state of "cosmos", and perhaps an equivalent of physical entropy concept. In a closed system a dis-order increases until we are all equally poor (there is NO natural/social law/system in the cosmos where would guarantee all of us equally rich/valuable by default). At the same time full and complete poverty for all can never be reached because (some) life-agents itself will try to utilize energy within (social/environmental) system to create pockets of prosperity, naturally syphoning out energy from the rest of the system. I do not want to imply a political of economic system within a conceptual paragraph -- that would be overextending the idea. The point is in my view that Berry does not ask the right question, or assumes the wrong default.

UncleOxidant 4y ago
> The assumption that the default mode of civilization is prosperity for all. First off, I'm not sure where you're getting that from reading this article, but maybe I'm missing something. Secondly, Berry is a Christian so of course he believes that there can be enough for all - this is (at least used to be) a central tenet of Christianity. Christ said: "25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? 28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these." Berry is coming from the worldview that God created a world of great abundance and that if we share, there is enough for all.
- lisper 4y ago
  > Berry is coming from the worldview that God created a world of great abundance and that if we share, there is enough for all. Sure, but he/they are simply wrong about that. The natural state of living systems is to propagate until they reach a natural limit imposed by some resource constraint or other. Our current technological civilization is an anomaly produced by the sudden release, over a period of a few hundred years, of solar energy stored over a few hundred million years, with a concomitant rise in CO2 levels and global temperatures. That party cannot be expected to last much longer, computers or no computers.
  - kspacewalk2 4y ago
    Alternatively, the anomaly is no anomaly at all. Its origins were fortuitous, but rather than a reversion to the baseline of misery it was an unlocking of a new normal though a series of irreversible (or very unlikely reversible) inventions, much like agriculture was. We used one source of energy to power our leap forward, we'll use a different one to sustain a baseline of plenty, or maybe unlock a new level soon. I see no reason whatsoever why this is less likely than the doom and gloom currently so in vogue.
    - lisper 4y ago
      Well, I hope you're right. But I'm not sanguine about civilization's prospects for surviving >2C temp increase, which seems to be where we're headed.
  - UncleOxidant 4y ago
    Berry has written extensively about environmental degradation. Notice the caveat above: "if we share". Human greed is the fly in the ointment. Again, he's written extensively on the impact of human greed on the environment. It's not inconsistent to think that there is enough for all and also to think that when we try to grab too much of that stuff for ourselves (more than what we need) that that mutual enough-ness (I hesitate to use the word "prosperity" here because it's accreted a lot of baggage in our hyper-capitalistic modern world) is threatened.

UncleOxidant 4y ago

> The assumption that the default mode of civilization is prosperity for all. First off, I'm not sure where you're getting that from reading this article, but maybe I'm missing something. Secondly, Berry is a Christian so of course he believes that there can be enough for all - this is (at least used to be) a central tenet of Christianity. Christ said: "25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? 28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these." Berry is coming from the worldview that God created a world of great abundance and that if we share, there is enough for all.

lisper 4y ago
> Berry is coming from the worldview that God created a world of great abundance and that if we share, there is enough for all. Sure, but he/they are simply wrong about that. The natural state of living systems is to propagate until they reach a natural limit imposed by some resource constraint or other. Our current technological civilization is an anomaly produced by the sudden release, over a period of a few hundred years, of solar energy stored over a few hundred million years, with a concomitant rise in CO2 levels and global temperatures. That party cannot be expected to last much longer, computers or no computers.
- kspacewalk2 4y ago
  Alternatively, the anomaly is no anomaly at all. Its origins were fortuitous, but rather than a reversion to the baseline of misery it was an unlocking of a new normal though a series of irreversible (or very unlikely reversible) inventions, much like agriculture was. We used one source of energy to power our leap forward, we'll use a different one to sustain a baseline of plenty, or maybe unlock a new level soon. I see no reason whatsoever why this is less likely than the doom and gloom currently so in vogue.
  - lisper 4y ago
    Well, I hope you're right. But I'm not sanguine about civilization's prospects for surviving >2C temp increase, which seems to be where we're headed.
- UncleOxidant 4y ago
  Berry has written extensively about environmental degradation. Notice the caveat above: "if we share". Human greed is the fly in the ointment. Again, he's written extensively on the impact of human greed on the environment. It's not inconsistent to think that there is enough for all and also to think that when we try to grab too much of that stuff for ourselves (more than what we need) that that mutual enough-ness (I hesitate to use the word "prosperity" here because it's accreted a lot of baggage in our hyper-capitalistic modern world) is threatened.