LeftAndRightAndEntropy

ThoughtStorms Wiki

MichelBauwens characterises the shift in the modern left and right as to a distinction between constraint limited thinking (left driven by eco-concerns) and right (driven by infinite growth assumptions)

https://4thgenerationcivilization.substack.com/p/the-great-entropy-debate-why-the?r=3zjg0

Bauwens wants to promote a third narrative. Though it's not entirely clear (at least to me) what it entails in concrete terms.

I have argued that the left largely became the Party of Entropy after 1989, abandoning the “politics of paradise” for a politics of limits and grievance. The right largely became the Party of Denial, embracing an atavistic extropianism that refuses to acknowledge ecological realities. Both are insufficient and represent, in my humble opinion, wrong turns for humanity.
What is needed is a Third Narrative that recognizes both the entropic constraints of thermodynamics but just as much the extropic nature of social and natural evolution. Indeed, there is no doubt that there is a complexification going on in the universe, from a world of matter, which became the world of life, and which, through human culture, became a world of consciousness, to which in time, more and more complex technological artefacts were added.

My personal view is that life is a dissipative system so implies some entropy. Humans get a, generous, energy budget from the sun. Which could, in principle give us the ability to live well both on Earth and within the wider solar system. OTOH, other stars are so far away that we can effectively ignore them for the next few thousand years.

Therefore:

we should focus, right now, on the shift to using solar (and other sun-based renewables like wind). While doing as little damage as possible to the rest of the ecosystem
this does involve a mind-set, governed by the idea that we ARE trying to become sustainable within the sun's energy budget. And explicitly rejecting infinite growth.
our job is to ensure humanity's survival and thriving on Earth. Our children's job is to ensure the same for the solar system. And if manage that, we can safely leave interstellar civilisation to our descendents a couple of thousand years into the future.

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