The Human Future: A Problem in Design

[greyl]

Address given at EnvironDesign 3, Baltimore, MD, April 30, 1999 - Daniel Quinn

...
Everyone nowadays is more or less aware that what we see around us in the world of nature is the result of a design process called evolution. This was not always the case of course. For thousands of years in our culture, it was imagined that what we see around us was the work of a divine designer who delivered the finished product in its eternally final form in a single stroke. God not only got everything right the first time, he got it so right that it couldn't possibly be improved on by any means.

Since the nineteenth century, this antiquated perception of the world has largely disappeared. Most people now realize that the marvelous designs we see around us in the living community came about through an exacting process called natural selection. Human design--and by this I mean design BY humans, not design OF humans--is similar to evolutionary design in some ways and different in other ways.

Human design is always directed toward IMPROVEMENT. Evolutionary design, on the other hand, only APPEARS to be directed toward improvement, and this confuses a lot of people. It leads them to imagine that evolution is HEADING somewhere, presumably toward the eternally final forms that God created in a single stroke. Evolutionary design in fact merely tends to eliminate the less workable and perpetuate the more workable. When we look at a seagull or a giraffe or a cheetah or a spider, we see a version of the product that's working beautifully--because all the dysfunctional versions have been eliminated from the gene pool of that species through natural selection. If conditions change, however--and we had the leisure to watch-- we'd see these apparently perfect forms begin to change in subtle ways or dramatic ways as natural selection eliminates the less workable adaptations to the new conditions and perpetuates the more workable.
...
We have an organizational system that works wonderfully well for products. But we don't have a system that works wonderfully well for people. That's the lesson to be learned at Jonesboro and Columbine--and at the places that are going to follow, because these two aren't the last two, they're just the first two.
We have a system that works fabulously well for products. But the one we have for people stinks. This is the lesson we've got to learn--or the human future on this planet is going to be a very bleak one indeed.
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[Tesha]

1. Reading "Ishmael" was a life-changing event for me.

This address was apparently given by Daniel Quinn
in Baltimore, MD, April 30, 1999. Quinn is the
author of the novel Ishmael and several
sequels.

Reading Ishmael was a life-changing event for
me and it has permanently altered my perceptions of
individual people and civilizations as-a-whole; I'd
encourage everyone here to read it.

Tesha

[Odin2005]

2. Quinn is a crackpot.

[greyl]

3. Is there any evidence to support your opinion in this speech? nt

[Tesha]

4. Ahh, well-reasoned argumentation -- spoken like a true "taker". (NT)

[Kingshakabobo]

5. Still reading it.......But I DO have a problem, so far.

The folding ruler isn't extinct! LOL. You can pick one up at Home Depot for a few bucks. It's an essential carpentry tool for taking EXACT measurements in tight spaces such as the inside of window frames. Of course, that's after it 'evolved' to have an extender slide insert to pick up the odd distances the wooden pieces don't cover.

Back to the essay!

[greyl]

7. Nice catch! :)

I searched at Homedepot.com for "folding ruler" and came up empty, then searched for "ruler" and was told I really meant to search for "roller". However, there's www.foldingruler.com, which I think actually shows that there's more than one way to make a functional folding ruler. ;)

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

9. And he apparently thinks Columbine/Jonesboro were the first school shootings

my problem with the whole thing is that he doesn't say anything.

[greyl]

10. It's true they weren't the first, but that's not quite germane.

There's no part of the speech that depends on Jonesboro and Columbine being the first school shootings. The prime point was that they wouldn't be the last, which is of course also true, and in fact, their frequency is accelerating. Jonesboro and Columbine were relatively current events in 1999.

list of school related attacks

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

12. Yeah, they were current events in 1999.

And used by every asshole who wanted to make a point.

Besides, what is this guys point?

[greyl]

14. With that out of the way, it should be easier to recognize the points

if you click the link and have the time to spend reading it.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

15. I read it.

It didn't really say anything.

[greyl]

17. That's odd.

Do you mean it said nothing new to you, or that is was devoid of any discernible statements, or something else?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

18. Yes.

It's like the guy likes the sound of his own meandering thoughts.

[greyl]

19. "Yes" doesn't work as an answer to a multiple choice question

unless maybe you mean "all of the above", but because the last choice was "or something else", that doesn't work in this case.

edit: Do you think our culture is perfect the way it is? If not, what do you think are the causes of its failings?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

20. Exactly.

Do you think our culture is perfect the way it is? If not, what do you think are the causes of its failings?

Idiots, mostly.

[greyl]

22. So, if we somehow removed all those idiots from our culture

but otherwise left the system and vision of our civilization alone, our culture would be "mostly" fixed? Have any of the other thousands of human cultures that have worked better for people rather than products benefited from not having idiots among their members?

[HamdenRice]

16. Bingo!

You read that stuff and realize that he has said absolutely nothing at all -- at least nothing that isn't utterly obvious. You just have a dull feeling behind your eyes that somehow he has made you a little bit dumber for your time. That's why I compare him to The Sphinx in "Mystery Men" -- making obvious or contentless statements, dressed up in somewhat mysterious syntax.

I think he suckers the weak minded because he has one talent: making himself seem more portentiously important and intelligent than he is. In one passage he compared himself to both Darwin and Einstein.

Yoda is more like it. Pure woo woo for the gullible.

[HamdenRice]

6. Quinn: Design for the " woo woo " set

From crackpot theories about demographics, development and famine (non-)relief -- that we must allow the poor to starve to death in order to reduce their numbers -- Quinn has taken his all around "brilliance" into the field of design.

This guy is indeed a crackpot. Quinn is class woo woo material. His writing reminds me of the "philosphy" of the character, The Sphinx, in the science fiction spoof, "Mystery Men". Pop quiz: Which one of the following is a deep thought by the Sphinx and which is a deep thought by Quinn:

-You must master your fear or your fear will master you!

-We are number one. All others are number two, or lower!

-We have a system that works fabulously well for products. But the one we have for people stinks!

-To learn my teachings, I must first teach you how to learn!

-You must lash out with every limb, like the octopus who plays the drums!

-As we all know, that which is built on a rock is stable, because rocks are stable!

-He who questions training only trains himself at asking questions!

-You must be like wolf pack, not six-pack!

[greyl]

8. Not a big Live Earth fan, eh? Ad hominem, poisoning the well, and falsehoods.

Wikipedia has a very decent entry on logical fallacies you might be able to learn from.

"Diversity, not uniformity, is what works. Our problem is not that people are living a bad way but rather that they're all living the same way. The earth can accommodate many people living in a voraciously wasteful and pollutive way, it just can't accommodate all of us living that way.

Beyond Civilization - Daniel Quinn

[PVnRT]

11. If it's on wikipedia, it must be true

Wait, what?

[greyl]

13. lol

In that case, here are a few others:

www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html
www.philosophypages.com/lg/index.htm
www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html
www.philosophicalsociety.com/Logical%20Fallacies.htm
www.galilean-library.org/int16.html

[PVnRT]

21. Oops, I thought you were referring to the essay author, not logical fallacies (n/t)