Slaying the Hydra

[GliderGuider]

As the nuclear calamity unfolds at Fukushima, a long-standing conflict between world views has been thrown into sharp relief. Now that the risks of nuclear power have been visibly demonstrated yet again, a rising chorus of voices is urging us to turn aside from the path of nuclear power, and to prepare for the future by embracing renewable energy like wind and solar instead.

This well-meaning exhortation begs one important question. How can we "prepare for the future" when we have no agreement on what kind of future we want to see? On the one hand, the environmental movement takes it for granted that a "good" future would contain a lot more renewable energy and a lot less nuclear power. Others might see a good future as one in which there was both nuclear power and renewable energy, but no coal or oil. Both positions are valid, based on different assessments of what the future may bring, and what sort of future each side would prefer.

I take yet a different and perhaps more radical approach. I see coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, hydro power, renewable energy, enormous mining operations, sprawling cities, electronic devices of all sorts (including the computer I'm typing on) - all the technological enablers of human activity - as equivalent symptoms of the underlying dis-ease of Separation and Fear.

We feel we are separate from nature by virtue of our humanity, and we are driven by our innate fear of chaos and uncertainty. This gives us a hunger for control, for mastery and dominion, as well as a sense that this is the proper order of the universe. In the search for our "rightful place" as Masters of the Universe we ignore, dismiss and even deny our own frailties, our interdependence with all other life and the planet itself, and our own nature. We assume that we are clever enough to go Mother Nature one better.

This is a hubris that has caused us to make Faustian pacts on every side. It's not just nuclear power - it's the automobile, the electric light and motor, the genetic engineering of plants, the plundering of the world's photosynthetic capacity, the streamlining of genomes for commercial gain, the elimination of whole species that dare to compete with us for food and living space. Even renewable energy is not blameless, standing as it does on the same control-craving foundation as all our other activities.

Compared to the sheer magnitude of the ovderall damage we're doing to the planet (and unavoidably to ourselves as well), nuclear power with all its terrifying unseen hazards can be recognized, if viewed from a slightly different angle, as little more than another minor sore on the side of the metastasizing malignancy of runaway human technological activity.

All is not lost however. At least not quite, and not quite yet. We do have a million battles to fight if we are to claw our way back from the brink. Fortunately there are billions of us to fight those battles. Your battle might be nuclear power, global warming, food sovereignty, urbanization, the depletion of fresh water or genetic engineering, but I think it helps all the warriors if we understand clearly what the stakes are, what the consequences of defeat, and what is the true casus belli. We need to recognize that we are fighting a whole Hydra, not just the one venmous head we are facing. And it's the same Hydra for all of us, despite the differences in our individual battles.

In my opinion, the predicament we're in has been woven of threads that include our evolved neuropsychology, our innate cleverness, our general lack of wisdom, and the technological and cultural structures that we have created around us. We may be able to work our way free of this monkey trap, but not unless we gain insight into our own nature, lovingly nurture the wisdom that we need to recognize what we're doing, and the courage to say No to some of it. If we can do that, the problems of nuclear power and all the rest will become much less threatening.

Can we accomplish such a radical transformation of human consciousness? We are getting a wake-up call. it's time for us to heed it, and to do a bit of growing up.

[SpoonFed]

1. tl;dr

> How can we "prepare for the future" when we have no agreement on what kind of future we want to see?

I and I'm sure that others propose a future free from the possibility of widespread radiological disasters that take months if not years or centuries to recover from.

> It's not just nuclear power - it's the automobile, the electric light and motor...

In this case, it sure seems like it's just nuclear. Why spread the blame around? Isn't it the appropriate time to shine a clear flashlight on the nuclear industry and the risks specific to this industry? There definitely seems to be a number of clear and obvious failures to be learned from here.

> Even renewable energy is not blameless...

Really? How is renewable energy playing a role in this particular nuclear crisis in Japan at present?

I think you're being overly dramatic and I refer you to the writings of Paul Virilio. To paraphrase, we engineer these disasters, plain and simple. But we as humans and engineers fail to accept that we're designing and building these things and need to take that into account on all levels when we decide or decide not to undertake such enterprises.

We are designing and building these disasters when we choose design and build these reactors. On a fundamental level we need to think hard about the costs and serious risks involved and not simply post facto throw hands in the air and say we did our best, it was out of our control or an act of God of all things, and understand that we are fundamentally responsible for this kind of disaster from the outset.

Seems rational to me and not some sort of boogeyman Hydra that needs to be smote.

[hunter]

2. The worst malignancies are those very similar to the host.

Becoming part of the environment is as difficult for modern man as being apart from the environment.

I look at the solar radiation burned skin of my arms and consider the cancerous and pre-cancerous stuff that's been removed. I was a white kid in Southern California growing up before sunscreen when tans were thought to be healthy.

The things considered "benign" don't grow much and stay where they are. The cancerous cells that grow as fast as normal skin and spread are dangerous.

Cancer cells that are most similar to the host are the hardest to kill. There are few biochemical targets that differentiate them from normally functioning cells. They spread until they choke out the normal functioning cells and that's what makes them deadly.

I think as humans co-opt more natural cycles in earth's environment we become increasingly malignant as a species. "Renewable" technologies like hydropower and tidal projects, desert solar projects, electric cars, and fuel from biomass, seem especially dangerous to me, as these will only increase the damage we do to what's left of the natural environment.

To decrease the malignancy of our clever technologies we must learn to live in extremely compact densely populated urban environments, entirely apart from natural environments, and in low environmental impact rural environments, little different than ancient traditional human cultures. Imagine dense high energy cities and plenty of wide open wild places, organic farms, stone walls, and villages with just enough solar power to keep the internet on. Nobody would be confined to one lifestyle or the other, but use of heavy technologies in rural areas would be extremely limited. That might mean no highways, no power lines, no cars, etc.

In such an environment the urban areas are benign and the rural environments are natural.

If we can't control and regulate our own numbers and environmental impacts then we are little more than a malignancy that will destroy the environment that sustains us.