Noam chomsky - humans & self extermination

[shock]

INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE - NOAM CHOMSKY
October 27, 2012
  Noam Chomsky :  Who Owns the World?     :   Information Clearing House: ICH

"***

***humans are somehow trying to fulfill a prediction of great American biologist who died recently, Ernst Mayr.
He argued years ago that intelligence seems to be a lethal mutation. He—and he had some pretty good evidence.
There’s a notion of biological success, which is how many of you are there around. You know, that’s biological success.
And he pointed out that if you look at the tens of billions of species in human—in world history, the ones that are very successful are the ones that mutate very quickly, like bacteria, or the ones that have a fixed ecological niche, like beetles. They seem to make out fine.

But as you move up the scale of what we call intelligence, success declines steadily. When you get up to mammals, it’s very low. There are very few of them around. I mean, there’s a lot of cows; it’s only because we domesticate them. When you get to humans, it’s the same. 'Til very recently, much too recent a time to show up in any evolutionary accounting, humans were very scattered.
There were plenty of other hominids, but they disappeared, probably because humans exterminated them, but nobody knows for sure.
Anyhow, maybe we're trying to show that humans just fit into the general pattern. We can exterminate ourselves, too, the rest of the world with us, and we’re hell bent on it right now.

Well, let’s turn to the elections. Both political parties demand that we make the problem worse. In 2008, both party platforms devoted some space to how the government should address climate change. Today, the—in the Republican platform, the issue has essentially disappeared. But the platform does demand that Congress take quick action
to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency
from regulating greenhouse gases. So let’s make re to make it worse.

And it also demands that we open the Alaska’s Arctic Refuge to drilling—I’m quoting now—in order to take "advantage of all of our American God-given resources." You can’t disobey God, after all.

On environmental policy, the program says, "We must restore scientific integrity to our public research institutions and remove political incentives from publicly funded research." All that’s a code word for climate science: stop funding climate science.

Romney himself says there’s no scientific consensus, so we should support more debate and investigation within the scientific community, but no action, except to act to make the problems worse.

Well, what about the Democrats?
They concede that there’s a problem and advocate that we should work toward an agreement to set emissions limits in unison with other emerging powers.
But that’s it. No action.
And, in fact, as Obama has emphasized, we have to work hard to gain what he calls a hundred years of energy independence by exploiting domestic or Canadian resources by fracking or other elaborate technologies.
Doesn’t ask what the world would look like in a hundred years.
So, there are differences.
The differences are basically about how enthusiastically the lemmings should march towards the cliff.


***"
====================================================


So there are differences and small as they are they may portend terrible and less terrible consequences,

with a vote for Romney probably tending to support terrible consequences,

and a vote for Obama probably tending to support less terrible consequences.


Because of the attachment of both candidates for an obstreperous war and terror causing Israel,

and because of their own willingness to tolerate our loss of constitutional rights

and a world suffering from murder ranging from assinations to murder by drone attacks on a miscellaenous array of people,
I'll not vote for either candidate.

But, if you feel you need vote, Obama seems to me to be

on the slow side of human extermination

with Romney on the faster.


SHOCKLEY


(re-paragraphing for emphasis)

 

[shock]

THE LI NK IS:
  Noam Chomsky :  Who Owns the World?     :   Information Clearing House: ICH
SHOCKLEY

 

[shock]

tHAT'S THE BEST i CAN DO--WHENEVER i TRY TO POST THE LINK THAT IS WHAT COMES UP---BUT THE ARTICLE IS EASY TO FIND WITHOUT A LINK.
SHOCKLEY

 

[jasonnfree]

INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE - NOAM CHOMSKY
October 27, 2012
* Noam Chomsky :* Who Owns the World?**** :** Information Clearing House: ICH

"***

***humans are somehow trying to fulfill a prediction of great American biologist who died recently, Ernst Mayr.
He argued years ago that intelligence seems to be a lethal mutation. He—and he had some pretty good evidence.
There’s a notion of biological success, which is how many of you are there around. You know, that’s biological success.
And he pointed out that if you look at the tens of billions of species in human—in world history, the ones that are very successful are the ones that mutate very quickly, like bacteria, or the ones that have a fixed ecological niche, like beetles. They seem to make out fine.

But as you move up the scale of what we call intelligence, success declines steadily. When you get up to mammals, it’s very low. There are very few of them around. I mean, there’s a lot of cows; it’s only because we domesticate them. When you get to humans, it’s the same. 'Til very recently, much too recent a time to show up in any evolutionary accounting, humans were very scattered.
There were plenty of other hominids, but they disappeared, probably because humans exterminated them, but nobody knows for sure.
Anyhow, maybe we're trying to show that humans just fit into the general pattern. We can exterminate ourselves, too, the rest of the world with us, and we’re hell bent on it right now.

Well, let’s turn to the elections. Both political parties demand that we make the problem worse. In 2008, both party platforms devoted some space to how the government should address climate change. Today, the—in the Republican platform, the issue has essentially disappeared. But the platform does demand that Congress take quick action
to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency
from regulating greenhouse gases. So let’s make re to make it worse.

And it also demands that we open the Alaska’s Arctic Refuge to drilling—I’m quoting now—in order to take "advantage of all of our American God-given resources." You can’t disobey God, after all.

On environmental policy, the program says, "We must restore scientific integrity to our public research institutions and remove political incentives from publicly funded research." All that’s a code word for climate science: stop funding climate science.

Romney himself says there’s no scientific consensus, so we should support more debate and investigation within the scientific community, but no action, except to act to make the problems worse.

Well, what about the Democrats?
They concede that there’s a problem and advocate that we should work toward an agreement to set emissions limits in unison with other emerging powers.
But that’s it. No action.
And, in fact, as Obama has emphasized, we have to work hard to gain what he calls a hundred years of energy independence by exploiting domestic or Canadian resources by fracking or other elaborate technologies.
Doesn’t ask what the world would look like in a hundred years.
So, there are differences.
The differences are basically about how enthusiastically the lemmings should march towards the cliff.


***"
====================================================


So there are differences and small as they are they may portend terrible and less terrible consequences,

with a vote for Romney probably tending to support terrible consequences,

and a vote for Obama probably tending to support less terrible consequences.


Because of the attachment of both candidates for an obstreperous war and terror causing Israel,

and because of their own willingness to tolerate our loss of constitutional rights

and a world suffering from murder ranging from assinations to murder by drone attacks on a miscellaenous array of people,
I'll not vote for either candidate.

But, if you feel you need vote, Obama seems to me to be

on the slow side of human extermination

with Romney on the faster.


SHOCKLEY


(re-paragraphing for emphasis)

Great post. Chomsky should be required reading in schools. I'll still vote for the lesser of two horribles which I believe to be Obama. Otherwise you're giving up. After Nov. 6 there will be either Romney or Obama. I'll bank on the more decent, intelligent one which is Obama. If a genius ever comes along, all the idiots will be against him or words to that effect (Jonathan Swift)so Obama has to play both sides of the aisle to survive. IMO anyway.

 

[tooAlive]

That's a really interesting post.

I, however, will not vote based on candidates; but based on parties.

I'm all for a smaller government, so my vote will be Republican.