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COMMENTARY
August 12, 2009
The information
Ah, summer. I am returning from a week of it -- during which, as ever on such occasions, I did my best to remain uninformed about developments in the world at large; to become better informed instead about topics such as birds, and fish. Though once again, my best wasn't good enough. Merely check for e-mail, and one is freed immediately from illusions about freedom from the world.The world has got you, baby, and it will hang on until the day you die. Unless you can reserve a little space for retirement within your own soul, there will be no peace. Prayer alone can reserve this; including the prayer you may not realize that you are already praying. No amount of travel can get you there: as I observe of the urban people, when they go on vacation. Granted, I am a mystical Catholic nutjob, but I can't help thinking they'd be wiser just to attend daily mass; which is cheaper, too. For the collection plate is passed only on Sundays. As I have argued, almost ad nauseam in this space, contemporary western man has replaced religion with a quasi-religion: a fanatic moral relativism founded upon the cosmology suggested by Darwinism. Instead of faith in God, we have a neurotic scientism. And with that comes a grievous concern about the world, and all the distress of environmentalism. For if you don't think God is in charge, it may follow that we are in charge. We must regulate everything: even the weather. That, anyway, is the connection I can see between our contemporary quasi-religion and its conventional expression in leftwing politics -- including the international missionary outreach for "global warming." Man, having found a vacancy in the divine order, has appointed himself to fill it. It follows that we must be constantly informed, and posted on every environmental threat. For as the New God -- the Cosmic Obama -- we have many responsibilities, and one of them is to rule nature. In a sane world, this husbanding would devolve chiefly upon the self-regulating individual. Convinced that little pleasure can be derived from doing so, people would not wish to live like comic-book pigs, wallowing in unnecessary consumption; including the consumption of unnecessary information. This, anyway, is the implicit argument of a blogger I found while trying to source a delightful study on the environmental impact of alternative media. A certain Kris De Decker, of Barcelona, Spain, moderates and posts "Low-tech Magazine: Doubts on Technology." He flagged, then summarized the preliminary findings of a certain Swedish Royal Institute of Technology. They specifically compared the environmental impact of an electronic publication, to that of an old-fashioned newspaper or magazine. If all life-cycle factors are considered, the evidence seems to suggest, old-fashioned paper products use less energy and do less harm. The study called attention to several points generally overlooked: that, for instance, once an old-fashioned paper is printed and distributed, the environmental damage is done. Any number of people can now read the thing. Whereas, once the same is posted on the Internet, the damage must increase. Each new reader adds to it. Moreover, as I like to add, old landfilled newspapers, and the monstrous international accumulation of back copies of the National Geographic, constitute a global carbon sink that may soon rival the Amazon rainforest. Whereas, there is no upside to the consumption of electronic information. It just burns energy, and never more intensely than in the manufacture of the high-tech equipment through which it is exchanged. And that stuff, in turn, creates lethal disposal issues. The conclusion to which the Low-tech Magaziner seems to leap is one I might contest, but not before admiring it. His headline was: "Information damages the environment." At least I would qualify this by saying that information wouldn't do half as much damage if people would stop acting upon it. Crows, and carp. Over my "lost week" I tried to assimilate as much information as possible on these two subjects. The proportion that came from books, as opposed to direct observation, was high. (The books are mostly "keepers," however.) It is my proud boast that, having learnt what I could in the available time about crows, and carp, I will not act on the information. As the most responsible imaginable environmental agent, I am contented just to know. To know, among other things, that an adult crow is smarter than the average birdwatcher, and that an adult carp is smarter than the average angler -- at least within the animals' respective areas of expertise. To know, as an end in itself, and seldom to intervene: this strikes me as a plausible, even Taoist ideal. "Et cognoscetis veritatem," as we say in Latin ("and you will know the truth"): knowledge itself tends to set one free; but if and only if it is a knowledge of the truth, and of the truth worth knowing. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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