Sabine,
In 1995, shortly after my honorable discharge from the U. S. Marine Corps, I graduated from commercial dive school and have primarily worked in the petro-chemical and energy sectors ever since. Based on this experience, I find the idea that humans can self-regulate their way to a sustainable future somewhat naive. Don't get me wrong, I feel your Priority Maps would make for an interesting research program, I just don't feel your assumptions, which you conveniently placed in the conclusion, have any basis in reality. Allow me to elaborate if you will.
Houston, Texas, hosts CERAweek, a gathering of top executives from all of the world's energy companies, once a year. 2013 was the first time ever that they acknowledged the existence of anthropocentric global warming. Of course the round-table discussion they held on the subject didn't focus on what they could do to mitigate anthropocentric contributions to the phenomenon, rather, it was on what they could do to mitigate the effects anthropocentric global warming could potentially have on their business model, but at least they acknowledged its existence. Even the investors in said companies are demanding an assessment of global warming. Meanwhile, conservative politicians and blowhards such as Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump continue to insist it's just a myth propagated by the liberal media. The conservative columnist who writes for The Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer, even quoted your favorite physicist, Freeman Dyson, to support his latest tirade. And he received full support from Forbes magazine, of course.
I personally had a role in shutting down an operation that was illegally storing and recycling used drilling mud. They were storing the mud in open earth pits - no liners or other containment barriers - just long enough for the drill filings to settle, then mixing the chemicals in the pit by cycling the mud through a system of mix pumps, and then re-introducing the chemicals back into their mud production process. The open earth pits were located just upstream from a large, freshwater lake which was supplying drinking water for two large communities. The man bankrolling the operation has a Harvard MBA and a Forbes profile, of course.
I've had the occasion to get to know a gentleman who works in the Major Offenders Division of a major Environmental Enforcement Agency and he can tell you some tales. He makes a living off of concrete manufacturers and readily admits that he only halts a very small fraction of violators. He's arrested people who are getting paid, and paid rather handsomely, to properly dispose of hazardous materials for dumping said materials illegally and at public detriment.
I have another acquaintance from the commercial dive industry, Paul McKim, who was once a legend in the industry; for a good while he held records for both depth and duration in saturation and was one of eleven American divers recruited by the government of England to implement dive operations in the North sea. In 2001 Paul secured exclusive rights to utilize an innovative, one-man, autonomous submarine with a tremendous depth rating in oilfield support operations and, with said rights, his knowledge of the offshore environment, and his vast network, he developed an offshore support company specializing in deep water work called Deep Marine Technologies (DMT). In 2001 DMT grossed just under $600,000 in revenue; by 2005 Paul was on the cover of Entrepreneur magazine and DMT grossed just under $60 million.
To facilitate the exponential growth of DMT, Paul brought in a venture capitalist from Minnesota, an Iranian/American named Kazimeny; Kazimeny was "friends" with the U. S. Congressman from Minnesota, Norm Coleman. Not long after Paul and DMT were featured in Entrepreneur magazine, Coleman and his wife embarked on a $400,000 renovation of their home in Minnesota. Naturally wanting to help his "friend," Kazimeny decided to funnel $100,000 through DMT to the Colemans. Norm Coleman's wife was an insurance agent licensed in Minnesota and worked as an independent contractor for Hayes Insurance, a company owned by another Coleman "friend." So Kazimeny simply created a fraudulent paper trail demonstrating that DMT engaged Hayes Insurance for "risk analysis" work and instructed DMT's CFO to pay Hayes Insurance, hence, Coleman's wife, $100,000 in four installments. Never mind that DMT, like most offshore companies, utilized Llyods for all of its insurance needs.
After the first $25,000 payment, McKim found out about the ploy and put a stop to it. Kazimeny illegally manipulated the board and promptly fired McKim from his own company. Paul sued in the State District Court of Texas claiming breach of fiduciary duty, amongst other things, and Kazimeny promptly put DMT into bankruptcy because it was McKim's only source of income. Kazimeny displayed absolutely no regard for DMT employees or anyone depending on DMT's services.
Of course the FBI became involved but the investigation went nowhere. Norm Coleman was trying to get re-elected when it all played out and the resulting scandal was partially responsible for his losing a run-off to the comedian, Al Franken. Today Coleman is a conservative lobbyist in Washington so now he and his wife can whore themselves with the full support and blessing of the American Supreme Court. Do you think Norm Coleman is the exception or the rule? Call me a cynic, but I say he's the rule.
Not long ago I watched a "gentleman" driving a fancy Recreational Vehicle, a motor home in the $80,000 - $100,000 range, dump his motor home's septic in the city storm sewer. Based on scientific analysis and extrapolation, approximately 350,000 - 400,000 barrels of used motor oil find their way into the Galveston Bay every year. This at a time when all automotive parts stores AND Walmart offer used motor oil recycling FREE OF CHARGE! I could go on and on . . .
So perhaps you would be interested in the Lifeboat Foundation, Ha, Ha, Ha . . .
"I am presently working on three related topics:
1. the paleolithic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle as a model of what humans have evolved to live like, and thus a good starting point if you want to understand how we can optimize our physical and mental health, strength and well-being
2. the concept of challenge as the fundamental driver of action and development in all agents, human as well as non-human
3. the problem of coordination in self-organization: how can a collective of initially autonomous agents learn to collaborate in the most productive way without any central supervisor telling them how to do it
The three topics are related in that they are all applications of what I call the "ontology of challenge and action," which sees the world as being constituted out of actions and their agents, and challenges as situations that elicit those actions. The life of a hunter-gatherer is essentially a sequence of (mostly unpredictable) challenges - mostly minor, sometimes major. In contrast, our modern civilized life has tried to maximally suppress or exclude uncontrolled challenges (such as accidents, germs, hot and cold temperatures, wild animals). Without these challenges, the various human subsystems that evolution has produced to deal with these challenges (e.g. the immune system, muscles, fast reflexes) remain weak and underdeveloped, leading to a host of diseases and mental problems.
The link with self-organization is that the action of one agent will in general change the environment in such a way as to produce a challenge to one or more other agents. If these agents react "appropriately," their interaction may become cooperative or synergetic; otherwise it is characterized by friction. In the best case, patterns of synergetic interaction propagate via the challenges they produce to the whole collective, which thus starts to act in a coordinated fashion."
- Francis Heylighen, pages 316-317 in Between Ape and Artilect
"I don't like the phrase 'existential risk' for several reasons. It presupposes that we are clear about exactly what 'existence' we are risking. Today, we have a clear understanding of what it means for an animal to die or a species to go extinct. However, as new technologies allow us to change our genomes and our physical structures, it will become much less clear to us when we lose something precious. 'Death' and 'extinction,' for example, become much more amorphous concepts in the presence of extensive self-modification.
It's easy to identify our humanity with our individual physical form and our egoic minds, but in reality, our physical form is an ecosystem, only 10% of our cells are 'human.' Our minds are also ecosystems composed of interacting sub-personalities. Our humanity is as much in our relationships, interconnections, and culture as it is in our individual minds and bodies. The higher levels of organization are much more amorphous and changeable. For these reasons, it could be hard to pin down what we are losing at the moment when something precious is lost. {Addition to clear with Steve: It is more likely that we will only realize what we have lost, long after it's already gone for good.}
So, I believe the biggest 'existential risk' is related to identifying the qualities that are most important to humanity and to ensuring that technological forces enhance those rather than eliminate them. Already today we see many instances where economic forces act to create 'soulless' institutions that tend to commodify the human spirit rather than inspire and exalt it."
- Steve Omohundro, pages 326 - 327 in Between Ape and Artilect
