RE: wow - is a "shadow" politician still a politician?

["Chris Blask" <chris () loftyperch com>]

Even though our moderator nevers allows my posts, I'll pitch this in...
 
Hi folks!
 
While I was raised on Colorado Rocky Mountain High 60s liberalism - looking forward to the day I could buy some land in 
the mountains and bury the deed ("Giving the land back to nature!") - longer and deeper thought on how to accomplish 
the whole Save The World thing has lead me to the opposite conclusion:  mankind needs to take complete responsiblity 
for running the ecology if we want to save it.  The naive psuedo-religious view that the ecosphere is some conscious 
being that knowingly regulates itself is so much mystical malarkey, and the righteous fervor of the self-appointed 
ecowarriors is in no way ethically superior to the zealotry of any other type of hypnotic ditto-heading sect.
 
I live in the woods on a lake: the deer, otter, bears, moose, beavers are my neighbors and a daily part of my family's 
life.  With worrisome regularity I see privileged inner-city vegan kids come up armed with all the real-world 
experience of the latest wave of Disney cartoons ("animals that eat plants are Good and deserve to live - animals that 
eat meat are Bad, and deserve to starve to death").  These kids inevitably wax poetic about  the horror of a deer being 
shot by a hunter and I find myself attempting to inform them about the realities of deer lifestyles - that they are 
born, sometimes survive to adulthood and inevitably fill the role of food source after slowly dying of starvation when 
they can no longer feed themselves (or while being torn to pieces by a pack of wolves).  That Bambi's dad did not 
really come to back Make him a Man (oops!  Man and men are bad, so that must have been a scripting mistake...), but 
unlike a human Bambi's dad would abandon him and fight to expel him from the herd.
 
In the West we have developed this insolated ideal that if it weren't for humans the world would be a garden of Eden - 
that all we need to do is stop doing everything and the Glory of Nature will reassert itself.
 
Pampered, delusional, suicidal Me Too groupthink...
 
The Glory of Nature is for all things to live and die.  For this particular ecosphere and all in it to perish in the 
flash of a comet strike or the slow roasting of the planet as our star expands.  The *only* natural force that can make 
any positive change to the short or long term survival of one or all of our genetic kin is Human Intent.
 
We need to get past the wanking self-gratification of public auto-flagellation and take responsibility for figuring out 
how to save the world.  In my opinion this includes the current model of generating resources and awareness by 
regulating hunting and fishing (neither of which I engage in [not ADD-compatible activities...;]), as Brian aptly 
describes **.  It may include activities that are not to our liking, but a responsible caretaker measures his success 
not in the pleasure of the moment but in the review of decades of dedication.
 
If saving the Redwoods meant cutting down all the large trees *** we should cut the damn things down.  If saving the 
seals means killing a thousand seal pups then we should get out the clubs.  If saving the planetary ecosystem means 
wiping out a dozen species of cute mammals in the process then we need to be all grown up and take the hard job of 
making that decision.
 
Were we to take the current affluent western liberal tack forever I would expect us to still be patting each other on 
the back for being so enlightened as we fly the ecosystem into a brick wall.  Thankfully, I have a huge amount of faith 
in the aggregate effects of individual human intelligence and character and believe we are working through our current 
social shallowness via debates just like this one (oddly enough...) .

-cheers!
 
-chris "don't have a gun but would die for your right to shoot me with one" blask
 
** A perfect example is the case of the Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep.  With a population of 36 in Colorado when I was a 
kid after disease spread via feces, a hunting license was issued (amongst great outcry) and the survivors were made to 
move about, therefore stopping the disease.  Today Bighorn Sheep are listed as "lower risk" and Colorado has a healthy 
population.
 
*** I'm making an extreme argument, not suggesting these are necessarily likely scenarios
________________________________

From: funsec-bounces () linuxbox org on behalf of Drsolly
Sent: Wed 8/29/2007 9:41 AM
To: Brian Loe
Cc: funsec
Subject: Re: [funsec] wow - is a "shadow" politician still a politician?



> I'm not sure where this fits in the discussion but, yeah, that SOUNDS
> like a ridiculous program. The article did not read all that unbiased
> so I have to reserve judgment to some degree - as I do with any news
> story.
>
> On the other hand, the saving of several species of migratory birds
> has come by way Ducks Unlimited. Further, in the US, EVERY TIME you
> buy anything to do with hunting or shooting (to include ammo and guns)
> you have contributed to the care of our parks and conservation
> departments. If everyone in the country stopped buying hunting and
> fishing stuffs tomorrow they would have to close our national parks.

Huh. So there's no other way that this could be financed.

> Never mind the arguments any government conservation agent will give
> you about bettering the herds of wildlife and creating habitat -
> without hunting there wouldn't be a conservation department in your
> state, AND you'd wipe out the populations of several large game
> species.

This sounds *so* like the arguments used by foxhunters to defend their
fun of chasing a small brown fox using a huge pack of dogs and cavalry.

I expect the Spanish use the same arguments about bullfighting, and the
bear-baiters, cockfighters and dogfighters were likely the same.

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