🚀 go-pugleaf

>> Such words accurately describe the existential problem of modernity
>> as it overtook the certitude and meaningfulness that tradition offered,
>> as well as the deliberation that weighed all possibilities and avoided
>> drastic imbalances. That type of thinking has been eroded and lost.
>
> Actually, it hasn't been lost; rather, the deliberation that weighed all 
> possibilities and avoided drastic imbalance remains with most of the 
> scientific community. Where those qualities have been "lost" may in fact 
> be places where such qualities never were: with salesmen, managers who 
> can't look beyond the next quarterly statement, in the pulpit and the 
> soapbox of the preacher and politician.

Philosophers were once the thought leaders of society, but as society
"progressed" after industrialization, social goals shifted to pragamatic
materialism and philosophers no longer had a purpose and consequently
didn't appear. Instead, pragmatists took the lead and showed what was
physically possible, leaving no place for deliberators or voices capable
of applying brakes to any slowly accelerating insanity.

> I've got a very simple morality for the modern world. I stole it 
> straight from the self-proclaimed "witches" and it works for me, with a 
> tiny bit of expansion. "If it harms none, do as thou wilt, and reck ye 
> well what harm may be done".

Most minds in the modern world are incapable of considering the harm of
their actions. Therefore harm must be preemptively stopped by preventing
potentially harmful possibilities from being performed on a wide scale.

> I'd argue that your campaign against Science would be better directed as 
> a campaign against Recklessness.

Except what I've described is recklessness caused by scientists. You
are arguing for scientific leadership, but these are precisely the same
people whose thinking created the problems we suffer. It is an old
political trick for someone to create a problem and then proclaim a
solution, each time making things worse.

>> Who do you think it was who created the methods that contributed to
>> Global Warming, or rather more accurately Climate Change that brings
>> us instability greater than mere heating? Who created aerosols? Who
>> created the processes to refine fuel and the methods to burn fossil
>> fuels? Are these the faults of sneaky politicians or clever scientists
>> who invented and discovered?
>
> And having created fire, then, Scientists are to blame for every person 
> who hasn't frozen to death in midwinter, as well as for every house 
> that's ever burned down due to Recklessness.

Did all people freeze to death before the formalization of the scientific
method? You are presenting silly strawmen.

> Yet had we created fire, and created little else, might not enough of us 
> over enough time have cause a Climate Change and find ourselves without 
> either the intellectual means or physical tools to discover the cause?

Speculating on hypotheticals does not absolve scientists of blame
for the very real harm of what they created and unleashed on society.

>> It is good scientists are finally waking up to the damage caused by
>> the inventions of scientists. Perhaps they will stop being so reckless
>> and shortsighted in the future.
>
> Again, your case is against Recklessness, not against Science.

My case is against the recklessness of scientists who are clearly
unfit for intellectual leadership because they are proven short-term
thinkers without any demonstrated consideration for the long-term
effects of their actions.

> Every person competent to be called a scientist has had a fairly clear 
> vision of the paths in the futures and in most cases have done their 
> very best to have no unintended consequences, insofar as they could 
> control matters.

Are you saying scientists are too stupid to realize that a combustion
engine produces exhaust, or that reliance on a non-replenishable fuel
resource is an obvious form of short-term thinking? How do you excuse
scientists from the reckless consequences of their creations without
proclaiming them incapable of managing their own discoveries?

> Eradicating smallpox was a very good thing to do. Eradicating smallpox 
> while refusing to allow funding of education about birthcontrol methods 
> was an insane thing to do.

Precisely whom needs to be educated? Western, one Christian nations, are
generally below a replenishing birthrate and aren't contributing to
overpopulation. How do you propose "educating" the third world to reduce
birthrates against their national interests? You must imagine yourself
to have some kind of powerful and clever international lobby.

In case you're unfamiliar, here are Europe's projected 2007 fertility rates
from www.census.gov:

Albania 2.03 
Andorra 1.31 
Austria 1.37 
Belarus 1.22 
Belgium 1.64 
Bosnia and Herzegovina 1.23 
Bulgaria 1.39 
Croatia 1.41 
Czech Republic 1.22 
Denmark 1.74 
Estonia 1.41 
Faroe Islands 2.15 
Finland 1.73 
France 1.84 
Germany 1.40 
Gibraltar 1.65 
Greece 1.35 
Guernsey 1.40 
Hungary 1.33 
Iceland 1.91 
Ireland 1.86 
Isle of Man 1.65 
Italy 1.29 
Jersey 1.58 
Latvia 1.28 
Liechtenstein 1.51 
Lithuania 1.21 
Luxembourg 1.78 
Macedonia 1.57 
Malta 1.51 
Moldova 1.25 
Monaco 1.75 
Montenegro 1.47 
Netherlands 1.66 
Norway 1.78 
Poland 1.26 
Portugal 1.48 
Romania 1.38 
Russia 1.39 
San Marino 1.34 
Serbia 1.69 
Slovakia 1.33 
Slovenia 1.26 
Spain 1.29 
Sweden 1.66 
Switzerland 1.44 
Ukraine 1.24 
United Kingdom 1.66