These definitions are from Overshoot: The
Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change by William J. Catton, Jr.. Do not
read this book if your dream in life is to sit on as much money as Billy Boy
Gates #3. There is only need in the world for one like he. Besides, the Mexicans
have overcharged themselves and everybody else to bring up Carlos Slim&Trim,
"El Nuevo Numero Uno."
Age of Exuberance: the centuries of growth and progress that
followed the sudden enlargement of habitat available to Europeans as a result of
voyages of discovery; a period of expansion when a species takes exuberant
advantage of the abundant opportunities in a eminently suitable but previously
inaccessible habitat. [Imagine a roe and a buck deer placed
upon an island covered with forage and where there are no predators. They will
happily be fat and multiply as fast as they can. That was what it was like when
the Europeans came from over the sea to the new world, the Americas. Their
superior weapons and method of social organization allowed them to largely
ignore the fact that the Indians were already there.]
Ecological Exuberance: the lavish use of resources by members of a
freely expanding population who are, at a given time, significantly fewer in
number than the maximum permitted by the carrying capacity of their
habitat. [The catfish are jumping, the corn is high; your
daddy's rich and your mammy's good lookin'.]
Culture of Exuberance: the total complex of beliefs and practices
associated with the opportunities for expansive life in the Age of Exuberance; a
culture founded upon the myth of limitlessness. [The American
Dream; there will always be more tomorrow of that which we now perceive as
wealth than there is today, no matter how many more people there
are.]
Myth of Limitlessness: the belief (more implicit than explicit,
perhaps) that the world's resources are sufficient to support any conceivable
human population engaged in any conceivable way of life for any conceivable
duration; derivatively, the belief either that a given resource is inexhaustible
or that substitutes can always be found. [The belief that
there is enough material and energy for everybody on the Earth to have a car,
and a house with three garages, that it's just a matter of working for it. That
way, driving a guzzler has absolutely nothing to do with somebody else's
poverty.]
Cornucopian Paradigm: a view of past and future human progress
that disregards the carrying capacity concept, pays no attention to the
finiteness of the world or to differences between takeover and drawdown, and
accepts uncritically the myth of limitlessness. [This is the
way TV urges most people to think, because the big boys are always after more
money, no matter what. There will never be too many people or gasoline guzzlers,
too much carbon dioxide, or enough stuff to spend money on.]
Cosmeticism: faith that relatively
superficial adjustments in our activities will keep the New World new and will
perpetuate the Age of Exuberance.[Thinking that nuclear and
wind power, smaller cars,
and better
light bulbs will allow everything to just keep on truckin' the way it
is.]
Ostrichism: obstinately persistent belief in the myth of
limitlessness; the unrealistic supposition that nothing basic has changed;
refusal to face facts. [Thinking that it doesn't matter if
species are increasingly going extinct, the climate getting worse, the poor more
desperate, the people more numerous, the moneyed increasingly blind and isolated
swamped in their things and power —that is the way the world has always been and
always shall be.]
Realism: recognition that the Age of Exuberance is over and that
overpopulation and resource depletion must inexorably change human organization
and human behavior. [Realizing that the only thing that is
going to get us to the other shore beyond the darkness is a great
change.]
Paradigm: an underlying shared idea of the fundamental nature of
whatever it is that a collectivity of minds seeks to understand: an idea that
guides inquiry and thought by defining what seems real, how things are presumed
to work, and how additional facts about this reality and these processes may
presumably be obtained. [The habit of understanding the world
that lies even deeper than our awareness. Now, it is belief in the fairness of
money and its ability to lead us into the future.]
Ecological Paradigm: in general, a view of the web of life that
recognizes a common chemical basis for all types of organisms (including man),
emphasizes the dependence of all life processes upon flows of energy and
exchanges of chemical substance between organism and environment, and expects
living forms inevitably to have effects upon each other by these exchanges; in
this book, rejection of the notion of human exemption for ecological principles
and affirmation of the view that ecological concepts are essential for
understanding human experience. [A way of understanding the
world that is only in its beginning; in which we understand our actions upon the
ecological systems to have global consequence and our destiny becomes that of a
species dependent upon our relations with one another and the biosphere, rather
than this current concept fostered by our economic system of isolated
individuals, each getting his own.]
Human Exemptionalism: the notion that human beings are so
fundamentally unlike other living creatures that principles of ecology (and
perhaps many of the principles of other branches of biology, too) are
inapplicable to us. [Thinking that the possession of
consciousness somehow exempts us from the cycles and consequences of nature,
such as being able to overpopulate our planet beyond its long term capacity to
support us.]
Drawdown Method of Extending Carrying Capacity: an inherently
temporary expedient by which life opportunities for a species are temporarily
increased by extracting from the environment for use by that species some
significant fraction of an accumulated resource that is not being replaced as
fast as it is drawn down. [Creating the possibility for more
people to be alive by exhausting resources faster than they are being
replaced.]
Detritus Ecosystem: an ecosystem in which detritivores play a major
part. As organic detritus accumulates in a given habitat, there is a temporary
increase in carrying capacity for detritus consumers. Insofar as these are
capable of increasing much faster that the detritus accumulates, however, their
introduction to the community after detritus has already accumulated, or their
release from some constraint that had earlier held back their use of the
accumulation, tends to result in a cycle of bloom and crash. They irrupt and
then as the detritus supply is exhausted, they die off. [Species can evolve that learn to feast off of accumulated dead
remains, increase their exhaustion of that stored energy rapidly while it
exists, run into the peak, and then die off.]
Detritovore: an organism that subsists by consuming detritus; by
extension, any organism that uses the accumulated remains of long-dead
organisms, including industrial human communities which are "detritovorous"
insofar as they depend on massive consumption of the transformed organic remains
from the Carboniferous period known as fossil fuels. [We are
living off of the supply of dinosaur blood which can only run out because they
are no longer walking the Earth, as well as off the other hydrocarbons, all of
which are accumulations of dead organic matter.]
Takeover Method of Extending Carrying Capacity: increasing
opportunities for one species by reducing opportunities for competing species.
[Creating the possibility for more people to be alive by
extinguishing other species.]
Carrying Capacity: the maximum
population of a given species which a particular habitat can support
indefinitely (under specified technology and organization in the case of the
human species. [In the case at the beginning of the deer, if
there was some way that they could learn to stop increasing their population at
a number where the forage grew back as quickly as it was being eaten, then they
would have a lifestyle in harmony with the environment, capable of continuing
into the future without end. That number would be the carrying capacity of the
island. For humans, the carrying capacity can be enlarged within limits with
changes in technology and organization. What is important is to see the limits
before one runs into them like a brick wall, and to realize which of the two
ways of change best promises to fulfill any need to adapt —technology has been
given the credit for everything, but it has been upon the back of the dinosaurs.
If technology can no longer carry the ball then we are forced toward a different
organization, and in all probability, a much smaller population.]
Phantom Carrying Capacity: illusory or extremely precarious
capacity of an environment to support a life form or a way of life; that portion
of a population that cannot be permanently supported when temporarily available
resources become unavailable. [The millions and millions of
houses that have been built around the idea of always having automobiles, and
which will be almost worthless without them.]
Redundancy Anxiety: a morbid apprehension arising from population
pressure, based on the more or less conscious realization that if there is an
excess of population in relation to carrying capacity, the population may
include oneself, not just others. [Realizing that if there are
too many people in the world, then one's own goose might be
cooked.]
Carrying Capacity Deficit, Overshoot:
the condition wherein the permanent ability of a given habitat to support a
given form of life is less than the quantity of that form already in
existence. [The deer multiply beyond the number where the
forage can grow back. In their hunger they devour it down to the roots where it
grows back even more slowly, and almost all the deer then die off. This happened
at St. Matthew Island. It also happened with people at Easter Island.
The way to understand overshoot in terms of human being
is to give up for a minute the fantasy that there is nothing that science cannot
do. Look around at the degree to which our society is based upon the current
supply of dinosaur blood, and imagine that supply declining every year after
year from now until forever. Then, reflect upon the attitudes that so many
people have and that are so encouraged by the profit seekers: "I've got the
money to buy an SUV and to fill the gas tank, and if that's what I want to do
that's what I'm going to do";"If they don't have enough money to have a life,
it's because they are either lazy or their government is rotten";"If the world
is going to run out of oil, then I had better hurry up and use what I can while
it's still here";"We can't let jobs and growth be taken away to save some silly
endangered specie";"It is God's Will that brings children into the world";"The
End of the World is coming and we at least are going to go to heaven, so why
worry?" Even if somehow the reality of dinosaur blood exhaustion does not leave
us beyond the capacity of the Earth to sustain us, our attitudes surely will.
This is overshoot.]
Diachronic Competition: a relationship between generations in
which living organisms satisfy their wants at the expense of their
descendants.[This is where people don't know what to do with
themselves other than want what the TV pushes them toward, such as retiring on
golf curses in the desert watered with drinking water. They have to enjoy now
the money they've got, regardless of the trashed out world that they leave
behind.]
Source: www.greatchange.org Back
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