Final Fantasy and Philosophy Essay 5

[strifehart]

OK, so sorry guys about the lateness of this post. I meant to put it up earlier but I forgot/got busy. Anyways, here goes....

Essay 5 dealt once again with the Gaia hypothesis, but mainly with respect to the movie "The Spirits Within". Gaia hypothesis, as explained in the fourth essay, is a theory presented by James Lovelock. Lovelock presents it as a metaphor to establish the interconnectedness and self-regulating nature of the Earth.

The essay compares the positions held by Aki Ross and General Hein. Aki's being an eco-friendly one and Hein's being an anti-Gaia position. Of course, these positions are manifested in their actions, trying to destroy the Phantoms using brute force as opposed to "putting them to rest" by exposing them to a bio-etheric wave to cancel them out.

The most interesting part of the essay comes from the role we, as humans, have in the Gaia hypothesis. The author notes that most of Western philosophy/religion in anthropocentric, greatly privileging humans over all other living creatures. If the Gaia hypothesis says that no one creature is valued more over any other, and all serve to simply maintain the biostasis of the world, then most of human philosophy and religion is at odds with the Gaia hypothesis. This is where environmental ethics enters the discussion.

Should we be more conscious of our effect on the world? Aki would say yes. Gaia's self-maintenance is fragile and she doesn't need us messing it up.

Hein would say we don't have to. I think we're all in agreement that the environment is important, so I wont bother asking what you guys think about that.

BUT, what's more interesting to me is how we function within the Gaia hypothesis. What if we're just a small perturbation? A push towards one side. Does that mean Gaia will put forth an opposite reaction to bring it back to the status quo. Does that mean, naturally wiping out humanity?

Lovelock says that we can't help/assimilate into Gaia until we give up our anthropocentric views. How do we start treating the non-human world as being as important as us? Our nature is to say "what's good for us is good for us and to hell with everything else".

More importantly, contrary to our own perception, humans are really an insignificant speck on the timeline of Gaia. So do we really matter? Will anything we do matter in the long run?

Unfortunately, I didn't feel like this essay tied in well to the Final Fantasy series. Of course, environmental ethics could be applied to any of the games, so feel free to do so. Use support from the games to back up your viewpoints. So I guess my final question would be "where do we see environmental ethics coming into play in the game series?"

 

[Rydrum2112]

Clearly I think 7 deals with the environment, and how it is treated. In the game- "using" nature is bad a la shinra extracting power from the planet.

I think 10 sort of does tangentially, the preachers of yevon say using technology is bad and only natural things are good (why al bhed are outcasts).

 

[strifehart]

OOoooh interesting. I'm glad you brought up Yevon and the people of spira. I never really connected al bhed to the whole gaia hypothesis thing. obviously they aren't "evil" in the way general hein sorta is, but that is definitely interesting. I think they absolutely personify the whole technology/humanity as a plague side of the argument, but the way FFX presents the conflict is all backwards. Yevon ends up being the evil and the Al Bhed are actually allies, and shouldn't be outcasts. Interesting...

 

[CHIP]

I agree with Hein's and Aki's positions to different extents. I believe it is important that we are conscious of the effect we have on the environment. Our anthropocentric mentality means we are only concerned about our own self-advancement at the exclusion of all other species.

I think, to some extent, it is human nature for us to belligerently dominate other species and to suck the environment of resources for our own selfish endeavours, it's probably a disposition programmed into our genes. As Agent Smith suggests in the Matrix, human behaviour is comparable to that of a virus, we simply move from one location to the next, carelessly using up natural resources and leaving destruction in our wake. Ultimately I think we need to change our behaviour and put more emphasis on encouraging to foster a more symbiotic relationship with nature and to do that, first and foremost, I think we need to be aware that an ever-increasing population will only put more stress on the environment and so we should focus on controlling that (obviously through ethical means), and end our dependence on hydrocarbons in favour of renewable energy.

In the last thread I brought up negative feedback and described how negative feedbacks must predominate positive feedbacks otherwise stability (of the eco-system) would not be maintained. Someone replied by saying that the greenhouse effect was a positive feedback because it caused ice to melt which lowered the reflectivity of the planet and reduced its ability to reflect sunlight away into space, however, this ignores the fact that as temperatures increase, more water is evaporated from the oceans which eventually condense into clouds and thus increases the albedo of the planet keeping the temperature within relatively narrow bounds. Therefore even though the melting of ice as a result of increased warming by the greenhouse effect is a positive feedback, it is only one feedback in a system of many individual and complex feedbacks.

Another example of negative feedback in the eco-system would be of predators and prey. A predator's ability to survive is solely dependent on the amount of food that exists. If the predator hunts too much and pushes its prey too close to extinction, negative feedback will take effect and the predator will start to die-off because its food-source is too greatly diminshed, and this thus allows the prey the opportunity to repopulate and keeps things inherently balanced. This strikes me as something that will probably happen to us sooner or later. We will eventually use up all the natural resources until the planet can no longer sustain the ever-increasing population, and consequently, negative feedback will kick in, our population will diminish and the eco-system will naturally restore equilibrium.

 

[strifehart]

I'm not 100% sure that our population will diminish if/when we use up our natural resources. Something tells me that we'll figure out a way to prevent that from happening. I mean, how many times have we had an energy scare, or "all our oil is running out" or "there's not enough food for everybody", but for some reason, we either develop better technologies or drill deeper, etc. Of course, I'm looking at the welfare of the world as a whole from a very narrow perspective (that of the western world). I'm not considering the gross poverty (increasing) in undeveloped nations.

 

[Rydrum2112]

Chip, look at mars and venus, they are results of positive feedback loops. Closer to home- pretty much every "evolutionary arms race."

More importantly, I want to touch on something else you mentioned. You mention 2 things, one the negative-feedback loop of predators and prey & we will use up all the natural resources. Their is a HUGE reason why the analogy of predators and prey doesn't work for us humans. As far as we know we are the only species to be able to think about true "what if's" that is hypothesizing about the future events. Making us capable of seeing long-term future events and allowing us to avert them.

I think strifeheart has a point, necessity is mother of invention. How do we not know someone will come up with an awesome solution.

Also if we use up our resources there is no garuntee that the eco-system will return to equillibrium.

 

[CHIP]

Chip, look at Mars and Venus, they are results of positive feedback loops. Closer to home- pretty much every "evolutionary arms race."

I am familiar with James Hansen's theory of a runaway greenhouse effect occurring on Venus due to positive feedbacks, don't know about Mars, but it does contain around the same amount of CO2 as Venus - about 97% - and is paradoxically 450°C colder. I don't think anyone can really say with certainty that the superabundance of CO2 on Venus' is a result of any positive feedback loop since no-one was measuring atmospheric concentrations of CO2 billions of years ago, were they? Therefore the theory is not a result of empirical observation but speculative conjecture. Either way, the atmospheres of these different bodies have different chemistries to our planet so any direct comparisons are meaningless.

If you look at rock-strata paleoclimate data you'll see that over the last 600 million years there has only been a 10°C global average temperature variation despite super volcanoes, 7000ppm (parts per million) of CO2 (today's concentration stands at 388ppm), continental shifts, and meteor strikes, so we know that a small perturbation of CO2 is not enough to cause the planet to go into a runaway greenhouse and that something is clearly stabilising our atmosphere and keeping the temperature within narrow bounds which would support the idea of a net-negative feedback system. If the positive feedbacks in the climate system overwhelmed the negative feedbacks the planet would have been doomed millions of years ago.

Their is a HUGE reason why the analogy of predators and prey doesn't work for us humans. As far as we know we are the only species to be able to think about true "what if's" that is hypothesizing about the future events. Making us capable of seeing long-term future events and allowing us to avert them."

My point is, if we farm the forests too quickly for them to re-grow and use up too much natural resources, sooner or later there won't be enough food and resources to support the ever-growing population and humans will start to die off. I don't believe this will happen, although I see no reason why it could not happen if we continue down our reckless path.

Also if we use up our resources there is no garuntee that the eco-system will return to equillibrium."

Why not? It does consistently after every 100,000 glaciation (periods where most of the planet is covered in ice and photosynthetic organisms are few and far between).

 

[Prince Doza]

Yep, the planet will be just fine, as a species, well I consider it amazing that we got this far!