21
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_3
Chapter 3
Ecological Problems and Paradigmatic
Solutions
3.1 Science Policy and Human Nature
Ever more taxing, emotionally, to analyze: The numbers, jurisprudence, pragmatic
compromises, overall vision for how “to fix it” are not adding up, because, as a
whole species we have no psychological or even faintly residual phenotypic record
of having ever dealt with so unflexing an ecological ultimatum, never mind that it is
solely our doing and that one would naturally assume we should therefore know
some route toward rectifying it. We don’t. The Holocaust was a microcosm of what,
presently, is occurring in every geographical quadrant, often at levels we can neither
visualize nor process. And if we could process (we usually can if we but attempt to
do so), there are only so many solid and sustained examples of human restraint,
historically, by which to gauge and extrapolate positive outcomes, where science
policy and human nature are so frequently at loggerheads.
We can try and fiddle with the numbers, tilting reality and our very response to
the hard sciences, toward any pre-existing bias. There are countless ways to “prove”
that one plus one equals three.
1
But there is no evidence-based reason that can
reverse the quite obvious contention that the sixth mass extinction is not likely to
also sweep away Homo sapiens in its undiscriminating embodiment of a planetwide biological crash. Either it is too late to meaningfully address what we have
been doing for countless millennia, or, all has come down, in our case, to the failed
notion of adaptive radiation being potentially self-guided. The big debate of
moment-by-moment traits, the byproducts of some combination of nurture and
nature, taking matters into their own hands. Informed re-evolution, re-genesis. Or,
muddling through its philosophical hurdles, the Jack London inflection point
1 See, for example, “1 + 1 = 3: Synergy Arithmetic in Economics,” by Mark Burgin and Gunter
Meissner, DOI: https://doi.org/10.4236/am.2017.82011, Scientific Research, AM> Vol.8 No.2,
February 2017, https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=73964, Accessed
February 21, 2020.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_3
Chapter 3
Ecological Problems and Paradigmatic
Solutions
3.1 Science Policy and Human Nature
Ever more taxing, emotionally, to analyze: The numbers, jurisprudence, pragmatic
compromises, overall vision for how “to fix it” are not adding up, because, as a
whole species we have no psychological or even faintly residual phenotypic record
of having ever dealt with so unflexing an ecological ultimatum, never mind that it is
solely our doing and that one would naturally assume we should therefore know
some route toward rectifying it. We don’t. The Holocaust was a microcosm of what,
presently, is occurring in every geographical quadrant, often at levels we can neither
visualize nor process. And if we could process (we usually can if we but attempt to
do so), there are only so many solid and sustained examples of human restraint,
historically, by which to gauge and extrapolate positive outcomes, where science
policy and human nature are so frequently at loggerheads.
We can try and fiddle with the numbers, tilting reality and our very response to
the hard sciences, toward any pre-existing bias. There are countless ways to “prove”
that one plus one equals three.
1
But there is no evidence-based reason that can
reverse the quite obvious contention that the sixth mass extinction is not likely to
also sweep away Homo sapiens in its undiscriminating embodiment of a planetwide biological crash. Either it is too late to meaningfully address what we have
been doing for countless millennia, or, all has come down, in our case, to the failed
notion of adaptive radiation being potentially self-guided. The big debate of
moment-by-moment traits, the byproducts of some combination of nurture and
nature, taking matters into their own hands. Informed re-evolution, re-genesis. Or,
muddling through its philosophical hurdles, the Jack London inflection point
1 See, for example, “1 + 1 = 3: Synergy Arithmetic in Economics,” by Mark Burgin and Gunter
Meissner, DOI: https://doi.org/10.4236/am.2017.82011, Scientific Research, AM> Vol.8 No.2,
February 2017, https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=73964, Accessed
February 21, 2020.