Assumptions Guide Technologies: Environmental Rain Dance

Many years ago, there were certain cultures that suffered from famine, which was the ensuing result of drought. Like many encapsulated societies, their reaction to this kind of tragedy was a mixture of their empirical understanding of the world around them and how that understanding was framed by their underlying worldview assumptions. The result of this mixture, a rain dance, which sought to exert a measure of control over the weather and thus control over the impact that weather had on their lives. The belief that this kind of control was possible (given the proper execution of the rain dance) undoubtedly had two effects: First, to give hope that drought and all of its negative consequences could be avoided in the future; secondly, a sense of frustration focused on those who were identified as, not having done the rain dance properly in the past and thus, bringing on the drought. The philosophical world view component of, the weather is subject to us rather than we are subject to the weather, may have produced a positive feeling, but ultimately served as a distraction from the technological development of these societies. Instead of developing centralized graineries, and effective food preservation technologies to mitigate the impacts of drought, they developed ever increasingly elaborate rain dances to control drought in the first place, and social pressure for non participation in these rain dances. These technologically underdeveloped societies have lost prevalence; however, some of these world view components (which existed in other societies as well) still boil right under the surface of modern day thought. Why not, after all, they do a produce a positive self image.

Multicultural Minute
Multicultural dogma would demand that after identifying a potential flaw that I now write twice as much about the beauties of these cultures to give a positive perception and nice feeling. Of course, there are many positive things that can be said about these cultures. However, the digression to bow down to multicultural idols would distract from the historical lessons that could be potentially drawn from a rain dance. I will therefore, simply ask for the reader’s benefit of the doubt that my point here is not to pick on other cultures.


Back to the Point
The underlying assumption that we control our own destiny, or more descriptively, that humanity is only accountable to its own actions, is alive and well in society today. Many people’s sense of hope is built largely on this assertion. It promotes a convenient paradigm of identifying, punishing and altering the behavior of the proverbial bad guy, and everything will be OK. Additionally, it provides the opportunity for the individual to engage in a few simple rain dance steps, in order to feel like a champion of the next new noble cause. However, most importantly, this assumption serves as framework to organize individual empirically understood facts about the world around us.

The above discussed world view component affects the conclusion of many issues in society today, it is probably most easily seen in the debate of global warming. A hundred or so years of modern meteorology records a change in the trends of weather patterns. Geologic data points to climate change over an even longer period of time. History gives accounts of differing regions having differing climates during past ages. Astronomers mathematically predicted the effects of temperature in relation to the sun and the axis of our planet’s rotation. However, my emphasis here is not to regurgitate a litany of scientific data, but rather to call into question the philosophical framework that organizes that data into conclusions. Like the medicine man of old, who designed the evolution of steps in the rain dance, environmental fundamentalists of today would manipulate scientific data, to win popular support by proclaiming that they have a formula to exert control over weather and our climate. Of course, contemporary climate control will require a new kind of rain dance. One with funding and research that has an emphasis on the acquisition on the modern day bad guy, 'carbon', and thus empowering us to subjugate the weather.

While this belief system massages the feel good assumption that humanity has total control over the consequences it bears; it ultimately may only prove as useful as the rain dance. An alternative set of assumptions that rejects that we are our own gods and that we are in fact subject to forces bigger than ourselves, would have different conclusions when evaluating the same set of scientific data. These conclusions would not be focused around the philosophical emphasis of developing technologies to control climate (rain dance), but rather, would be focused on the development of technologies that would mitigate the impact of climate change (food preservation). For example, the average American consumes a lot of Idaho potatoes, what are we going to do when or if the climate of Idaho no longer supports the production of potatoes? Understandably, this kind of question might frighten the residents of Idaho; and distract them from the rain dance of, 'don’t worry about it, we don’t have to deal with that problem, if only we follow the plans of Al Gore and get those bad guys who aren’t doing the rain dance right'.