45
© 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_6
Chapter 6
The Ecclesiastes Factor
6.1 The Satiation of Choices: Imperatives and Priorities
The present currency regarding the prospects of our species’ extinction is tantamount
to some vague clamor in the unconscious abetted by startling data sets; an attitudinal stylistic corpus feeding upon a premonitory event, or series of inordinately
devastating biological diminutions, both inchoate and evolutionary, and presumed
by a critical mass of mood-swing and supposition to be looming, sooner or later.
Our species focuses upon these trends with mental targets typically deriving
from numbers. A six-fold increase—40 gigatons to 252 gigatons—of melted ice
around the Antarctic continent, for example, in the last 40 years, one gigaton (in our
minds) equaling a million metric tons, each ton equivalent to one thousand kilograms, and so on down to the scant divisibility of a sub-atomic particle. All targeting
the vastly premature break-up of Antarctica, a result of vast, cumulative anthropogenic intrusiveness into the global cycles of climate and chemical turnover (Fig. 6.1).
Such that a Pine Island Glacier lost an amount of ice nearly three times the size of
San Francisco in a matter of days in mid-February, 2020.
1
Immense, at least, by
earthly standards. We lodge the first question herewith: Does Pine Island Glacier
meaningfully translate into the kinds of choices our evolution has prepared us for?
If not, what are the missing genes, synapses, moral equivalencies exerted in a language we can understand, that evade us? Has natural selection, as framed by the
evolutionary standards we have come to believe in, enjoined from implementation
that process by which mentation might be truly capable of processing—not just
internalizing—non-local events of global importance? Or events that on the surface
seem to be affecting other species, but somehow magically, not ours?
1 Eric Rignot, Jérémie Mouginot, Bernd Scheuchl, Michiel van den Broeke, Melchior J. van
Wessem, and Mathieu Morlighem. Four decades of Antarctic Ice Sheet mass balance from 1979–
2017. PNAS, January 14, 2019 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1812883116; See https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=dYRcFPI2hhs. Accessed February 13, 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_6
Chapter 6
The Ecclesiastes Factor
6.1 The Satiation of Choices: Imperatives and Priorities
The present currency regarding the prospects of our species’ extinction is tantamount
to some vague clamor in the unconscious abetted by startling data sets; an attitudinal stylistic corpus feeding upon a premonitory event, or series of inordinately
devastating biological diminutions, both inchoate and evolutionary, and presumed
by a critical mass of mood-swing and supposition to be looming, sooner or later.
Our species focuses upon these trends with mental targets typically deriving
from numbers. A six-fold increase—40 gigatons to 252 gigatons—of melted ice
around the Antarctic continent, for example, in the last 40 years, one gigaton (in our
minds) equaling a million metric tons, each ton equivalent to one thousand kilograms, and so on down to the scant divisibility of a sub-atomic particle. All targeting
the vastly premature break-up of Antarctica, a result of vast, cumulative anthropogenic intrusiveness into the global cycles of climate and chemical turnover (Fig. 6.1).
Such that a Pine Island Glacier lost an amount of ice nearly three times the size of
San Francisco in a matter of days in mid-February, 2020.
1
Immense, at least, by
earthly standards. We lodge the first question herewith: Does Pine Island Glacier
meaningfully translate into the kinds of choices our evolution has prepared us for?
If not, what are the missing genes, synapses, moral equivalencies exerted in a language we can understand, that evade us? Has natural selection, as framed by the
evolutionary standards we have come to believe in, enjoined from implementation
that process by which mentation might be truly capable of processing—not just
internalizing—non-local events of global importance? Or events that on the surface
seem to be affecting other species, but somehow magically, not ours?
1 Eric Rignot, Jérémie Mouginot, Bernd Scheuchl, Michiel van den Broeke, Melchior J. van
Wessem, and Mathieu Morlighem. Four decades of Antarctic Ice Sheet mass balance from 1979–
2017. PNAS, January 14, 2019 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1812883116; See https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=dYRcFPI2hhs. Accessed February 13, 2020.