13 March 2014

Peacemeal social engineering...


It is obvious that our modern world has been influenced in various ways by the horrors of WW II. It was the horrors of belligerence on a global scale that forced entire generations into a unique kaleidoscope of behaviours. The hypothesis I am generating is only focused on one perceived aspect.

It goes like this:
  • A militarised generation made a specific skills set available in most developed nations.
  • One of these skills is the ability to execute large scale initiatives. 
  • Some of these skills include:
  • The ability to mobelise resources almost without any economic restraints i.e. Everybody was happy to work with "IOU" promissory notes.
  • Labour and business had a common goal. 
  • Focused skills training was successful due to personal commitment to a greater cause
  • Dissipline was universally accepted as a matter of life and death. 
  • Manufacturing safety and quality were paramount
  • Sacrifice was a way of life
  • Health and environment was considered acceptable sacrifices
  • Robust and (extremely) pragmatic engineering designs were the norm.
  • Success at any cost was the prevailing mindset. 
This and many other behaviours were the modus of operation.

My conclusion is therefore that any modern approach to solving energy and environmental issues have to free itself from the evil legacy and try to addopt a progressive approach that has to be more successful than past successes. Unfortunately the harder it is to find and mobilise successful behaviours and skills, the more we tend to believe one of two things 

  1. the past has the key to the future, or
  2. the past must be avoided at all cost
I propose an approach that is different from these two "historicist" options, and it has been theorised byKarl Popper in "The open society and its enemies" (It's a free book from arguably the best philosopher of science from the 20th century) 

This excerpt introduce his proposed method of " peacemeal social engineering"
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That is why I am interested to find enough scientific and rational support for the a world that have abundant clean enery available for any future human activity.  Not as a panacea but simply because it is something we can do that has merit. 

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