PIX 2015: Kiliii Fish on Living Wild

@Edgar_in_Indy

It's pointless taking this any further. I referred to clear evidence, and you have not even addressed how these facts contradicted your claims. Unlike you I am very widely read in anthropology, and I am a qualified ecologist. It's not just based on something I saw on the TV.

It's nothing to do with opinions or world views. There are straight forward facts that contradict your arguments. If all cultures were the same, these declines would have happened continually through history, which they haven't.

You fail to understand the massive difference between a culture and where someone is from. I'm a European. Europeans themselves used to be hunter-gatherers, and the culture that saw the environment as just something to exploit is a recent development in historical terms.

Europeans bad, hunter/gatherers good. And also, you know everything. I'm clear on that now. So what are your proposals?

My plan was to watch the Colts, but I think your plan is better.

Pretending to be a dickhead? No sir. I was never very good at pretending to be anything.

And can you imagine this planet trying to sustain 7 billion humans as hunters gatherers? Lol. We are WELL past that. Again, you cannot simply imagine that it's 5000 years ago. These problems are already here and need to be dealt with.

@Edgar_in_Indy

I never said "Europeans bad, hunter/gatherers good" or that I know everything, you said that. It is also a stupid claim because one Europeans were all hunter-gatherers.

You claimed "I don't buy it that primitive people were all about sustainability and preserving the environment". I contradicted this by pointing out their countries had stable and high levels of biodiversity, until European colonists arrived. That is a fact, not an opinion.

Likewise, I was simply making the point that I was not merely expressing an opinion, and that I had studied biodiversity in depth, and had relevant qualifications in the subject. That is not saying I know everything, just that I knew enough about the relevant facts, to know what the facts were.

So far you have offered no explanation for why the biodiversity in the New World only crashed after European colonists arrived. I was born and live in Europe, do you?

No further explanation is necessary. You already said it...white people are bad for the earth. Everything was paradise until they started running around screwing everything up and showing the rest of humanity how to misbehave.

The only question now is, how do I go about punishing myself and my children? Is it enough to just run around like you do and put my ancestors down? I doubt it. This will take some thought.

I guess for starters, I can advocate for letting the entire Middle East and Africa migrate over here. You'd think they'd want to avoid the parts of the earth that have been "Europeanized", but apparently they have a much higher regard for our culture than you do.

PeaceKeeper, very well stated.

Unfortunately though, he has *all* the hallmarks of somebody who has been trained in today's colleges.

His anti-western mode of thinking has become mainstream, and the easiest and safest thing to do is nod your head and go along with it, even if inside you don't agree. Hating your own European heritage is what now passes for modern enlightenment. But I think it's important for people to stand up to the incessant defamation of European culture and traditions.

It's not likely to change their minds, but at least they should know that not everybody views western civilization through the same dark and grimy filter they do. And maybe next time they won't be so quick to denigrate other people's culture.

To use one of the intellectual bullies' favorite words, maybe next time they will be more "tolerant".

I personally don't associate myself with my heritage in any real way, as I believe it to be meaningless... Beyond the things I was taught by my parents which in part shaped who I am today(the effect of which MANY would be better off being aware of), I am no more connected to them than I am to anyone else on this planet.

Who you ancestors were has nothing to do with who you are today. You should feel neither ashamed nor proud of them. Being proud of ones heritage is just another way of creating an exclusive group mentality which is counter-productive in an interconnected world. And being ashamed of them is a road that leads you to useless depression and self-loathing. You will never make any progress down either road.

You are you. We are here. Solve the problems that exist.

"SteB, you are confusing correlation and causality. If you, in fact, are trained in anthropology, you are doing a disservice to whomever taught you."

That isn't what I said at all. What I said was " Unlike you I am very widely read in anthropology, and I am a qualified ecologist."

That is very clear and a single sentence i.e. I am a trained ecologist, and I am very widely read in anthropology. I simply do not have the space to go into your simplistic misunderstandings. However, if you cannot comprehend what I clearly state in a simple sentence, there isn't much point in going on.

Yes, the culture and ideas could have taken place anywhere, and not necessarily in Europe. However, to come to this complex misunderstanding of the natural world where it is just seen as a commodity to exploit, required a complex series of historical precedents to go down this blind alley. In other words, it is unlikely to have been repeated by chance, which is why it wasn't repeated by other cultures.

"Unfortunately though, he has *all* the hallmarks of somebody who has been trained in today's colleges."

Hmm! This was never taught at the universities and colleges I studied at. Your problem is simply presume to much.

'To use one of the intellectual bullies' favorite words, maybe next time they will be more "tolerant".'

No I stated evidence which entirely contradicted your simplistic and fallacious argument. Instead of addressing the factual evidence, which contradicts your absurd claims, you invent straw man arguments to argue against i.e. deliberately misrepresenting what I said to make it easy to argue against.

What you completely address is how and why this European culture has destroyed biodiversity and the natural environment wherever it has become dominant, in a way which other cultures didn't. Self-evidently you have no answer to this extremely inconvenient but bleeding obvious contradiction to your argument. You accuse me of bullying by contradicting you with evidence.

SteB, It's extremely obvious that small hunter/gatherer tribes will have less of an ecological impact on the environment. You don't need to be any kind of "ecologist" to know that, and I haven't argued against that. You are the one creating the straw man argument.

My point is that any group of humans would have continued to progress in technology, and at some point there would be a tipping point where the society would move away from hunting/gathering. In our case, it happened to be the Europeans who got there first. But it would have been *somebody*. You are the one who does not have evidence to prove it would not have been somebody else.

And what's so great about hunter/gathering? At some point, as their numbers grew, they would stress the environment and come into conflict with other groups of people as they expanded and competed for scarce land and resources. It is completely possible to hunt and gather to the point of exhaustion/extinction.

@Edgar_in_Indy

There is a big misunderstanding. You appear to believe that by spelling out these facts and truths that I am being judgemental. I don't work like that. If you want to effectively solve a problem, you have to be brutally honest about what the problem is. If you distort your understanding of the problem because it's inconvenient, or it means accepting uncomfortable truths about your cherished viewpoint, you will not solve the problem.

The population, in say the Americas in pre-Columbian times is now thought to have been much larger than initially thought.

And no I am not using a straw man argument, and you don't seem to know what one is.

I have repeatedly stated facts, and you have not even addressed that evidence. Instead you have made a series of assertions, which you have not supported. I have offered well established evidence, which contradicts your assertions, and you just avoid this.

I can go into huge depth about this with massive references.

The sad thing about you is that you focus only on the negative aspects of the European heritage, ignoring the many marvelous and wonderful things that this culture has brought the world.

@PeaceKeeper

Your posts are offensive and deeply intellectually dishonest. There is massive academic discussion about what the population size of the Native American population was in pre-Columbian times. It is generally thought to be much higher than it was thought to be. It is impossible is such a small space to detail this with full references.

I will simply reference the Wikipedia article to demonstrate that I am not making this up, and so that can see that you are being intellectually dishonest, and offensively insulting. Note that I am providing evidence, and you are just making offensive personal attacks. This is called the ad hominen logical fallacy. It is an intellectually dishonest method, and what people resort to when they've lost the argument. It is used by those of low intellect. I stick to the evidence, and you get personally insulting. You don't know how to argue in a rational way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas

@Edgar_in_Indy

No it is you that is being selective. At no time have I made any general negative comments about Europeans. Unlike apparently you, I am a native European, born and bred here, so your claims are really not very credible.

My points were confined to the impacts of European culture i.e. not Europeans on the natural environment. They were not general comments about European culture, and my comments are solely based on Environmental Impacts. So advances in medicine etc, are simply not relevant to this context.

@Edgar_in_Indy

"Are you kidding? You've made so many negative, subjective, opinion-based judgments about your culture that it will take me two posts to point them out and respond."

You clearly do not understand rational argument, and the difference between facts and opinions. My comments about impacts on biodiversity, are objective facts, not opinions. It is an objective fact, that the biodiversity of countries colonized by European origin cultures in the last 500 years or so rapidly declined after they arrived. This is an objective fact.

You may regard this as "negative" "opinions", but this is clearly because you don't understand what an opinion is. You have just made a series of unsupported assertions i.e. your opinions. You've never even tried to support your claims with evidence, or to contradict what I say with evidence. You need to understand the difference between objective fact and evidence, opinion, and unsupported assertions. Not once have you contradicted me on fact.

"It's a myth that any culture would do the same."

So I’m sure you can point to other earths where humans advanced to the point where they learned to write, work with metals, etc., and then just stopped advancing?

This is the biggest fallacy in your arguments, and where you unfairly slander Europeans. At some point, some culture would have gotten the upper hand in technology, and use that to their advantage. Labor would start to become specialized; they would transition away from hunting gathering, so on and so forth. The Europeans simply got farther down that path before others.

"[hunter/gatherers] had to be coerced into giving up their lifestyle by persecution, and often genocide."

Again, you're making the assumption that the pre-European societies were more virtuous, and that they would never engage in persecution of their neighbors. Completely biased and factually unsupported considering evidence of warfare, slavery, and even genocide among primitive non-European societies.

@Edgar_in_Indy

It really isn't worth me taking this further. You are just making assertions and expressing opinions, which are unsupported by fact, or references. When I have pointed to the objective evidence which contradicts your unsupported assertions and opinion, you just ignore that. You just make more unsupported or erroneous opinion.

You are just trying to browbeat me into defeat, which really makes a joke of your laughable claim that I am bullying you, because I contradicted you with facts and evidence.

Unless you support your claims with evidence, or address the contrary evidence I have cited it is pointless carrying. As I say, this is not dialogue, it is an attempt to defeat me by making strident assertions.

AGAIN, the one thing I agree with you about is the ecological impact, but you keep pretending like I'm arguing against that. I'M NOT. You're like a kid with his fingers in his ears shouting "nah nah nah nah I can't hear you!"

It's the value judgments that I'm disagreeing with. It's the ridiculous assertion that without Europeans, all other human societies would have continued to remain primitive hunter/gatherers, and oh yeah, they never would have hunted and/or gathered or reproduced to the point of stressing the environment.

You've clearly lost the argument and just keep repeating your refrain about colonialism and biodiversity, which NOBODY has argued against because it's so bloody obvious.

Instead of just going on like a broken record, you should admit that our culture has done far more good than bad, and that you actually like living in a warm house in the winter, and having medicine, and using cameras, computers and the internet. Don't worry...we won't think less of you.

"AGAIN, the one thing I agree with you about is the ecological impact"

Then what are you arguing about, I've never made any other points?

"It's the value judgments that I'm disagreeing with."

What value judgements, point to them?

"It's the ridiculous assertion that without Europeans, all other human societies would have continued to remain primitive hunter/gatherers"

Where have I ever made any such claim? You are just making this up, and arguing against straw man arguments that you've made up yourself.

No wonder you can't understand what I'm saying, when you are arguing against made up things I've never said.

You are just repeatedly using the straw man logical fallacy, in which you argue against points I never made, and which you just made up to make it easy to argue against. If I am wrong, you should be able to quote where I have said the things you claim. You won't be able to, because I never made any such points, you did.

@Edgar_in_Indy

So you can't quote anything I said to justify your false claims about what I said, and you have to resort to making it up. Your claims about what I said are just bare-faced lies because of your inability to engage in honest argument.

I just went through and checked. Not once have you quoted anything that supports your claims, and you are just being dishonest. I clearly challenged you to support your false and dishonest claims by quoting what I said to justify your claims, and you can't. As I said you wouldn't be able to quote anything to justify your claims, because I never said what you falsely claimed.

The straw man logical fallacy, which you have used repeatedly is a well known tactic of dishonest argument, used by those with an inability to argue properly.

Ah, this thread... Pop-anthropology at its best.

Intellectually dishonest? Offensive? What are you talking about? Is the fact that I don't take you at your word as a "trained ecologist" offensive to you?

"Massive academic discussion about what the population size of the Native American(s)". And? I never disputed that. It's the fact that you somehow turn that into an argument for the sustainability or superiority of these cultures that's ridiculous. You read into these things with the strangest slant, all for the sake of supporting your own ideas.

All you've done throughout this entire debate is claim to know more than other people, and offered no evidence to support it. You are viewing the same information and present theories based on them which are NOT generally accepted. The fact that people are discussing it doesn't mean it's true. You are the one being dishonest. Stop presenting HIGHLY debatable theory as fact.

And quit the straw man, straw man argument. It's transparent.

I didn't make false claims about what you said...I quoted you directly, and you did not handle it well.

You have been exposed as a fraud. You have shown yourself to be one more biased pseudo intellectual. You promulgate the self-hatred preached by the modern white liberal, and you re-write history by perpetuating the false and insultingly-simplistic stereotype of the noble savage.

Given your disrespectful attitude toward your own culture, you are undoubtedly someone who has bought into the notion that diversity is the supreme goal for any society. It is you and your kind that is allowing Europe to become a footnote to history.

I despise you, because it's people like you who have allowed our societies reach the desperate state they are in. Your words paint the picture of a weak man with a fragile psyche who is wracked with guilt due to the beneficent accident of your birth into the most advanced culture the earth has ever known.

In short, I pity you.

"Intellectually dishonest? Offensive? What are you talking about? Is the fact that I don't take you at your word as a "trained ecologist" offensive to you? "

I have never said anything on the basis of being a trained ecologist other than I had studied the biodiversity loss in depth.

You are the one engaged in bluster. Not once have you either used a reference, or referenced any evidence or fact. You have just made offensive personalized comments. You are unable to argue honestly, and quickly resort to the ad hominen logical fallacy, the fall back of those without the ability to argue the facts, and those who have lost the argument. Don't expect any more responses, because you are an empty vessel with no references, facts or evidence to back up your bluster.

@Edgar_in_Indy

So you can't quote anything I said to support your lies about what I said?

Put up, or shut up!

Don't they teach how to argue rationally and honestly in the US?

You are SO GOOD at accusing others of your own faults it's almost impressive.

Almost.

I've already clearly stated that the facts you are presenting are being used by you to falsely support your own ideas and theories. You can't respond to that, and that IS the argument itself. Not the facts, the theories developed using them. Your theories are in question. Stop defending subjective evidence and start defending your theories.

I can see you're not used to being contradicted. Unfortunately for you and your kind, people are just about done being trodden over by the political correctness brigade.

Peace, just to be clear, I've never once in here denied that the ecology of the planet been damaged by modern man, which has been led by the European/Western/American culture. That much is self evident. SteB wants to act like that's my point, but it never has been.

What I'm saying about liberals is that they are quick to point out the flaws in our cultures, while extolling the virtues of other cultures. At some point, they cross a line and it becomes counter-productive.

For example, the biggest polluters in the world are now countries like India and China where climate impact is not taken nearly as seriously. Their economies are growing like crazy, and they are polluting more and more. Remember the embarrassment of the smog at the Chinese Olympics?

So instead of apologizing to these other cultures for what happened in colonial times, we need to be taking them to task for what they're doing today. We need to be growing our own economies and bring the manufacturing jobs back to where we actually take steps to protect the environment.

Edgar, no. Just no. Don't use the VERY current trend among(some) conservatives of seeing the fault in our past as an excuse to promote the demonization of others and as a round about way to promote the idea of continuous growth as the solution to everything.

You both are the reason these discussions never get anywhere. You are doing nothing but trying to use critical issues as a means to your own ends.

"seeing the fault in our past as an excuse to promote the demonization of others"

Not quite sure what you mean by that, nor do I think that's what I was doing.

We were(are) guilty of the same things there are. You are using the fact that they have not had quite enough experience to realize the fault in what they are doing as a way to demonize their culture and promote your own.

You are insinuating that those cultures are somehow less capable of safely producing the technologies we desire, when the only real difference between us is the time we have had with them.

The solution is education. Not this idiotic idea that we should be the sole producers because we are the only ones who can do it right. That is historically and fundamentally innacurate.

It's funny how you both do the same thing.

Sorry, but that's not what I think at all. You read an awful lot into my comments.

I *do not* think they are behaving the way they are simply because they are not as advanced as we are, and do not know better. Apparently that's what you think of them, which is very patronizing on your part.

I believe that their entrenched leadership thinks more strategically and long term in terms of competing with other countries, whereas our politicians are forever focused on the next election.

I think that they consciously place less emphasis on the environment, and are fully aware of the consequences of their actions.

Just as the Chinese government is fully aware that they are oppressing their people, they are fully aware that their manufacturing policies have led to the horribly polluted air. It's not a priority for them.

I think they have a different mindset, and that the world would be better served by shifting production from known and callous polluters. That's all.

Sorry, but that sounds like nothing more than an aweful lot of self justification for an egotistical world view. You could just as easily use all of those same points as evidence supporting a much less self-interest based solution. Not to mention the fact that supplying the "west" is not nearly as large a driving factor as you think. You hugely overestimate our influences in that regard.

They produce for themselves. You can't move jobs back to the us that were never here to start with. You want more jobs in the US? Stop demanding to make $200 for the production of a product, but refusing to pay over $100 for it in a store. Problem solved.

The macro-economic discussion could on forever, but I just wanted to let you know that you had completely misinterpreted the way I view those countries/cultures.

I don't know why, but you have a tendency to try to get out in front of me, and put me in places that I was not going.

Attempts at defending my perception of you aside, lets get back to your actual statements...

"We need to be growing our own economies and bring the manufacturing jobs back to where we actually take steps to protect the environment."

This is the solution you offer, then? You believe this will help the environment in the long term? It's not simply a thinly veiled political/economic agenda?

I would love to hear your reasoning as to why this is the(or even a short term) solution, as opposed to educating people and working to create/enforce global regulation on production and pollution.

Even if we COMPLETELY forget how little environmental effect moving the jobs that have left the US back into the US would have... I mean... really... is that the best you can do? Grow the economy? Why? To offer them even more reason to grow faster? Sounds an awful lot like your priority is not the environment at all. It sounds, as I said, like a lot of self-justification for a egocentric agenda.

Did I ever say the environment was my only concern and my number one priority? It's one concern among many. Like most people, I'm multidimensional. You really have a way of putting words in my mouth.

The biggest thing I think about is my children. Which is why in addition to the environment, I also think about other things like the economy and national security. I guess that must make me some kind of freak.

But I've been around the world, including living for a couple years in an Eastern Bloc country, and I married a woman from a 3rd world country, and from all this I have found that we have something pretty special in this country. That's my perspective.

It seems like you keep reaching to find things about me to be offended about. So why don't you just tell me what outrageous thing you want me to say, and in the spirit of getting along, I might oblige you.

You've said more than enough outrageous things already. Quit trolling for an easy out.

Compete with China and India... My GOD man... Have you not been paying attention for the last 60 years? Have you not seen the end of that path?

Putting words in your mouth? That was a direct quote. Answer the question... is this your solution? How does that solve any of the problems you list?

People pretend that the economy is weak, and things are getting worse every day...

Where? Not in the US...

China passed us economically? They have 2 BILLION people. Get used to it.

Some day I'm sure your children will thank you for the strong economy and walls around their house as they look out over the desert that was once the midwest, with books detailing all the species that USED to exist in their laps.

Just don't tell them you had a chance to stop it.

Okay, you have experienced outrage on top of outrage. So what are your marching orders for me?

@Peacekeeper

Just to illustrate the absurdity of your claims and their fallacious nature.

Earlier you said to me.

"Judging by the prolific nature of your posts, you have plenty of time to explain anything you want."

Now let's look at the big long line your obsessive ranting posts, since I last posted a comment. It does highlight the hypocrisy and dishonesty of your jibes.

What you and Edgar_in_Indy have failed to grasp, is that I made a few simple points. The ideas and beliefs you are attributing to me are not actually contained in anything I've actually said. This is why you keep misrepresenting what I said. You are presuming I am arguing something, which I have provably never said - both of you. However, despite both provably misrepresenting what I said repeatedly, you both have failed to grasp that you were both making mistaken presumptions about what I said and why, and arguing against your own straw man arguments that both of you had set up yourself.

Why is it that every time you challenge a person presenting stereo-typically conservative ideas to back them up with some sort of input of their own, or even a reason they think that's the right thing to do, they immediately start to play the victim? Claim you are putting words in their mouth? Imagine that they are somehow at the control of the liberal masses/media/whatever else?

As though simply being against liberals is what they need to do. It's ironic that you ask ME for marching orders, assuming I'm some liberal(I've been accused of being both) who wants to put you in line, when you clearly already have a set of marching orders, and are following them to a T.

Good luck with the fam(seriously, no ill will wished). o7

SteB

"The irony is that the complex problems we have created like anthropogenic climate change, biodiversity loss, and general ecological unsustainability, are best understood by hunter-gatherer peoples, who always saw the follies of our civilization."

First thing you said.

Did they turn down guns to help hunting? Before you say "they would have if they knew lead poisoning was a threat to animals", I remind you "European culture", as you call it, had no idea of the impact either.

Those people had no more understanding about their impact on the environment and the importance it held than modern society has of shopping malls. Many, MANY cultures have failed due to the same mistakes we are making right now. Some of these cultures you seem so fixated on are the remnants of them.

We have simply "succeeded" to the point our failures have a scope beyond the planets ability to repair itself. Their failures passed un-noticed by the planet due to the scale. Not because they didn't exist.

Edited to better reflect your initial reference to hunter-gatherers, as opposed to primitive farming culture(which is actually what many of these cultures you are talking about were)...

"Did they turn down guns to help hunting?"

I would recommend reading Boyce Richardson's "Strangers Devour the Land" for an understanding of the context within which hunter-gatherer people's borrowed technology. It was purely in the context of continuing their general lifestyle, and did not change it.

The lead shot poisoning issue is not really relevant. It is more a side effect from the way recreational shooters shoot i.e. concentrated in certain areas, and is not really relevant to using a gun in the context of hunting and gathering. It's to do with local concentrations of lead shot which waterfowl pick up.

Talking of Boyce Richardson. See this film he made in the 1970s, note how one of the Cree is resting the land on which his trap lines are on to let it recover. There is a better description in the book I referenced. I could give far more references, but space is short here. See how I use references and evidence for my points.
http://www.nfb.ca/film/cree_hunters/

Peace, I have my viewpoint and opinions, which have been formed by a lifetime of experience, but I'm fully aware that I don't know everything, and I'm always willing to learn.

You're basically just been sitting back shooting out criticisms, while offering precious little wisdom of your own, probably imagining that you are the lone voice of reason.

The one thing you did say was "more education". That's certainly an original thought. Too bad nobody every thought of *that* before.

Have you seen the videos of how our college kids are behaving lately? The colleges seem to be turning them into spoiled malcontents. I got a degree from a major American university, because that's just what you have to do, but I consider it to be money very poorly spent.

If 7 billion people were using guns to hunt food, it would definitely be a relevant problem. The only reason this shooting is now "recreational" is because we have... shopping malls!

And this is my point. Those cultures survived they way they knew how, to the best their environment allowed them to. It was not some innate knowledge, or even learned knowledge. They never ran into the issues of more advanced societies because the conditions that existed never allowed their populations to grow to that point.

These people were not selectively culling their stock to maintain a sustainable balance with the ecosystem, they simply couldn't grow any bigger. Any place on the earth that was capable of sustaining large populations by way of farming or other more advanced types of societies had those types of societies. Some failed, ours didn't, we grew, and now our actions have effects no hunter gatherer could have guessed, beyond the fact that it destroyed their own way of life.