![]() ![]() The notion of the Sorcerer has more in common with our perceptions of reality than science or psychology can ever convey. Isn't that just a little bit far-fetched? Muir: You describe "a Sorcerer within" as a mastermind of the cravings behind The Seven Deadly Sins. My aim has been to identify contexts and probabilities that shape the answers. Vallentyne: My book poses these questions, but does not presume to answer them. Muir: Does our global technological society have to crash? Isn't it possible that human society will ignore your work? Vallentyne: Nobody - except humanitarians, environmentalists, most women and all children. Muir: If destruction takes place in 500 to 1000 years, who cares? Muir: What do you have to say to the eternal optimist and the resigned pessimist? ![]() Biospheric feedback is here now and increasing! Differences in time scales create the problem! Muir: What makes you think that we may be on the brink of globally disastrous feedback from the Biosphere? I do not think that you are even close to evaluating the influence of different time scales in your analysis. Malthus, it seems, is not yet entirely dead. Vallentyne: Possibly, but I have added three new dimensions to the discussion: (1) a runaway cycle of intertwined growth of technology and population, jointly (2) a change of context from an era of "upward causation" in which exponential growth is normal, to an era of "downward causation" in which continued growth is suicidal and (3) the psychological-behavioral nature of the problem in both mice and humans. Muir: Yet another global treatise on this subject in addition to Malthus, The Club of Rome, and Global 2000? Don't you think the public and political reaction will be to shrug and move on? The marketplace accelerates the runaway cycle by feeding human desires rather than limiting human growth. ![]() It is between the behavior of mice and humans when both are driven to excesses by a runaway cycle of growth of technology and population. Vallentyne: My comparison is not between men and mice. What about human innovation and invention? Men are not mice! You seem to dismiss the "magic of the marketplace". Vallentyne, you claim that the global course of "Human Utopia" since the 14th century has been following the 4½ year march to extinction of a mouse colony provided with everything that mice could want. Vallentyne on "Tragedy in Mouse Utopia: The Sorcerer Lurks Within" 2006. ![]() Johnny Biosphere: "This book is remedial reading fom some ecologists, most employees of enviornmental protection agencies, and most forward looking businessmen and politicians."Įconomist Tom Muir interviews ecologist J.R. Political, spiritual and behavioral opportunities are identified that could be overlooked, misinterpreted or ignored in steering a course toward coevolution of humanity and the Biosphere. Part IV describes how the Sorcerer works and how to control his destructive traits. As the Sorcerer's apprentices, we have been preparing the ground for a crisis of crises beyond human control. How an inner life-force symbolized as "the Sorcerer" causes populations to self-destruct by satisfying internal desires beyond their useful times. Part III shows how the runaway growth of technology and population is creating havoc in our species and the Biosphere. Part II describes our dependence on the Biosphere. Part I compares the suicidal effects of runaway growth in Mouse Utopia to a similar sequence of events in Human Utopia. This book examines whether a similar fate could be in store for Human Utopia. Deprived of motherly love early in life, and denied access to social roles later in life, young mice grew up without knowing how to behave as mice. Over a 4½ year period the population exploded into a colony of 2200 mice, and then slowly and inexorably declined to extinction. Calhoun, American behavioral ecologist, introduced eight mice into a technologically designed walled enclosure that fulfilled all the wants and needs of mice except migration in and out. ![]()
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