Goodbye Ruby - Hello Earth

[Christophe Mckeon]

Hi guys,

Thanks for some of your positive responses.

I made my decision not because I was unhappy doing what I was doing. I
truly loved what I was doing. I did experience some of the health
complaints you guys are talking about though.

I made my decision because:

We are presently losing 200 species a day on this planet. That rate is
as high as during the greatest species die offs in the earth's natural
history, during disasters, like eruptions of super-volcanoes and meteor
impacts. Ecological diversity is of course what keeps us alive.

Climate change is going to be absolutely disastrous. The scientific
community is in the vast majority in thinking that it is man made, that
it is very real and that it is very dangerous. Not just for our
children, but at this point, for ourselves.

Petro-collapse or peak oil, which is not on too many people's radar
right now, but it will be very soon. Over 30 towns in England have
become 'Transition Towns' in order to build resilience against both
petrocollapse and cimate change. Agriculture is entirely dependent on
petrochemicals. 10 calories of petroleum are now being used to produce 1
calorie of food, compared with the 1 to 1 ratio of the 1930s. If you
don't know what peak oil is you are very dangerously in the dark.

Population overshoot. There are currently 6 billion people on the planet
and growing exponentially. You guys should all be able to guess what
happens when you have a finite resource base but an exponential growth
rate of both economies and populations. The carrying capacity of the
earth w/o constant petrolium input is estimated at between 1 and 3
billion depending on who you ask.

I closed my eyes to all these facts for years hoping they would go away
and that somebody would 'be on it', but they didn't and they aren't.
Just a single one of those 4 forces is massive and all of them combined
are at this point probably insurmountable. The longer we wait the harder
will be the crash.

But... I found permaculture which was designed by scientists (ecologists
and systems theorists), and believe it has great promise and that it
could completely revolutionize agriculture. Not only that but it is
tremendously energy efficient and increases biodiversity and soil
health. i.e. it is the complete opposite of current agricultural
practices. I think it would be very attractive to software people,
especially open source types, as it is all about design and small scale
local interactions. It even uses design patterns.

When I saw that there was hope, I had a sort of spiritual awakening, a
crumbling of the walls of denial, and a grieving for the planet we are
about to destroy, that's why I'm leaving, and that is why I am planning
on talking to as many people as I can. There will be more and more of us
'dropping out' in the near future as the forces described above start to
become plainly obvious in not so nice ways.

So you see, it is not about back pain, or if my lamp is bad for me. I'm
sorry, I know it's a downer, but it's time for people to start talking
to each other about this stuff, especially smart people like yourselves.
It's life or death now, but the problem is that humans, even the
smartest humans do not react to threats unless they are directly in
front of them in plain view. We have our own evolutionary psychology to
blame for this.

We need all the brains of the earth on this one.

Good Luck.

 

[john maclean]

Reminds me of an old engineering joke (forgive the masculine slant, ladie= s).

At the dorms...

Geek 1: Dude! =A0You'll never believe what happened to me just now! =A0I
was walking back from class and this girl biked up to me, jumped off,
stripped naked right there on the sidewalk!

Geek 2: Wow! =A0What did you do?

Geek 1: I jumped on the bike and took off.

Geek 2: Why did you do that?

Geek 1: Uh, duh. =A0The clothes wouldn't fit.

As long as we pump trillions of dollars back into the economy to prop
it up from a recession/depression then it will be business as usual.
This __could__ be a chance for a re-think on the production process.

- Packaging. If stuff ain't over packaged, we won't buy it.
- Waste of water in the developed world. I prolly use more of it to
brush my teeth than some of use for food.
- General waster. WTF would I do with a needle and thread? Um, buy new jean=
s!
- Transport. Do you have an affordable, reliable service in your town?
I'm lucky as I live and work in London and can get around by public
transport. But it is crap here. From what I have seen in the UK it is
more cost effective to take a taxi or hire a care if you are
travelling out of town with a few people.
- Electricity. Turn off your dvd, radio, stereo etc and you loose all
of the settings. Keeping them on standby preserves those settings.
- The economy. Shareholders want growth and that means more. More
stuff, sold to more people, buying more stuff. Constant growth is what
the economy is built on.
=3D As responsible people, we are supposed to make more and more stuff
and buy it as soon as we get paid. That helps the world go around.
=3D Some of us value ourselves on the ability to buy __stuff__.
=3D The more stuff we can buy the "better off" we are. # That's a bit
simplistic but you know where I am coming from.

Whales, polar bears and butterlies? Who cares? I see them on the TV
and not in the city where I live. Heck, what do I know what happens on
Polar Bear Avenue? What does that have to do with me doing my job of
producing more stuff?

My problem with the whole green issue is not that climate change may
or may be man-made, but what our response is.

I can bet any amount of money you like that it will be the consumer
that fits the bill.
=3D Water taxes
=3D Methane taxes
=3D Green taxes
=3D Electricity taxes
=3D Heating efficiency taxes

I say this as it's easier for a government to say, "we are doing
something about this climate stuff as we are giving the people a
stick". That's what I see from my end, over in Merry Olde Englande.


__END__
Get back to work and do not hit the send button. who wants to read my
rants anyway?

--=20
John Maclean
07739 171 531
MSc (DIC)

Timezone: GMT

 

[Martin DeMello]

Our worst general global problem is lobbyists and corruption, and the sec= ond
worst is the oil companies.

Second words is Monsanto, I'd say. Loss of biodiversity in our food
crops could be fatal.

martin

 

[Robert Dober]

Hi guys,

Thanks for some of your positive responses.

I would really discuss some of these points with you but I am afraid
that it is too OT to do it here.
OTOH maybe this is just important enough anyway. I dunno.
As a compromise I will ask some questions here and send you a private
mail later on, if and only if this is ok for you.
<snip>
Probably you think that you can do more for the cause by not being a
programmer or sysadmin or architect anymore.
However, what can we (those who believe that their talents are in
programming or creating systems on distributed Linux boxes etc.etc.)
do to help? Any ideas, pointers?

Thx in advance
Robert

 

[MRH]

OK - BYE

 

[Jared Nance]

Even the things we love most have a dark side... in my opinion if you
feel like what you're doing cannot contribute positively (and you care
about that) then yes, you should probably leave it. But if you really
love it, shouldn't you try to find a way to make it work?

 

[s.ross]

[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

I am writing today to say my goodbyes to Ruby

So long and thanks for all the fish.

 

[David Masover]

Call me an optimist, but to quote Buffy: "there's always another
apocalypse"

Buffy also died twice. I don't know that's the kind of optimism we want!

 

[Patrick Aljord]

we know is destroying our planet, yet which we

Hey, the planet is doing just fine!

 

[lasitha]

I would really discuss some of these points with you but I am afraid
that it is too OT to do it here.
OTOH maybe this is just important enough anyway. I dunno.

Yes, it is. Moreover i think anyone not interested in further
discussion is probably familiar enough with the thread to ignore or
mute it.

+1 to continue here.

[...]
However, what can we (those who believe that their talents are in
programming or creating systems on distributed Linux boxes etc.etc.)
do to help? Any ideas, pointers?

I for one would love to hear responses to that question in particular.

In any case, my thanks to Christophe for posting, caring and taking action.

solidarity,
lasitha

 

[Chris Kottom]

[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

Why not use your skills to work on solving the problem then? I doubt the
solutions are going to be found by people in caves using abaci passing
parchments back and forth via pony express. Like it or not (and sometimes I
don't) the technology-enabled world isn't going anywhere, and I think that,
regardless of your feelings about it, you've got to be honest enough with
yourself to accept as constraints the things that are perhaps not ideal but
that also aren't immediately changeable. Or even attack the perceived
problems using the leverage technology offers: global communications,
distributed computing for problem solving, etc.

I respect your convictions very much. I just fear some kind of society-wide
brain drain if all the smart people suddenly decide to tune in, turn on and
drop out.

I would really discuss some of these points with you but I am afraid
that it is too OT to do it here.
OTOH maybe this is just important enough anyway. I dunno.

Yes, it is. Moreover i think anyone not interested in further
discussion is probably familiar enough with the thread to ignore or
mute it.

+1 to continue here.

[...]
However, what can we (those who believe that their talents are in
programming or creating systems on distributed Linux boxes etc.etc.)
do to help? Any ideas, pointers?

I for one would love to hear responses to that question in particular.

In any case, my thanks to Christophe for posting, caring and taking action.

solidarity,
lasitha

 

[Leo]

And always remember: If you are not part of the problem, then you are part of

the solution!

The problem with that is that for most people it's always the others
who are part of the problem. Could you imagine that people start
shouting: "Yeah, we know we are the problem so let's just go home and
simply forget about those stupid things we're supposed to be doing."
Which for whatever reason reminds me of B Brecht "Imagine there is a
war and nobody comes." Kudos to the OP.

 

[Robert Dober]

[...]
However, what can we (those who believe that their talents are in
programming or creating systems on distributed Linux boxes etc.etc.)
do to help? Any ideas, pointers?

I for one would love to hear responses to that question in particular.

In any case, my thanks to Christophe for posting, caring and taking action.

Thanks for the encouragement. I have said it in a private post to Bill
Kelly before, Christophe indeed has become one of the most valuable
contributors to this list with his goodbye message, IMHO. He indicated
some keywords which are part of answering my questions. I am
particularly fascinated with this one
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture.
Christophe mentioned patterns interesting for programming too (as they
are general design patterns).
I retained two concepts which I always found very fascinating, but not
that easy to implement: Small and Slow.
Small systems are manageable, e.g. Small Is Beautiful. And Slow
systems are more likely to be thought out, easier to support by
(human) nature. If one adds my personal favorite design principle, as
simple as possible but not simpler (A.Einstein), we got three Esses.
SSS.

I also believe that Permaculture comes from farming environments but
is a highly intellectual approach not denying progress or achievements
but submitting it to critics (do we need this, or can we afford this).
OTOH progress is even needed to solve given problems.

If I understood it correctly we would live in quite a different world
today if permaculture had been applied for some centuries now. Just
one personal vision, what might have happened: Maybe no cell phones
but more medical knowledge (but on second thoughts advanced
communication technologies might having been developed as a side
product of medical technologies research and due to its usefulness in
a highly decentralized society). Would we have traveled to the moon? I
daresay no, but the idea for space travel would exist for centuries
and people would work on it, but slowly. The day the first man would
step on our satellite she would see a green paradise that would
resemble much more to paradise.

Nuff dreaming for today.

Robert



--
There are some people who begin the Zoo at the beginning, called
WAYIN, and walk as quickly as they can past every cage until they get
to the one called WAYOUT, but the nicest people go straight to the
animal they love the most, and stay there. ~ A.A. Milne (from
Winnie-the-Pooh)

 

[Marc Heiler]

Oh noes!

The world is gonna collapse...

 

[Robert Dober]

Christophe Mckeon wrote:

That you do not agree with Christophe I understand, that some of the
ideas make you afraid I understand.
That you do not investigate further or ask questions that I am surprised ab=
out.

So you're "leaving." =A0Thanks.

That you insult him comes as a big shock to me!
Cheers
Robert
--=20
Si tu veux construire un bateau ...
Ne rassemble pas des hommes pour aller chercher du bois, pr=E9parer des
outils, r=E9partir les t=E2ches, all=E9ger le travail=85 mais enseigne aux
gens la nostalgie de l=92infini de la mer.

If you want to build a ship, don=92t herd people together to collect
wood and don=92t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to
long for the endless immensity of the sea.

 

[Eleanor McHugh]

Buffy also died twice. I don't know that's the kind of optimism we
want!

Well I think it's all that's on offer.

Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net

 

[Bill Kelly]

[...]
However, what can we (those who believe that their talents are in
programming or creating systems on distributed Linux boxes etc.etc.)
do to help? Any ideas, pointers?

I for one would love to hear responses to that question in particular.

In any case, my thanks to Christophe for posting, caring and taking action.

Thanks for the encouragement. I have said it in a private post to Bill
Kelly before, Christophe indeed has become one of the most valuable
contributors to this list with his goodbye message, IMHO. He indicated
some keywords which are part of answering my questions. I am
particularly fascinated with this one
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture.
Christophe mentioned patterns interesting for programming too (as they
are general design patterns).

While I share, to a degree, the concerns Christophe mentioned,
such as peak oil, overpopulation, and pollution/climate change,
I am also concerned when I see statements to the effect that
computers should be abandoned because they are contributing
to the annihilation of the planet.

I'm similarly concerned when I see language on the Permaculture
page like, "Earthcare - recognising that Earth is the source of
all life (and is possibly itself a living entity - see Gaia
theory), that Earth is our valuable home, and that we are a part
of Earth, not apart from it."

My concern is that the facts about the impending demise of all
life on this planet are not being faced squarely.

A billion years may seem like a long way off, but consider the
numbers:

- Earth's current age estimated 4.7 billion years
- Evidence of life on earth 3.6-3.7 billion years ago
- Years Earth will still be in habitable zone due to
solar expansion: about 1 billion years

If life has been around on Earth for about 3.6 billion years,
and only has 1 billion left to go, then we are at about the
78% mark. In geologic time, the possibility of life on this
planet is nearly 4/5ths over.

This does not mean that I'm anti-conservation. The part of
the Earthcare ethic that I do agree with is that Earth is our
valuable home. For now.

But i don't find romantic notions about saving the planet
from annihilation to be helpful.

To me, the question is better framed in terms of how long
homo sapiens are planning to be around. Less than a billion
years? Or more than a billion years?

If less, well, then we can solve ALL of the problems
mentioned by Christophe in one generation. Stop having kids.
But that still won't save the planet from annihilation.

If we're planning to be around more than a billion years,
then at some point we'll be deciding which (remaining)
species to bring with us as we colonize the galaxy.

In the meantime, I agree there are strong indicators we
need to become better custodians of our planet's environment
and resources than we have been recently. Or we won't last
long enough to build the space ships.




Regards,

Bill

 

[Juan Zanos]

Hello Fellow Humans,

I want to keep this short, but I could write a
book if I wanted to. I am the author of DRP
a relatively unpopular and decaying GEM.

I am not a very frequent poster to the list
and not a particularly vocal member of the
community. I have however been enjoying Ruby
for the past 8 years of my life. In fact I
would call Ruby one of the loves of my life.

I am writing today to say my goodbyes to Ruby
but also to computers and everything else which
we know is destroying our planet, yet which we
continue doing in our denial and madness towards
inevitable annihilation.

This is not a suicide letter, I am going to study
permaculture which I think is one of the few chances
we still have. I am going to try to make a small dint,
but it is only in mass that we will succeed. This is
the endgame.

Some of you will have a very strong and angry reaction
to this email. Please try to reflect on why you might be
quite so angry.

In any case, please take my word that this is
a sincere and heartfelt farewell. If any of you
who are watching the world unfold and are experiencing
similar feelings, or are starting to feel cracks in
your shells, please feel free to contact me privately,
and I will be glad to speak with you. I am not a
psychotherapist but I may have something to contribute,
besides we have Ruby at least in common.

Goodbye Ruby my Dear,
Christophe

I appreciate the sentiment. But if I wrote less Ruby I'd probably
drive more.
Thanks in part to Ruby I rarely even need to commute. Maybe Ruby loves
the Earth.

 

[Leo]

Thanks in part to Ruby I rarely even need to commute.

Just because the Internet doesn't move, doesn't mean its maintenance
doesn't require energy.

 

[Robert Dober]

Just because the Internet doesn't move, doesn't mean its maintenance
doesn't require energy.

We really should be aware of that I agree, maybe I should not have
posted , maybe we should know how much a post pollutes, etc.etc.?
R.