Better off TED?

I happened to be indulging in TED lately, a somewhat guilty pleasure, admittedly, because I of the ideological agenda that many of the speakers don’t bother to even hide. Obviously the ethical fraternity of these speakers makes them confident enough to betray their long ago passing from objective inquiry into open advocacy, in all of its potential for suppression of Copernican-type revolutions of thought. The prevention of heresy, in any already successful organization, seems more important than the encouragement of enlightenment.

But they don’t seem to be concerned. Magnificent scientists like Jane Goodall, giddy in this feel-good environment, publicly besmirch any credibility from any of their otherwise fair-minded research. Goodall originally gained a name for herself impressive enough to gain an honorary Ph.D. without a baccalaureate by correcting many of the ideologically driven perceptions existing before her about the field of great apes. Previous rain forest thinking saw in these species only vegetarianism and general peaceful and nonviolent interaction that critics of our own species could only pine for.

Yet she has of late been willing to make the current focus of her public speaking, not to augment or for heaven's sake outdo to her past accomplishments, but to risk the everyman ring of the kind of cliché tripe every other lukewarm intellect is sounding these days--exactly the level of the politically motivated nonsense she has so carefully debunked with her empirical observations rather than reliance on authoritarian precedence.

In a meandering mix of stories about chimps, denigrations of our own species, and pleas to save the earth that probably dazzled the audience by being something for everyone, I was particularly struck by some what she said about the native peoples of Ecuador living in the rainforest.

She described the unexpected sight of the village chief using a laptop computer to get her a laugh out of the audience, admitting that they want to use such technology to better their lives by using such innovations of the intruding white man (her words) as running water, a half an hour per home of electricity a day, and combating tropical diseases. But these only in a larger context of how sad it is that such advances are destroying their culture--surely the greater evil for Ms. Goodall than the suffering eradicated by use of the new technology.

Does it ever occur to any of these social scientists that say such things how selfish to their own interests it is to fight such changes for the purpose of preventing ‘the loss of cultural diversity?’ What right does any one of us have to say that other people any place in the world only need a half an hour of electricity per night and one laptop among them? Would anyone suggesting this place herself under such a restriction?

It is obviously fascinating to those who would have their fellow men as museum exhibits to see 'primitive chiefs wearing regal finery’ as some type of time-travelling curiosity. But in the name of preserving such fascinating displays for our own enjoyment, would we allow anyone to have a say in decisions about our own lives?

I don’t know what notion of intellectual superiority blinds people to the unsavoriness of saying that other people are incapable of making important decisions for themselves, other than the obviously very common human tendency to tolerate different rules for ourselves than for others. Most who pan 'materialism, 'consumerism' or the latest 'ism' that refers to human beings having bettered their circumstances do so with the understanding that THEY of course, will be able to choose exactly WHICH comforts and conveniences of modern society they and their own are able to enjoy, while the less fortunate are relegated to whatever is chosen for them.

One person might insist that of course laptops and cell phones are a basic right in the new information age, but large housing square footage is a gross overindulgence, another may believe that of course they have earned the luxury of early retirement, a stay at home wife, or acreage on their farm, but the computers and cell phones of the first person, who of course is in term calling them idle or wasteful, just clutter our lives and can be dispensed with, etc--the obvious problem being that one man's sinful indulgence is another's cherished, hard-earned necessity, and it is extremely problematic to get into the game of pointing fingers and characterizing another's naturally differing values or preferences.

Curiously, Ms. Goodall, in her humdrum, monotone cry of the evils of modern society, doesn’t seem to lack the information that society has produced. She is obviously intelligent and well exposed to the latest scientific evidence along with it does and does not support--she knows what she is doing, and thus like her associates at TED is an advocate rather than a believer. When she makes her unnecessarily Cassandra-like depictions of the current state of the planet, she knows better than to get too specific, to quote any outcome of particular science such as she herself is known for when communicating her alarm that some unspecified children somewhere in the world are eating poisoned food or drinking poisoned water.

And sure, anyone can easily claim that children are being poisoned by the toxic consequences of human technology, as long as they don’t get overly specific about what they mean by that. If one defines poisoning as simply a consequence of man-made chemicals entering our bodies, without any particularly harmful consequence befalling them as a result, one could claim that we all poison our children each time we give them their daily multivitamin.

And it is obvious that this is very close to her actual definition. She mentions some fifty chemicals in our bodies that weren’t there fifty years ago. That somehow seems a strange coincidence of the number fifty but I will bite and assume it’s true. It would still require a willing leap from her audience for them to assume any relationship between these chemicals and any particular consequence.

Indeed, she knows she must say that such toxicity could account for only possibly the ills of maybe asthma or ‘particular types of cancers,’ as surely she is aware of the larger body of information and what it is concluding about manmade chemicals and health. Children everywhere are freer from major diseases than ever, and even all but smoking-related cancer, allowing for population and age of its sufferers, is on the decline. This data despite the file-drawer phenomenon bias that has for a century characterized investigations attempting to pin synthesized chemicals with absolutely any possible health problem.

All this suspicion and potential harm seen around every corner because of the hatred of human progress and shame for its consequences, in her own extreme words. But why, is the real question. She herself has used technology to better the lives of the beloved chimps she studies, giving them running water and video games, and has encouraged its use to spread the word for the causes she advocates. Why doesn’t she feel hope, judging from the faith she seems to place in it on the one hand, about the possibilities technology offers rather than such shame?

Why do such a large number of its beneficiaries honestly refuse to admit that technology, whatever its consequences, has not changed lives for the better? Do they they were living, (as in some of their own ancestors' primitive state) in superstition-laden Medieval Europe, with all of the barbarism and horror provided by human beings and nature alike? I for one am glad I am not desperately consulting witches and astrologists to save my children from the plague, at least the half I didn’t bury when they were born. And for all the quaintness of primitive societies to scientists, these are many of the realities they still endure.

And just like the dire predictions about mass starvation or other consequences of human manipulation of their environment, it turns out that technology can actually be employed to reverse its own negative consequences, rather than only an evil to be mitigated or fought. But fight on they still do. I get so sad when I hear about some story like that poor kid who went across the country to his miserable end freezing and starving on a diet of only marijuana seeds in Alaska, after he was driven to reject the benefit of his privileged upbringing and education because Cumulative guilt is regularly heaped on the young and impressionable if they dare enjoy or appreciate the improved lot in life they have been given through thousands of years of human industry and struggle. I can't imagine what his fore bearers would think if they were told of how much he had obviously appreciated what they had done to pave the way for him.

And worst if all, the guilt isn’t necessary, rather an obvious manipulation by those who know better. Listen to Pinker’s talk on violence. He probably wouldn’t agree with me, but I think that it is interesting that he has gained enough intellectual status to point to one of the elephants in the room. As long as he puts enough obligatory twists on it to seem kosher to his colleagues he can make the obvious point that there has been widespread tweaking and obfuscating of the worldview of any who have been educated recently in the Western world, for the ideological agenda of studied strategy to so indoctrinate.

Another Tedster brought up the notion of ideas as germs, and it makes sense to look at potentially obvious facts this way. They can be everywhere, like the fact that human population is no longer exploding despite the given in most everyone's mind not up on the latest UN projections. This is an ideal case of what can happen when you wait for the information that is given to you rather than seeking it yourself. In fact human population in most countries and inevitably in all of them is on the verge of precipitous decline. Surprising? Look into it. Chances are your government is already scurrying around trying to do something about it because they were just clued in five minutes ago themselves.

Many governments around the world are worried about the complete unknown affect of the inverted population curve because what would you know it, no one is actually worrying about the problems that will actually befall us. Immune to the actual state of things because we have been inoculated against it by those who have convinced us of a completely alternate reality, people get so riled up by doomsayers about the imagined potential evils and problems. Thus the frightened panic about a future that will never come is what will ironically lead to the actual future we will be to deal with without any preparation by those learned and studied forecasters. Fearing what would happen if our planet was busted by overpopulation, people have amazingly felt guilty about reproducing for the past thirty years and now many cultures such as Russia, Japan, Spain and Germany are staring down extinction. The brilliant ideas that government bureaucrats are coming up with unguided by intellectuals reveal the state of their desperation. Singapore is sponsoring government cruises so people will get married and have kids. Does that sound like anything that is going to be what solves any type of crisis whatsoever?

And that poor kid in Alaska that sacrificed himself to an invisible cause.... It makes me so sad. It makes me certain that for whatever reason incomprehensible to me, some human nature makes people somehow desperately eager to not only see the bad in the world and the future, but in their search for superiority and self-satisfaction, to look for the bad in each other wherever they can find it.

Not being a person that so hopes for the worst in the future or in my fellow human beings, I would prefer a world where only ideas were bad. And at all costs, people wouldn't have to be. I feel that we really only have the responsibility to correct each other's views, and not instead criticize or even worse control their behavior or morals. Especially, any time that I can make things better by doing something easy like just choosing to define my terms a bit differently, like not seeing quite so many 'isms' when there don't absolutely need to be, it can be a very easy way of avoiding Ms. Goodall's unfortunate anger shame or resentment about human activities or endeavors. If I can resist the pleasure of feeling better by thinking others are worse, how much the happier for all of us.