Elliot Rodger, 22, was mightily miffed, because he "couldn't get no respect" during his assorted forays onto the UC- Santa Barbara Campus, including the town of Isla Vista. Worse, there were "the blonde girls" who rejected his advances in favor of the "big brutes who walked on the beaches"- and in his ego-inflated mind this merited "punishment". In a blathering 140 page manifesto this little scion of privilege (his father was an assistant director for 'The Hunger Games') wrote:
"All of my suffering on this world has been at the hands of humanity, particularly women. It has made me realize how brutal and twisted humanity is as a species."
He then went on to bawl and whine about how his life "has been a dark story of sadness, anger and hatred. It is a story of war against unjust cruelty."
A war against unjust cruelty? Are you kidding me? If he wanted to make war against unjust cruelty he could have pulled his head out of his ass and helped feed the homeless, or maybe helped organize protests on the growing inequality in this country thanks to the Neoliberal rats. Instead, he vowed a "day of retribution" writing:
"On the day before the 'day of retribution' I will start the first phase of my vengeance, Silently killing as many people as I can around Isla Vista by luring them into my apartment through trickery and violence."
And the little miscreant followed it up by first cowardly knifing his three apartment roommates then going outside on a killing spree including opening fire on three women near the Alpha Phi sorority house, killing two of them, and firing on others from inside his BMW. All in all the aggrieved punk left six dead and wounded five others before offing himself.
Law enforcement and others are now going through his writings trying to make sense of them - but it's likely a lost cause. When unjustified grievance and hyperbolic victimhood trumps reason, reason exits and all that's left is unjustified rant and BS. Clips of his video babble published in assorted papers over the weekend disclose one deluded, sick puppy. At one point he whines how "the last eight years of my life I've been forced to endure an existence of loneliness and rejection and unfulfilled desires all because girls have never been attracted to me. Girls gave their affection and love to other men, never to me."
Hmmmmm....did he ever try to make himself loveable? But, of course, an entitled twerp wouldn't see it that way. He'd only perceive that he's the son of some big shot so merits respect and love without effort. He can be whatever he wants and demand love and affection but need not be loveable or even remotely likeable.. But alas, reality doesn't work that way. The females of our species - most of them - have especially canny emotional radar and are able to detect selfish, self-involved twerps from a literal block away. Of course, sometimes they're temporarily blinded and let the exterior 'package' obscure the loser inside and pay the price later, but the choice remains theirs and no one coerces them into desiring or loving someone they have no wish to.
Rodger's mistake was in demanding the women he encountered forego any choice and instantly kowtow to him. In other words, he fancied himself a demigod, worthy of demigod-style worship - not normal human affection. He was also saddled with a monumental inferiority complex because the blonde women he fancied, desired "beach brutes" instead. He was prepared again to deny them their choice on the basis of what he - the all-seeing demigod- deemed to be infatuation with the wrong types. He, of course, was the only "right type" for them.
But his bellyaching about girls not being attracted to him really takes the cake:
"You girls have never been attracted to me. I don't know why you girls aren't attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it."
Again, note the grandiosity and level of self-delusion. He's all important so all those who don't fall on their faces in front of him have to pay the price. A demigod for sure.
Had the little twerp invested more time in his books, he'd likely not have come to such a sorry end, or ended the lives of others. Instead of pursuing girls who had no interest in him he'd have done better to do some serious exploration toward self-awareness, or better, escaped his self-imprisonment by joining organizations specifically to help others. He could have joined Alpha Pi Omega - the national service fraternity. Instead of seeking to have others kowtow to his needs he ought to have sought to attend to others' needs.
He also had the wrong idea about college, writing "college is the time when everyone experiences those things such as sex and fun and pleasure."
Uh, no, that's not what college is all about. College is about testing the extent of one's intellectual and emotional growth not merely wallowing in self-gratification. In other words, if "sex, fun and pleasure" are part of the college experience they occur as coincident with it - during occasional events - not as ends in themselves.
The words of Buddhist philosopher Alan Watts again ring true ('The Wisdom of Uncertainty', p. 131):
"Released from the circle of attempted self-love, the mind of man draws the whole universe into its own unity as a single dewdrop seems to contain the entire sky. This, rather than any mere emotion, is the power and principle of free action and creative morality."
Being worthy of love, then, comes before receiving love from others. To be worthy of love, one must break the bonds of exclusive self-love which corrupts perceptions and is self-limiting. Self-love to the extent of self-worship (such as Rodger evinced) forecloses choice and free action - on the part of the person imprisoned, as well as the objects of his attention - which remain objects and never are seen as persons.
The sad fact is that although Elliot Rodger demanded affection and love from others, he was never capable of giving it himself. Could he have been severely mentally ill? Undoubtedly, and this would explain the self-delusion to the point of murdering in response to feeling "unloved". The other tragic aspect is that though the evidence disclosed a sicko lurking in Santa Barbara, the authorities never searched his apt. If they had they would have turned up his purchased weapons. But like all sociopaths Rodger's smooth demeanor convinced the authorities (who contacted him 3 times) he was no threat.
Now, six people have paid for it, even as the gun lobby continues to turn a blind eye to their own role in this latest tragedy.
Showing posts with label The Hunger Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Hunger Games. Show all posts
Monday, May 26, 2014
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Why Michio Kaku's Future Predictions Are Likely Wrong
Michio Kaku is a physicist who by now has made a number of notable claims to fame, based on popularizations such as his book 'Hyperspace', as well as appearing on assorted network interviews the past few years in association with events such as the BP oil disaster, and the Japanese tsunami and its impact on Fukuyama nuclear plants.
Anyway, in a weekend Wall Street Journal interview (p. A11, March 10-11) Kaku delivers a number of stirring prophecies - for lack of a better term- that boggle the mind. One such prediction: we will have computer chips in everything, from clothing, to furniture, to cars to most appliances .....even pets. The word "computer" will actually become defunct because so much stuff will have computer chips it will no longer be necessary to discriminate one unique object that computes from all else. (Even "DNA chips" will be inside our toilet which can instantly analyze stools and urine to let us know if cancer is lurking.)
The technological power moreover will be so vast by the year 2100, that our grand kids will seem to us like "Greek gods". Almost everyone will also have hand held devices that can translate any language in seconds. One imagines Kaku also foresees stupendous advances in physics, biology, chemistry etc. but he doesn't specify many beyond perhaps discovering the Higgs boson using the current large hadron collider. Perhaps the years of budget cuts have tempered his expectations in the pure science sphere.
(My own take is that if there's one defined advance that we need to achieve, it's being able to knock out or divert a large planet-killing asteroid from impacting the Earth - such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. I don't necessarily expect colonies on Mars, but I do expect this - if we plan to remain on this world, and not spread ourselves outward.)
Anyway, how realistic are Kaku's ideas? That depends on what you know (or don't know) and how well you understand the extent to which abundant, cheap and useful energy underlies the sort of advances he prognosticates. What we know is that large quantities of energy (and water) are required to manufacture computer chips to an acceptable level of quality - and we are rapidly running short of both cheap, useful energy and water.
Let's take water first. In ‘The State of the World’ report (2000, pp. 46-47), it is noted that the ever increasing water deficits will likely spark “water wars” by 2025. As they note (p. 47):
"When a country’s renewable water supplies drop below 1,700 cubic meters per capita (what some analysts call the water stress level) it becomes difficult for the country to mobilize enough water to satisfy all the food, household, and industrial needs of its population.”
As it is, most nations in the 3rd world are now in this predicament or soon will be by the year 2020. It's particularly bad in the most rapidly growing nations of sub-Sahara Africa. Climate change -global warming has definitely played a role ...as it continues to do so in the U.S. (Mainly in the West and Southwest).
The same State of the World’ report notes at present rates of decline and even without factoring in the worst global warming influences – the number of people living in water-stressed countries will rise from 470 million to 3 billion by 2025. More than a sixfold increase. Add in projected new climate change data and likely effects and the stressed populations increase nine or tenfold.
In terms of energy, and what exactly the source is that provides for the manufacture of all our computer chips now - that's easy! It's OIL! The planet was endowed originally with ~ 3,000 billion barrels of oil – of which we’ve consumed one third and another one sixth of relatively cheap oil remains after Peak Oil - which occurred in 2005. It is true that there's about another third of “break-even” oil (costs as much to access as it delivers), after which one -sixth of very expensive oil remains (costs much more to reach it than it deliver in energy - say like deep sea deposits which will effectively take 3 gals consumed for each gallon produced).
At the heart of these considerations is the net energy (cf. Weisz, in Physics Today, July, 2004, p. 51)
Q (net) = Q (PR) – [Q (op) + E/T]
In effect, for break-even oil one would find Q(net) = 0
Thus, there is no net gain in energy given the quantity that must be used to obtain it.
For the last 700 billion barrels,
Q(net) = negative quantity = -Q
since the rate of energy production (Q (PR)) must be debited by the energy consumed for its operation Q(op), and the energy E invested during its “lifetime” T.
This is why oil shale and natural gas drilling, fracking are wastes of time and energy - because they do not deliver NET energy value, they deliver lost energy quotas that multiply over time. Think about it: If it takes 1.01 gallons of cheap, high EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) oil to produce 1.0 gallon of low EROEI shale oil, then you are sacrificing your most useful energy for less useful. You are, as we would say in Barbados, "batting on a losing wicket". The reason the oil shale humpers and their ilk can make their bald claims is that no one ever calls them out on the TOTAL energy costs used for extraction (including the energy costs to make the equipment that extracts), including transport!
Moreover, this is a game that can go on only so long, before the losses exceed the benefits and drive producers away! This is exactly what's occurred already in many oil shale drilling and gas fracking states as the market costs of those commodities have plunged in relation to the costs of their production. Well, why is this? It's because the REAL market costs are too low because they're put in competition with the remaining stores of high EROEI oil rather than the actual energy costs to produce them! If the latter were used, the oil from shale would be 2-3x the regular oil costs.
“Peak Oil’ is somewhat misleading a term, since it suggests a specific date of peak production (e.g. 2005). In more practical terms – what it means is that if 2005 was the year of global peak oil production then the worldwide oil production in 2025 will be the SAME as in 1980 demanding that Q(net) > 0. Also, it means that 2040 will be the same as 1965, and 2060 will be the same as 1945, and 2100 will be the same as 1905! All this while the population is expected to reach 9 billion or more in the SAME PERIOD!
In effect, the total available and accessible energy density (marked by the source with the biggest 'bang for the buck', e.g. oil) is continually decreasing. Thus, Kaku's projections of the "Greek god" status for kids living in 2100 are predicated on energy stores barely equal to the oil we had available in 1905 and could actually get out of the ground then. Precisely for this reason, one will really have a vast energy-unsupportable population, that may well add up to 10 billion or more!
That is, nearly 10-11 billion people exist as net energy sinks not sources, and based on this no civilization can survive. What one gets then is not some utopia like Michio Kaku envisages, but the nightmare world of "Panem" the horrific nation depicted in the 'Hunger Games' in which the population must be endlessly culled by bloodsport games and people exist perpetually on the margins of hunger and disease. How can it be otherwise? The reason the utopians' nonsense usually prevails is first, most Americans are diehard, unchecked optimists at heart, and second, most of the utopians (or unabashed optimists) have never processed fully the concept of net energy! Which is why I always suggest blog readers avail themselves of the site:
http://www.dieoff.org/
and pay attention to the links at the right, going through them in the order shown.
What about developing solar, geothermal, wind or all together to replace fossil-fuel based energy and allow us to make our endless computer chips? Valiant thought, but it crashes and burns. The fact is neither solar, wind, geothermal, hydrogen, methyl hydrates or anything else can save us (since they lack the requisite energy density) unless we ALSO cut global population down to 2 billion or less. We cannot keep gobbling finite energy stores at the rate we are (increasing the "gobble rate" by 1-2% per year) as we increase the number of "gobblers" too!
A reality check appears in The Physicist's Desk Reference, in the section on 'Energy Supply', there is a table (C., p. 187) for future projections of energy supply. The information is divided into categories of energy for categories of energy demand (I, II, III, IV) where I is 'very aggressive', II is 'aggressive, III is 'moderate', IV is 'unchanged' . The only double-digit exajoule energy source contributors for IV are: oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear. Oil shale is at 1/10 of nuclear and, solar is at 2/3 of oil shale .
In terms of Kaku's world in 2100, the reality of the U.S. of A. will actually be more in tune with the "Panem" depicted in Suzanne Collins' dystopic tale, than any kind of utopian, fairy vision with every citizen instantly blinking eyes to compute on a global network and living endlessly via "synthetic organs".
What about technology itself, might that not usher in Kaku's glorious world and spare us from a 2100 version of "Panem"? After all, maybe technology or some hitherto unthought of device or series of them will make energy access more efficient or abundant?
According to energy specialist Matt Savinar (Life after the Oil Crash, p. 33):
"The idea that technologically derived increases in energy efficiency will solve this for us is fundamentally flawed: technology uses energy; it doesn’t produce it. Here in the 21st century, we have a shortage of energy, not technology. The shortage of energy was caused primarily by the introduction of new technologies such as the internal combustion engine. The shortage is therefore unlikely to be solved by the introduction of even more technology.
More technology will simply allow us to use more energy, which will make us more dependent on technology, which will make us more dependent on energy. As the supply of energy dwindles, the technology on which we have become dependent will no longer function To illustrate: what do you think would happen if the average fuel efficiency of every vehicle on the road today was magically raised to 200 miles per gallon?
It doesn’t take a psychic to accurately predict how we would react to this “miracle.” We would continue to build our homes farther and farther away from our jobs and grow our food farther and farther away from our stores. In other words, we would increase our dependency on cheap energy. This would temporarily delay the crisis while reinforcing the underlying problem, which is a dual dependence on cheap energy and high technology. The more dependent we are on cheap energy when the day of reckoning arrives, the more painful it is going to be, the more people are going to die, and the longer it will take us to recover from the aftermath.
Consequently, increases in fuel efficiency and technology are more likely to make our situation worse, not better."
The bottom line here is that in all Kaku's marvelous visions, the one down factor he didn't correct for is the increasing global population, which is not only an endless drain on finite resources but an incessant source of global pollution. This increasing population consumes billions of hectares of potable water each year even as it pollutes an equal amount in its industrial processes. It also gobbles up non-renewable sources of cheaper and efficient modes of energy such as oil, even as it increases demand on the same stores by never-ending increase in human numbers.
This is a math game that simply can't work, and if Kaku really wants to see the world he envisions, he needs to show us how to pare human numbers down to no more than two billion - without invoking any horrific scenarios like novel viruses for which there is no immunity or antibiotics ceasing effectiveness.
Anyway, in a weekend Wall Street Journal interview (p. A11, March 10-11) Kaku delivers a number of stirring prophecies - for lack of a better term- that boggle the mind. One such prediction: we will have computer chips in everything, from clothing, to furniture, to cars to most appliances .....even pets. The word "computer" will actually become defunct because so much stuff will have computer chips it will no longer be necessary to discriminate one unique object that computes from all else. (Even "DNA chips" will be inside our toilet which can instantly analyze stools and urine to let us know if cancer is lurking.)
The technological power moreover will be so vast by the year 2100, that our grand kids will seem to us like "Greek gods". Almost everyone will also have hand held devices that can translate any language in seconds. One imagines Kaku also foresees stupendous advances in physics, biology, chemistry etc. but he doesn't specify many beyond perhaps discovering the Higgs boson using the current large hadron collider. Perhaps the years of budget cuts have tempered his expectations in the pure science sphere.
(My own take is that if there's one defined advance that we need to achieve, it's being able to knock out or divert a large planet-killing asteroid from impacting the Earth - such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. I don't necessarily expect colonies on Mars, but I do expect this - if we plan to remain on this world, and not spread ourselves outward.)
Anyway, how realistic are Kaku's ideas? That depends on what you know (or don't know) and how well you understand the extent to which abundant, cheap and useful energy underlies the sort of advances he prognosticates. What we know is that large quantities of energy (and water) are required to manufacture computer chips to an acceptable level of quality - and we are rapidly running short of both cheap, useful energy and water.
Let's take water first. In ‘The State of the World’ report (2000, pp. 46-47), it is noted that the ever increasing water deficits will likely spark “water wars” by 2025. As they note (p. 47):
"When a country’s renewable water supplies drop below 1,700 cubic meters per capita (what some analysts call the water stress level) it becomes difficult for the country to mobilize enough water to satisfy all the food, household, and industrial needs of its population.”
As it is, most nations in the 3rd world are now in this predicament or soon will be by the year 2020. It's particularly bad in the most rapidly growing nations of sub-Sahara Africa. Climate change -global warming has definitely played a role ...as it continues to do so in the U.S. (Mainly in the West and Southwest).
The same State of the World’ report notes at present rates of decline and even without factoring in the worst global warming influences – the number of people living in water-stressed countries will rise from 470 million to 3 billion by 2025. More than a sixfold increase. Add in projected new climate change data and likely effects and the stressed populations increase nine or tenfold.
In terms of energy, and what exactly the source is that provides for the manufacture of all our computer chips now - that's easy! It's OIL! The planet was endowed originally with ~ 3,000 billion barrels of oil – of which we’ve consumed one third and another one sixth of relatively cheap oil remains after Peak Oil - which occurred in 2005. It is true that there's about another third of “break-even” oil (costs as much to access as it delivers), after which one -sixth of very expensive oil remains (costs much more to reach it than it deliver in energy - say like deep sea deposits which will effectively take 3 gals consumed for each gallon produced).
At the heart of these considerations is the net energy (cf. Weisz, in Physics Today, July, 2004, p. 51)
Q (net) = Q (PR) – [Q (op) + E/T]
In effect, for break-even oil one would find Q(net) = 0
Thus, there is no net gain in energy given the quantity that must be used to obtain it.
For the last 700 billion barrels,
Q(net) = negative quantity = -Q
since the rate of energy production (Q (PR)) must be debited by the energy consumed for its operation Q(op), and the energy E invested during its “lifetime” T.
This is why oil shale and natural gas drilling, fracking are wastes of time and energy - because they do not deliver NET energy value, they deliver lost energy quotas that multiply over time. Think about it: If it takes 1.01 gallons of cheap, high EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) oil to produce 1.0 gallon of low EROEI shale oil, then you are sacrificing your most useful energy for less useful. You are, as we would say in Barbados, "batting on a losing wicket". The reason the oil shale humpers and their ilk can make their bald claims is that no one ever calls them out on the TOTAL energy costs used for extraction (including the energy costs to make the equipment that extracts), including transport!
Moreover, this is a game that can go on only so long, before the losses exceed the benefits and drive producers away! This is exactly what's occurred already in many oil shale drilling and gas fracking states as the market costs of those commodities have plunged in relation to the costs of their production. Well, why is this? It's because the REAL market costs are too low because they're put in competition with the remaining stores of high EROEI oil rather than the actual energy costs to produce them! If the latter were used, the oil from shale would be 2-3x the regular oil costs.
“Peak Oil’ is somewhat misleading a term, since it suggests a specific date of peak production (e.g. 2005). In more practical terms – what it means is that if 2005 was the year of global peak oil production then the worldwide oil production in 2025 will be the SAME as in 1980 demanding that Q(net) > 0. Also, it means that 2040 will be the same as 1965, and 2060 will be the same as 1945, and 2100 will be the same as 1905! All this while the population is expected to reach 9 billion or more in the SAME PERIOD!
In effect, the total available and accessible energy density (marked by the source with the biggest 'bang for the buck', e.g. oil) is continually decreasing. Thus, Kaku's projections of the "Greek god" status for kids living in 2100 are predicated on energy stores barely equal to the oil we had available in 1905 and could actually get out of the ground then. Precisely for this reason, one will really have a vast energy-unsupportable population, that may well add up to 10 billion or more!
That is, nearly 10-11 billion people exist as net energy sinks not sources, and based on this no civilization can survive. What one gets then is not some utopia like Michio Kaku envisages, but the nightmare world of "Panem" the horrific nation depicted in the 'Hunger Games' in which the population must be endlessly culled by bloodsport games and people exist perpetually on the margins of hunger and disease. How can it be otherwise? The reason the utopians' nonsense usually prevails is first, most Americans are diehard, unchecked optimists at heart, and second, most of the utopians (or unabashed optimists) have never processed fully the concept of net energy! Which is why I always suggest blog readers avail themselves of the site:
http://www.dieoff.org/
and pay attention to the links at the right, going through them in the order shown.
What about developing solar, geothermal, wind or all together to replace fossil-fuel based energy and allow us to make our endless computer chips? Valiant thought, but it crashes and burns. The fact is neither solar, wind, geothermal, hydrogen, methyl hydrates or anything else can save us (since they lack the requisite energy density) unless we ALSO cut global population down to 2 billion or less. We cannot keep gobbling finite energy stores at the rate we are (increasing the "gobble rate" by 1-2% per year) as we increase the number of "gobblers" too!
A reality check appears in The Physicist's Desk Reference, in the section on 'Energy Supply', there is a table (C., p. 187) for future projections of energy supply. The information is divided into categories of energy for categories of energy demand (I, II, III, IV) where I is 'very aggressive', II is 'aggressive, III is 'moderate', IV is 'unchanged' . The only double-digit exajoule energy source contributors for IV are: oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear. Oil shale is at 1/10 of nuclear and, solar is at 2/3 of oil shale .
In terms of Kaku's world in 2100, the reality of the U.S. of A. will actually be more in tune with the "Panem" depicted in Suzanne Collins' dystopic tale, than any kind of utopian, fairy vision with every citizen instantly blinking eyes to compute on a global network and living endlessly via "synthetic organs".
What about technology itself, might that not usher in Kaku's glorious world and spare us from a 2100 version of "Panem"? After all, maybe technology or some hitherto unthought of device or series of them will make energy access more efficient or abundant?
According to energy specialist Matt Savinar (Life after the Oil Crash, p. 33):
"The idea that technologically derived increases in energy efficiency will solve this for us is fundamentally flawed: technology uses energy; it doesn’t produce it. Here in the 21st century, we have a shortage of energy, not technology. The shortage of energy was caused primarily by the introduction of new technologies such as the internal combustion engine. The shortage is therefore unlikely to be solved by the introduction of even more technology.
More technology will simply allow us to use more energy, which will make us more dependent on technology, which will make us more dependent on energy. As the supply of energy dwindles, the technology on which we have become dependent will no longer function To illustrate: what do you think would happen if the average fuel efficiency of every vehicle on the road today was magically raised to 200 miles per gallon?
It doesn’t take a psychic to accurately predict how we would react to this “miracle.” We would continue to build our homes farther and farther away from our jobs and grow our food farther and farther away from our stores. In other words, we would increase our dependency on cheap energy. This would temporarily delay the crisis while reinforcing the underlying problem, which is a dual dependence on cheap energy and high technology. The more dependent we are on cheap energy when the day of reckoning arrives, the more painful it is going to be, the more people are going to die, and the longer it will take us to recover from the aftermath.
Consequently, increases in fuel efficiency and technology are more likely to make our situation worse, not better."
The bottom line here is that in all Kaku's marvelous visions, the one down factor he didn't correct for is the increasing global population, which is not only an endless drain on finite resources but an incessant source of global pollution. This increasing population consumes billions of hectares of potable water each year even as it pollutes an equal amount in its industrial processes. It also gobbles up non-renewable sources of cheaper and efficient modes of energy such as oil, even as it increases demand on the same stores by never-ending increase in human numbers.
This is a math game that simply can't work, and if Kaku really wants to see the world he envisions, he needs to show us how to pare human numbers down to no more than two billion - without invoking any horrific scenarios like novel viruses for which there is no immunity or antibiotics ceasing effectiveness.
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