I have almost completely lost the urge to write on this blog. I guess I'm writing this easy post to keep busy, as Arthur Schopenhauer recommended. So those of you waiting for updates to the Flatland series may be waiting for some while. We'll see. My motivation has disappeared, which may betoken my acceptance (at last!) of this crock of shit called the Human Condition.
There is a new series on PBS called EARTH: A New Wild. The "new wild" is new because there is no wild. There is no wild because "people are everywhere" (video below).
The series was written by and features the naturalist and conservationist Dr. M. Sanjayan. Ample evidence exists which demonstrates that thousands and thousands of other species are fucked, and Sanjayan is familiar with that evidence, but that is not the story Dr. M wants to tell
To his credit, Sanjayan tries to bring humans into the picture. Unfortunately, that's where things start to unravel, because over and over again Dr. M makes the point that Other Species Have Value To Humans, and thus his underlying questions are always the same:
Can't we peacefully co-exist with these other species? Surely we can, right? Isn't it in our best interest to do so?
You know, the very species we're driving to extinction. Sanjayan avoids this unpleasant fact, preferring instead to focus on Stories of Hope.
In the opening video, called "Home," at the 54:35 mark, Dr. M asks the crucial question:
Does that mean that every species of animal needs to have a specific [economic] value to [humans] if it is to survive in the new wild?
"No," says Dr. M, because there's an exception! What about Panda bears? You know, those cute and cuddly toy-like, highly anthropomorphized teddy bears. They have no value to us that we know of!
Sigh. I covered this ground in Part II of Adventures In Flatland, so you might review that if you're not depressed enough already.
Still, the series is not worthless. At the 12:20 mark of the second video, called "Plains," Dr. M gives us the skinny on the Saiga antelope populations (species Saiga tatarica) in southern Asia, a range spanning Russian Kalmykia , Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and western China.
Unfortunately, their horns are so valuable as Chinese medicine, that, after the break-up of the Soviet Union, unpoliced poaching reduced the Saiga herds from 2,000,000 to only 20,000.
Aline Kühl hopes that her research into Saiga reproduction can help us protect one of the fastest declining species on Earth.
Dr. M's numbers are a little off. According to the IUCN, the critically endangered Saiga shows the following population trend.
Historically, this was a common species in Eurasian steppes and semi-deserts. From information provided in recent references it appears that between 1991 and 1994, the global population of S. tatarica was relatively stable at just under one million animals, the majority of which were in Kazakhstan (approximately 810,00–825,000) (Bekenov et al. 1998, Lushchekina et al. 1999, Sokolov and Zhirnov 1998). However, the population in Kazakhstan had fallen to around 570,000 animals by 1998 (A.B. Bekenov and Iu. A. Grachev, in litt. to ASG).
In European Russia (Kalmykia), the Saiga population steeply declined after land reclamation of the Volga basin started, but the species remained numerous within the distribution area. In the 1970s the population recovered to ca.700,000–800,000 as a result of hunting regulation. However, since then the population has drastically declined. In 1980 there were an estimated 380,000 individuals, in 1996 there were 196,000, and by 2000 just 26,000 (see Milner-Gulland et al. 2001 for annual survey results for 1980–2000). At present there are no more than 18,000 animals in Kalmykia. Sex ratio is severely skewed; the proportion of males varies from 1 to 10% in different years.
The population of Mongolian Saiga increased from ca. 3,000 in 1998, to 5,200 in 2000 helped by favourable climatic conditions and active conservation measures by WWF–Mongolia. Numbers fell between 2000 and 2002 as a result of severe winters and summer drought. They continued to decline in 2002–2003, mainly because of poaching. Numbers were ca. 1,020 in 2003, and 750 in January 2004 (J. Chimeg, in litt.).
In total, the global population of Saiga is now estimated at ca.50,000, down from 1,250,000 in the mid-1970s, with most animals found in Kazakhstan.
No doubt that is more information than you wanted to know
The title of this post comes from a 2004 Conservation News story about the Saiga slaughter called Teetering on the Brink but Still Cause for Hope.
Doesn't that title basically sum up the Human Condition? I think it does.
If you filter out the hardwired hope, and focus on the ongoing destruction of other species, there is lots to learn about the Sixth Extinction in this new PBS series. I highly recommend it, not only for its subject matter, but as an excellent introduction to Flatland.
I have said it before and I will say it again -- you are made of sterner stuff than I. I tuned in to about five minuets of the first episode and there were Masai racing around in Land Rovers, wearing night vision goggles, so as to live in peace with the local Lion Pride.
Well after that I just thought: "I am sure Dave will be tuning in and if he said there is a point of subjecting myself to this I will find out then".
By the way, my commie friends, have an expression for the point you made at the end of your post.
When supporters of other political lines do what the commies consider to be, a good job covering some particular exploitation or social oppression, while at the same time showing-up the limitation of a non-party line analysis of said exploitation/oppression, they call that "good exposure".
The masses start out with "good exposure". It prepares the masses for the correct party line, by allowing party supporters to struggle with them, by showing them the draw-backs of non-class analysis of "the exploitation and oppression the system generates".
Perhaps I need to find better introductory "good exposure" before I bring up Flatland. But then, the capacity for ever being able to see Flatland is more then likely genetically determined. Education can overcome "false consciousness" resulting from a particular socialization but it can never rewire consciousness itself.
Posted by: Wheelerlucas | 02/13/2015 at 04:11 PM