for - definition - human climate niche

• for: quote, quote - Stowe Boyd, quote - progress trap, quote - unintended consequences, unintended consequences, progress trap, cultural evolution, technology - futures, futures - technology, progress trap
• quote:
  • Technological change is an accelerant and acts on the social ills like pouring gasoline on a fire
• author: Sowe Boyd
  • consulting futurist on technological evolution and the future of work
• paraphrase
  • In an uncontrolled hyper-capitalist society,
    • the explosion in technologies over the past 30 years has only
      • widened inequality,
      • concentrated wealth and
      • led to greater social division.
    • And it is speeding up with the rise of artificial intelligence,
      • which like globalization has destabilized Western industrial economies while admittedly pulling hundreds of millions elsewhere out of poverty.
  • And the boiling exhaust of this set of forces is pushing the planet into a climate catastrophe. -The world is as unready for hundreds of millions of climate refugees as it was for the plague.
  • However, some variant of social media will likely form the context for the rise of a global movement to stop the madness
    • which I call the Human Spring
  • which will be more like
    • Occupy or
    • the Yellow Vests
  • than traditional politics.
  • I anticipate a grassroots movement
    • characterized by
      • general strikes,
      • political action,
      • protest and
      • widespread disruption of the economy
    • that will confront the economic and political system of the West.
  • Lead by the young, ultimately this will lead to large-scale political reforms, such as
    • universal health care,
    • direct democracy,
    • a new set of rights for individuals and
    • a large set of checks on the power of
      • corporations and
      • political parties.
  • For example,
    • eliminating corporate contributions to political campaigns,
    • countering monopolies and
    • effectively accounting for economic externalities, like carbon.

A somewhat indirect construction of human? Language is located in the mind? Therefore, humans have minds that they use for language? Or language that they use for minds?

Articulate:

Definition: (noun) Having or showing the ability to speak fluently and coherently; having joints or jointed segments; (verb) pronounce (something) clearly and distinctly; express (an idea or feeling) fluently and coherently; form a joint.

Origin: Mid-16th century: from Latin articulatus, past participle of articulare ‘divide into joints, utter distinctly’, from articulus ‘small connecting part.’

So while words vary widely and have no direct relation to the ideas they represent, tone is universal. Here we have another claim about the human: it is one who uses tone in a certain way.

This seems like a break from Locke, and possibly even from Hume.

A hu(man) has things other than ideas running through its mind.

Limitations are being set. If organs cannot be affected or if the affect isn't "sensible", what of the one experiencing it?

Oxford reference: "Not common sense in its ordinary meaning, but in Aristotle (De Anima, II, 1–2) and following him Aquinas and others, a central cognitive function that integrates and monitors the delivery of the other distinct senses, as when a shape is both seen and felt."

Kant discusses this concept extensively, but his definition is closer to "common sense" than Aristotle's.

Locke assumes that such a person does not exist, defining human as "one who understands all simple modes/ideas."

Restrictions on intelligibility and comprehension, which by extension imply a restriction on what's human or universal

i.e. one story's version of being human compared to another.Similar to what I was saying in the prior paragraph.

This brings us back to the point that the definition of human is similar to the definition of rhetoric. The more you try to define either, the more confusing and exclusionary each can get. Just like rhetoric, there is no one way to define human, but instead you stack all definitions on top of each other, without one superseding the others. The definitions are also situational, like Le Guin being human by this definition, but not by the previous one about killing.

Le Guin gives a definition of what it means to be human; the idea of theorists that humans must kill. Then, she makes it clear that this isn't the only definition of human, considering she's human and wouldn't/couldn't act in such a way. Then there's this awesome and gross little paragraph about women possibly not being human, but rather, defective and unworthy of having a say. Ouch.