Bit of a threadjack, but in relation to nasomomdele’s comment on the hypocrisy of many liberals, this thought dawned on me the other day, “I have never heard a liberal, ie Al Gore, or any other celebrity, ask Las Vegas to turn off the lights (anybody been to Times Square at night?.) I wonder how much energy that would save? No, they yell at me for putting a 75 watt normal bulb in the lamp on the nightstand.”

1) I write Environmental Impact Statements for a living
2) I am currently studying early 20th-century strategies to fix social problems through Utopian physical planning

These may not seem too relevant, but bear with me. The second reason has been tugging at me lately because of the outcomes of the planning that took place. The most enduring theory was that of the “Neighborhood Unit”- a model plan that is very prevelant today although in a different way, whose goal was to provide “community” both in physical and social structure.

Frankly, it was a plan for marginalizing the ostracizing effects of the automobile. The community needed to be saved from new isolating forces. Technology had begun to have detrimental effects on social activity. (Robert Putnam’s “Bowling Alone” is a great read on this subject)

The first reason I cited relates in that I have dealt a lot with analyzing environmental impacts, including social impacts. More interesting is the planning guidance that I am writing for Federal environmental agencies (BLM, DOA, etc.). The enabling legislation for management of public lands espouses the two-fold mission of “multiple use” and “sustained yield”, basically meaning anything is allowed, except where it is not allowed because it has a negative impact.

What is more interesting is that some of the strongest environmental regulations are not based on scientific information. Critical Habitats and such are scientifically analyzed and managed, but Visual Resources and Cultural Resources are protected outside of scientific methods. In fact, Federal agencies prioritize such protections, regardless of the basis- be it scientific or otherwise. So there is precedent for a kind of “moral” protection of family as a critical unit of society.

One large hurdle for such a thing is legally defining “family”, which would inevitably lead to a high drama argument.

What’s more, society rejects moral protections for families as well as indidviduals. Drug, Alcohol, and tobacco use are acceptable to a large portion of society, regardless of the obvious negative impacts. For example, if there is a study out there that correlates homosexuality (a supposed detractor to the family) with HIV (health impact) or promiscuity (harmful psychological impacts) or otherwise, there would be outcry of bigotry and rejection of the science.

Interestingly, many such two-faced people argue for “sustainable” practices to save the environment for our children while destroying themselves as the families and providers for our children in the name of selfishness or some platform of “zero population”.

Frankly, we are too fickle a world at this point to protect ourselves. We are self-destructive and hypocritical, liars, and all that kind of stuff. Sam hits it right on, though I would say politics is the religion of our time- science is a convenient as a support, mostly because of its Godless nature.

The stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep. The old channels cannot contain it and in its search for new ones there seems to be growing havoc and destruction along its banks. [Here] I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated. “What’s new?” is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow. I would like, instead, to be concerned with the question “What is best?,” a question which cuts deeply rather than broadly, a question whose answers tend to move the silt downstream. (page eight)

Another ecology metaphor! Riparian zones (that is, the places where flowing water meets its earthen bank) are among the most fertile and diverse parts of our ecology. Some agitation of the banks is necessary and good, yet these ecosystems are also remarkably fragile. Pirsig believes, and I agree, that we have too much silt and too little banking happening in the wide-flowing, shallow stream of cultural consciousness.
This thought made me think about something another of my heroes, Daniel Boorstin, frequently spoke of. He called “the fertile verge,” a place (as he put it) where “something and something else” encounter each other. Such encounters were the source of American creativity and strength. This blog post makes the connection to Web 2.0. I agree, but Boorstin, as writer of the seminal book The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events would also have cautioned about the downside.

I also appreciated the quote from George Orwell in Postman’s “Informing Ourselves to Death” that you linked to above.
Another possible conclusion is one expressed by George Orwell — also about 50 years
ago — when he remarked that the average person today is about as naive as was the
average person in the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages people believed in the authority of
their religion, no matter what. Today, we believe in the authority of our science, no
matter what.
I daresay that the number of those clinging to their science and their politics seems to be ever increasing. Unfortunately many of these do not use any filter to protect them from the contaminants therein.