To: The New
York Times
<oped@nytimes.com> |
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Officially, it
is the job of
anthropologists
to recognise
and urgently
convey to an
imperilled
world that an
artificial
socio-economic
environment has
effectively
replaced the
natural
environment as
the focus
of man's
behavioural
programming,
thus blinding
us to the
catastrophe
towards which
we are
heading. Why
haven't they
done so?
Because they
too are
blinded by
their
dependency on
the
socio-economic
environment.
We all strive (because programmed) to maintain - the more energetic and entrepreneurial among us, to expand - the (socio-economic) environment and the niches we are best able to exploit, which results in the creation of ever more niches (ecotopes and subecotopes, i.e. industries, such as advertising, film, TV, aviation, the automobile industry, etc. etc). This expansion of the socio-economic environment is driven by forces (behavioural programming), rooted in our animal nature, which free-market capitalism developed and has been honed to take advantage of (thus, it's apparent success), but which are blind to the limits inherent in the natural environment, upon which ultimately the socio-economic environment depends, along with all the niches and individuals it supports. The huge size, capacity and resilience of our planet's natural environment has led us to believe that we can rely on it to bear everything the socio-economic environment demands of it, but we are in for a very rude awakening – an awakening that has already begun (e.g. global warming).
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