our friends/peers say and think (in-group bias) which narrows our boundaries considerably.
The first principles, synthesis, and implications in this book will be perceived by people in different ways, depending on their starting vantage point, education, current focus, temperament, and other attributes. As a person looks around themselves, they naturally tend to focus on the issues that seem closest and most urgent. This does not mean that other issues — which require wider, longer term boundaries of analysis — are less important. It just means they are less prominent in our focus. We all tend to be near-sighted. Some readers of this book will zero in on the “end of growth” implications for their own family. Some readers will try to prepare their local region better for energy and fiscal depletion. And others (perhaps) will choose to engage with human mischief related to the ongoing and accelerating sixth great extinction. There is no right or wrong perspective. There are simply different boundaries of analysis, stakes, and concerns. The above graphic shows these different boundaries in a hypothetical manner. A normal person cares about all the things listed, but it is the human default to focus on the near-term and things closest to our own perceived self-interest. We need to be aware of the wider boundary implications as well. TaaL: While it may not always be apparent in my comments, I am a great fan of humans. There is no shame in being a younger intelligent species which is doing its best to work out the universe, life, and everything. My participation here is specifically to add the perspective of a species which faced many of the same problems and found a workable path to overcome them. This will, unavoidably, mean contrasting our successful paths with the paths you are now choosing, so I hope you’ll take my input in the spirit intended. The “boundaries of analysis” I advocate will tend to reflect the desirability of survival as a species into a deep time future, living a very large number of happy lives on a world with healthy and productive ecosystems; and how the pursuit of immediate self-gratification and the action it spawns will cause a world-dominating species to fall afoul of achieving meaningful deep time survival f or your progeny. So, I guess I’m a wide -boundary type of alien.
The Bottom Line: There are likely many different answers to a problem depending on where one draws the boundaries.
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