Dire Warnings
Who listens?
Avian Flu is coming! It's spread to cattle now. Are we sleepwalking into another pandemic?
I've been seeing dire warnings about that.
What to do about dire warnings?
When Covid19 first appeared the Chinese were against revealing the disease at all for fear of causing a panic - the opposite of a dire warning. And then their hospitals started getting overwhelmed by the disease and they changed their posture. I saw them building huge hospitals to hold Covid patients in a matter of days.
Canada looked and was warned and learned. We shut down a lot of the economy and also we did an experiment in UBI to enable people who were thrown out of work by the lockdown to buy groceries and pay the rent.
Lots of people didn't take the warning seriously. They wanted to gather for parties and church service and concerts.
And we have reason to be suspicious of dire warning - they often fizzle. The legend of the boy who called wolf comes to mind. How often have I seen dire warnings about everything from coffee to sugar? Many times for each.
One element here is just normal human psychology. If things are OK here and now then things are OK.
I like the parable of the man falling from a high building. A magical interrogator freezes time as he falls past the 3rd floor and asks the faller "How ya doin?" Faller replies "So far, so good".
So with Covid a lot of the people who weren't infected were acting as if there was no problem. They thought that mask and vaccine mandates were a huge overreach (powergrab even) by the government.
A similar issue arises with issues like global warming or environmental regulations. If you take the warning seriously then the action taken seems reasonable. And if you don't take it seriously then the action seems unreasonable and intrusive.
Lately the issue of waste plastic has become a big deal. It's piling up in mountains on beaches:-( That macro plastic is a problem for sure. But lately the media has been shining a light on "microplastics". The idea here is that the plastics around us degrade by falling apart into little bits that last forever.
The smallest of these bits (nanoparticles) have been found in the plaque that lines people's arteries. That is surprising - interesting and amazing even and also eep. But what is the danger?
It's been said that we are in a new geologic age - the anthropocene - when human activity becomes as big enough to leave a distinctive trace in the geologic record. I don't think that humans will wipe out life on earth but certainly humans may well wipe themselves out. And then geologists from a future intelligent species would see the mark in the rocks that we were here.
But then I think - Hey - we have this huge resource - plastic - it's piling up in mountains. How can we mine those mountains?
And already Mother Nature is at work. It seems that the great garbage gyre in the middle of the pacific is providing an environment for a whole new ecosystem out there
What do you think?
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.