4 ms·

Whenever I see an easter island head, I can't help but draw parallels between our global civilization and theirs. The eastern islanders consisted of around a d

Whenever I see an easter island head, I can't help but draw parallels between our global civilization and theirs. The eastern islanders consisted of around a dozen tribes, each competing for resources with others. It's thought that all of these statues were put up in a race by chieftains, competing with one another to put up the biggest, most refined and the best statue. I wouldn't be surprised if they competed in their standards of life too. ("I eat X for breakfast, lunch and dinner!") I certainly wouldn't be surprised by the fact that they might have had political factions, special interests and a life rife with complicated political maneuvering. (it was certainly in the short term interests of statue makers to be against conservation and egg chieftains on) After all we're the same species and they were just like us. However what they failed to realize was the inescapable fact that they were living on a small piece of land in the middle of a vast ocean. Their seemingly inexhaustible resources were pitiful by any standards. As time wore on and their population boomed, a point came when all of these factors came together. Their squandering of resources combined with their unsustainable way of life for a large population faced off with their limited resources, and the result was ugly. Their entire civilization collapsed. Most of the population was lost to famine. Their civilization descended to cannibalism to survive. This degraded civilization became the perfect breeding ground for disease and even more people died. This cycle went on and on until their entire civilization was wiped out and the entire population nearly eradicated. I shudder to think what it must have been like to live in this world. It must have been a nightmare. Today like the eastern islanders with their statues, we keep on building taller and taller structures, better and more lethal weapons, and crazier systems. We compete with one another for status symbols at personal, regional and national levels. Today we are just as isolated on this tiny blue ball, with a finite amount of resources, a booming population, combined with special interests and huge egos. Like the eastern islanders we have nowhere to go...

gbog 15y ago
Ok, nice prose of your, but the tiny blue ball thing is bullshit. Any plane on window seat will show you that the Earth is enormous and empty for most it's parts, even in China. Don't think I advocate more cars and buildings. It's just that the tiny crowded ball argument is wrong, and dangerous, as it can be used to build a nasty antihumanism.
- baq 15y ago
  ask yourself how much land is required to support a single human for a year. mostly empty is how it must be, otherwise we've got problems.
- grannyg00se 15y ago
  "A small amount of resources" does not necessarily have direct correlation with square footage. Even if every part of the earth aside from Europe and NA were empty, there would still be a serious issue with respect to resource consumption.
- GeneTraylor 15y ago
  >>> nice prose of your <<< Thank you, but my prose is far from being nice. You should see my boss with a red pen around my prose. :-) >>>but the tiny blue ball thing is bullshit<<< Carl Sagan has another take on the matter. :-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M >>>Any plane on window seat will show you that the Earth is enormous and empty for most it's parts, even in China. Don't think I advocate more cars and buildings. It's just that the tiny crowded ball argument is wrong, and dangerous, as it can be used to build a nasty antihumanism.<<< I would argue that treating our resources as essentially endless because of the sheer size as compared to the individual fails to take into account that there are now 7 Billion people on this earth. Each and every one of them deserves a better life, they deserve to be able to have a luxurious bath, flush toilets with water, wash hands with water, eat processed foods which take a lot of water to make, wash their cars with water, drink pure water and at the end of the day consume around 315 litres of it. Of course, today not everyone lives like that except for wealthy countries (the statistic is based upon the US) but I think everyone wants a standard of life like that. If somehow, tomorrow 7 billion people started consuming water like that then we would drink up 2 205 000 000 000 litres of fresh water in a day, but the total possible water supply we can access (and this includes the glaciers) is only 3.5 × 10^19 litres... That's quite an easy way to run out of water. Now if you do the same with energy, with waste, with consumption and so on what you have is a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. The way we live today just can't last. I think that you can solve this problem using technology, but its roots lie deep in our societies. What's frightening over here is that there is no way out for us. Unlike our ancestors we simply can't burn and move on. The earth is where we have to make our stand. I really think that it's important for people to start taking the gravity of the situation seriously. We need solutions, and we need them fast. Our time is running out. I think that there is no greater form of humanism than realizing that all of these people need to be saved from such an horrible end and devoting your entire life to creating a better future.
rsanheim 15y ago
Yes. Read _Collapse_.
- GeneTraylor 15y ago
  Now I certainly plan to. Thank you.
spindritf 15y ago
That's a really captivating story with a strong message but it's far from obvious whether it happened, and whether it happened like you describe: http://www.marklynas.org/2011/09/the-myth-of-easter-islands-ecocide/ http://www.marklynas.org/2011/09/the-myth-of-easter-islands-... Especially the claims of cannibalism seem a little far fetched.
- GeneTraylor 15y ago
  I might be wrong, but I'm sure I read a detailed discussion somewhere about how they analyzed burial pits and found large amounts of cuts as if the flesh had been flayed and so on. Apparently they did detailed DNA analysis and even found human bone fragments in waste pits. I can't seem to find that discussion online right now. However I did find a rebuttal by Jared Diamond on the same site to this argument; http://www.marklynas.org/2011/09/the-myths-of-easter-island-jared-diamond-responds/ http://www.marklynas.org/2011/09/the-myths-of-easter-island-... On a side note I think that it is uncomfortable for us to think about the demise of everything we cherish in this way, and that's why we tend to shy away from discussing this more openly and rigorously. It's interesting to see how the blog post I cited ended with the same note; >>>The islanders did inadvertently destroy the environmental underpinnings of their society. They did so, not because they were especially evil or deprived of foresight, but because they were ordinary people, living in a fragile environment, and subject to the usual human problems of clashes between group interests, clashes between individual and group interests, selfishness, and limited ability to predict the future. Does that remind you of any problems that we ourselves face today? That’s why we find Easter’s story so gripping, and why it may offer us lessons. You’ll find good coverage in Bahn’s and Flenley’s new book.<<<
  - spindritf 15y ago
    That's the response from Jared Diamond who wrote a book (mentioned in the comments below: "Collapse") with pretty much the same story as yours, of course it will end with a similar conclusion.
    - GeneTraylor 15y ago
naz 15y ago
Nice writeup but it's easter, not eastern. If anything it's western.
- GeneTraylor 15y ago
  Sorry I have dyslexia, I tend to get muddled up like that sometimes.
Daniel_Newby 15y ago
> However what they failed to realize was the inescapable fact that they were living on a small piece of land in the middle of a vast ocean. Their first problem was that they and their palm trees were too big for the island. A big body size means a low population count, and that means that range of random fluctuations overlaps with zero: extinction. This is why island species evolve towards dwarfism: the Flores "hobbits", dwarf elephants, etc. Like many species that are seeded onto an island, they died out before they could evolve to meet the challenges. The second problem is that humans are not built for a stable, hospitable situation. Our ability to adapt to change atrophies, so that an emergency becomes a catastrophe. (Look up "water empire".) We are built for constant warfare, plagues, droughts, floods, and so forth. > I shudder to think what it must have been like to live in this world. About like the sad story of Rhodesia, renamed Zimbabwe and destroyed as an exercise in social justice. > Like the eastern islanders we have nowhere to go... If we build big enough, soon enough, we get the inner solar system, whose resources make our current civilization look like a molecule of water in an ocean. Then we can take the gas giants as an afterthought, whose resources make the inner solar system look like a molecule of water in an ocean. Then we get the galaxy.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]

gbog 15y ago

Ok, nice prose of your, but the tiny blue ball thing is bullshit. Any plane on window seat will show you that the Earth is enormous and empty for most it's parts, even in China. Don't think I advocate more cars and buildings. It's just that the tiny crowded ball argument is wrong, and dangerous, as it can be used to build a nasty antihumanism.

baq 15y ago
ask yourself how much land is required to support a single human for a year. mostly empty is how it must be, otherwise we've got problems.
grannyg00se 15y ago
"A small amount of resources" does not necessarily have direct correlation with square footage. Even if every part of the earth aside from Europe and NA were empty, there would still be a serious issue with respect to resource consumption.
GeneTraylor 15y ago
>>> nice prose of your <<< Thank you, but my prose is far from being nice. You should see my boss with a red pen around my prose. :-) >>>but the tiny blue ball thing is bullshit<<< Carl Sagan has another take on the matter. :-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M >>>Any plane on window seat will show you that the Earth is enormous and empty for most it's parts, even in China. Don't think I advocate more cars and buildings. It's just that the tiny crowded ball argument is wrong, and dangerous, as it can be used to build a nasty antihumanism.<<< I would argue that treating our resources as essentially endless because of the sheer size as compared to the individual fails to take into account that there are now 7 Billion people on this earth. Each and every one of them deserves a better life, they deserve to be able to have a luxurious bath, flush toilets with water, wash hands with water, eat processed foods which take a lot of water to make, wash their cars with water, drink pure water and at the end of the day consume around 315 litres of it. Of course, today not everyone lives like that except for wealthy countries (the statistic is based upon the US) but I think everyone wants a standard of life like that. If somehow, tomorrow 7 billion people started consuming water like that then we would drink up 2 205 000 000 000 litres of fresh water in a day, but the total possible water supply we can access (and this includes the glaciers) is only 3.5 × 10^19 litres... That's quite an easy way to run out of water. Now if you do the same with energy, with waste, with consumption and so on what you have is a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. The way we live today just can't last. I think that you can solve this problem using technology, but its roots lie deep in our societies. What's frightening over here is that there is no way out for us. Unlike our ancestors we simply can't burn and move on. The earth is where we have to make our stand. I really think that it's important for people to start taking the gravity of the situation seriously. We need solutions, and we need them fast. Our time is running out. I think that there is no greater form of humanism than realizing that all of these people need to be saved from such an horrible end and devoting your entire life to creating a better future.

rsanheim 15y ago

Yes. Read _Collapse_.

GeneTraylor 15y ago
Now I certainly plan to. Thank you.

spindritf 15y ago

That's a really captivating story with a strong message but it's far from obvious whether it happened, and whether it happened like you describe: http://www.marklynas.org/2011/09/the-myth-of-easter-islands-ecocide/ http://www.marklynas.org/2011/09/the-myth-of-easter-islands-... Especially the claims of cannibalism seem a little far fetched.

GeneTraylor 15y ago
I might be wrong, but I'm sure I read a detailed discussion somewhere about how they analyzed burial pits and found large amounts of cuts as if the flesh had been flayed and so on. Apparently they did detailed DNA analysis and even found human bone fragments in waste pits. I can't seem to find that discussion online right now. However I did find a rebuttal by Jared Diamond on the same site to this argument; http://www.marklynas.org/2011/09/the-myths-of-easter-island-jared-diamond-responds/ http://www.marklynas.org/2011/09/the-myths-of-easter-island-... On a side note I think that it is uncomfortable for us to think about the demise of everything we cherish in this way, and that's why we tend to shy away from discussing this more openly and rigorously. It's interesting to see how the blog post I cited ended with the same note; >>>The islanders did inadvertently destroy the environmental underpinnings of their society. They did so, not because they were especially evil or deprived of foresight, but because they were ordinary people, living in a fragile environment, and subject to the usual human problems of clashes between group interests, clashes between individual and group interests, selfishness, and limited ability to predict the future. Does that remind you of any problems that we ourselves face today? That’s why we find Easter’s story so gripping, and why it may offer us lessons. You’ll find good coverage in Bahn’s and Flenley’s new book.<<<
- spindritf 15y ago
  That's the response from Jared Diamond who wrote a book (mentioned in the comments below: "Collapse") with pretty much the same story as yours, of course it will end with a similar conclusion.
  - GeneTraylor 15y ago

naz 15y ago

Nice writeup but it's easter, not eastern. If anything it's western.

GeneTraylor 15y ago
Sorry I have dyslexia, I tend to get muddled up like that sometimes.

Daniel_Newby 15y ago

> However what they failed to realize was the inescapable fact that they were living on a small piece of land in the middle of a vast ocean. Their first problem was that they and their palm trees were too big for the island. A big body size means a low population count, and that means that range of random fluctuations overlaps with zero: extinction. This is why island species evolve towards dwarfism: the Flores "hobbits", dwarf elephants, etc. Like many species that are seeded onto an island, they died out before they could evolve to meet the challenges. The second problem is that humans are not built for a stable, hospitable situation. Our ability to adapt to change atrophies, so that an emergency becomes a catastrophe. (Look up "water empire".) We are built for constant warfare, plagues, droughts, floods, and so forth. > I shudder to think what it must have been like to live in this world. About like the sad story of Rhodesia, renamed Zimbabwe and destroyed as an exercise in social justice. > Like the eastern islanders we have nowhere to go... If we build big enough, soon enough, we get the inner solar system, whose resources make our current civilization look like a molecule of water in an ocean. Then we can take the gas giants as an afterthought, whose resources make the inner solar system look like a molecule of water in an ocean. Then we get the galaxy.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]