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December 02, 2004
this is why we can't have nice things
This morning over breakfast my son hit me with an interesting idea. I am often amazed at how children come up with things out of the blue. He said, "Dad, I've noticed that whenever mankind creates something new, he destroys something. I said, "hmmm, that's interesting. Give me an example." He said, well, back in the stone age, when they wanted to make spears, they first had to cut down trees to get the wood. Also, when they made their spearheads and axes out of flint, they had to chop away at it."
I mused for a second, and thought about the fact that, yes, whenever we create something, we must disturb, destroy and remove some natural resource to use as tools or as raw material. The stones of the great pyramids had to be quarried up out of the earth. We create arable land by damming and diverting rivers.
Everybody destroys. This goes for capitalists wearing alligator skin boots, and vegans who hold up their hemp pants with vinyl belts. Whether you're growing soy beans or poppies, you've got to first clear the land of trees and stones, and then break up the soil with a tiller. Whether you get your electricity from a coal-burning power plant, or you burn candles made from wax you pillaged from some bees, you've got to destroy, break, disrupt, and confiscate to make it happen. We can't have nice things until we destroy some stuff.
Have a nice day.
Posted by joel at December 2, 2004 11:35 AM
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Comments
So no presents under the tree for little Joey this year?
Posted by: Diva Drip at December 2, 2004 11:17 PM
There absolutely will be. I'll destroy some stuff or pay someone else to destroy some stuff. The best gifts encourage creativity, of course, because they teach our children how to destroy stuff. It's the gift that keeps on giving!
Posted by: Joel at December 3, 2004 10:16 AM
Stomping out ignorance is destructive behavior on the part of teacher or parent. Hopefully ensuing generations will learn and repeat such behavior. Keep on stomping.
Posted by: dabuheebly at December 3, 2004 02:24 PM
Ah, your son has hit on the core concept of sustainability - figuring out ways of breaking the earth only as fast as it can fix itself.
The trick is to destroy less, or to get more value for what you've destroyed. Take vegitarians. Vegitarians use about 1/10 the amount of land and 1/1000 the amount of water to produce thier food. In performing energy analysis for companies interested in sustainable systems, sometimes embodied energy estimates are included - how much energy it takes to build a building. A haybale-mud structure may not only destroy less resources (just hay and mud, versus strip mining for iron ore or cement), but will use much less energy in doing so, which goes back to oil resources that can never be put back into the ground.
Posted by: Worldgineer at December 6, 2004 02:07 PM
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