Domain: ishmael.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to ishmael.com.
Comments · 32
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Re:governments trying to control information
hmm, last time I checked, food grows on trees. (It really does!
... and each tree makes lots of food)
BUT MOST IMPORTANT: the food supply defines our population, not the other way around.
see
http://media.anthropik.com/pdf/hopfenberg2003.pdf
http://www.potluck.com/offerings/increase.shtml
http://www.ishmael.com/Education/Science/index.sht ml -
Re:Find a better name.
Now I'm confused, how does haggling give dignity to anyone in the process?
It makes the other person a *person*, instead of just a consumer or a worker or a businessman. The extended conversation of the haggling means that you see your "opponent" as a human being, instead of merely a faceless number.
If my abilty to get the best price (or a fair price) depends on my ability to negotiate, I don't ever want to live in that society.
I'd probably be at a bit of a disadvantage also- being autistic. But that would come back to doing business with people I KNOW, vs people I don't.
I'm not sure how you can expect to buy say a bushel of wheat for a different price from two vendors, all the free market requires is that you can not buy wheat, that several vendors sell it (perhaps two grades or brands), and that you can substitute barley or corn.
But with certain things you can't- which goes back to my other argument on rarity of the item. How easily can you suddenly go from gasoline to biodiesel? Not very easily, though both are fuels that do exactly the same job. That's what I mean by a captive market, rather than a free one. Price gouging exists in captive markets simply because it CAN. Under a truly free market, price gouging will never exist- because you can get the exact same product from a different vendor and/or haggle for a different price.
Markets can transact in security (I'm thinking of several ways to do it now), but by design they cannot be security. Human nature cannot offer you security no matter how it's organized.
Incorrect- for the first several thousand years on this planet we granted every human being some measure of security. All it takes to grant people security is local production to the consumer, and ownership of one's own means of production. Security does NOT require price fixing- in fact, price fixing is against human security. See Daniel Quinn's writings for more information on how tribal societies create security.
I choose a market based system because they are the that works well knowing that all the other actors are flawed and selfish, rather than a system that depends on them not being selfish. I wish they weren't but barring the Mellinial reign I don't think human society will find that on it's own.
And yet, we have, in the past- sometimes for tens of thousands of years at a whack. We expect such security because we evolved to expect it. We're called to not be selfish- we evolved to form small societies that do work. Expecting larger societies to work is the mistake; and a rather new one at that, at least in geological time scales. -
It's a beginning...
This is the first time I've seen anyone really discussing this. I'm glad to see it. This is going to be an extrememly important issue in our lifetimes.
Good reading: http://www.ishmael.com/Education/Writings/The_New_ Renaissance.shtml
And some great books: http://www.newtribalventures.com/ntv/market/catego ry.cfm?Category=11#72 -
Re:Not because you think, but...
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Re:Alpha Centauri
I didn't like Alpha Centauri because I disagree with most of the ideology that the game is based on. I don't personally believe in the Gaia hypothesis (i.e. the planet itself is alive) or that the ultimate goal of humanity is to leave our bodies and become one with some machine, and that the only way to keep order is through blatant mind control of "drones". It had an elitist feel about it that really left a bad taste in my mouth.
It sounds like you got a little confused with the game's "ideology". Let me explain.
First of all, Alpha Centauri is not Earth/Sol. The planet isn't alive because of some application of the Gaia hypothesis (which I am not sure you actually understand, no offense), it's alive because there is a living fungal neural network covering the surface, under the seas, and buried within the crust (and there is more than a suggestion that the fungus was engineered by aliens for this purpose at least half a billion years ago). It's not an application of the Gaia hypothesis, it's a living alien creature of vast power...
The transcendence goal is merely one possible win situation - there are at least five of them. Plenty of them have no man-machine component whatsoever. One of them is to seize control over the world economy, for example, or to be elected head of all other factions. And it is important to note that even after transcendence, people are given the choice to keep their bodies and remain how they are. Nobody transcends because they are forced to - how could that possibly work?
The game itself is a little unclear over what drones are - they are basically just unhappy people and function as that ingame, but there are definitely techologies that create stuff like genejack drones that are slaves (usage of this tech is completely optional of course, and gives harsh penalties). But if you don't like drones, just don't let any of your people become unhappy (which is hardly impossible).
Even more important than all of the little details is the game's stance on all of this "ideology". The Alpha Centauri game itself is entirely a struggle over just what kind of ideology is most correct for humanity in the future. The game and its developers don't know the answers, and they completely realized that. Certain leaders you can play are utterly opposed to the trascendence goal, the planet being treated fairly because of its intelligence, or the usage of drones. There is an ambivalence about nearly every "advancement" the game features. All ideologies in the game have disadvantages of some kind. The game simply doesn't preach or force on the player some kind of ideology - it gives you choices to create the future how you believe it should be. The game is about exploring different future societies and how they would interact with each other.
It also just happens to be the best turn-based computer strategy game in existence. Nothing else beats its gameplay.
I actually have a slight problem with most 4X games and their (unspoken) ideology, and that's because they all seem to subscribe to the basic Taker mythology (essentially, the world is made for man alone). Alpha Centauri is more agreeable than most, though, because it is isn't about Earth, man needs to expand at least a little just to survive as a species, and the game does allow you to succeed without conquering the whole biosphere. -
Re:This is Microsoft's new competitive strategyThis really worries me because if blatant fraud and deceit become accepted business practices that are allowed to succeed, what does that say about the state of our civilization?
Oh I can answer that. We probably have 20 to 50 years left of civilization before it completely tears itself apart at the seams. If the end of cheap oil doesn't kill us, then our overly aggressive, competitive, and consumptive habits will finish the trick. These patent based "attacks" by Microsoft serve as a warning about a much deeper malady of the human condition. If human greed continues unchecked, we have no chance at all.
Good Luck
crulx
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Re:Good Idea
This is the kinda thing Genetic Engineering and Modification should be going into, not for Cheaper prices in the supermarket, or Glowing fish, Lets see more food in starving country's, Less Landmines, and other ways to improve life,
Of course, thats whats been said about just about any new or improved technology in the last what, 30 years?
No let's not see more food. Let's see more contraceptives. The problem isn't that there isn't enough food, it's that there are too many people for the land to supply. Sending food on temporarily solves the symptom of the problem. The problem being overpopulation. It sounds harsh, but in the end fewer people would starve fewer children especially.
Unfortunately I can't take credit for this idea, I read it in Ishmael. -
degrees of stultification
the only degree you get if you don't pay attention
is a degree of stultification and culture too poor to mention!mod me up down or sideways, it doesn't really matter;
better get your RSI on, baby, and indulge in mindless chatter! -
Re:What I don't understandA very insightful post!
While the details surrounding the choices that humanity made 10,000 years ago or so may never get unearthed, we can surmise the nature of the mental change they made by the way it effects human society today. First, we must point out, as you did in your post, that the change that humans made involved thought. Humans before this had very similar genetics to us and non-civilized peoples our culture has met certainly have our intellectual potential, if not the huge knowledge set our culture posesses. So knowing this change has an intellectual basis, we should look for its root ideas. I wish to set out the basic Memes of our civilization.
Meme 1: Humans have a special place in the universe before all other forms of life.
We feel that we no longer need to obey the laws that other animals follow. We feel that we have a âoespecialâ place in the universe, given to us by God for the religious or Reason for the atheist. Our legal system carefully systematizes this distinction between Human and Animal. It pervades most peoplesâ(TM) thoughts without them realizing it.
Meme 2: Our particular civilization has the TRUE way to live.
This way involves a totalitarian form of agriculture in which we constantly choose humans and food for humans over all other forms of life. Chickens must live so foxes must die. Cows must live so wolves must die. Wherever our civilization has gone, we have robbed the local environment to produce food or space for our human species.
Another part of this involves the notion of a âoejobâ. We feel that everyone should make products to sell so that we can buy products. This make product/get product habit encompasses every aspect of life and we have developed many theories to handle it, ie economics. A more realistic understanding of âoeeconomyâ would include the resource limitations put on the system by our environment.
Meme 3: All other humans must live this way.
Humans in this civilization always defend aggressively to the death their system. Even very minor deviances from the current cultural system, be it economic belief, religious belief, or even particular habits can cause massive wars. Whenever we encounter another group of humans, âoemissionariesâ flock to the location in order to indoctrinate these people and give them âoethe one true way.â
The agricultural system ties into it power on this planet. By constantly pushing the Food side of the population equation, we consistently have increased our human population. For 10,000 years we have grown âoemore food for a growing population.â From the look of it, we intent to do that right to the point where we completely outstrip the global environments ability to replenish itself.
Most of you who read this believe these 3 things, even if reading them separately causes you to âoefeel above that.â Please make an effort to rid yourself of these ideas because within them contains the destruction of all of the lifeforms on this planet.
From animist perspective:
Daniel Quinn's Ishmael siteFrom the enlightenment perspective:
J KrishnamurtiFrom the pop culture perspective:
The Matrix -
Ishmael
link
...by Daniel Quinn - no other book changed my life and perspective on it. Seriously amazing and unbelievable. -
Re:The bit I don't understand:
The greatest mistake we could make as a species would be to short-circuit this cycle for the sake of our own greedy, short-sighted interests.
What do you think we are doing now? Were we really meant to transplant hearts, kidneys, etc? Were we really supposed to use radiation to kill cancer?
Ishmael explained it best when he suggested the "Takers" don't want to be at the mercy of the Gods.
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Food Supply and Population GrowthMany of the slashdotter's responses scare me. We have strange arguments about carrying capacity that don't understand that you can OVERSHOOT the carrying capacity by a long shot, through environmental destruction. We have arguments about simply needing more energy, as if we do not require the other life forms on the planet to maintain our oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, water, and a million other biosystems that keep us alive. We have discussions on the first worlds slowing population with assurances that everything will just work itself out when the third world "grows up" which ignore basic scientific law on the subject of population growth.
I will list what I know of population dynamics, in order to show you my point of view.
- Humans beings belong to the animal family. We obey laws of population dynamics like all other animals. That we can effect the situation to take better advantage of biological laws doe not make us immune to their effects.
- All animals have a population size that food supply appears as a principal functor. Any "win" on the amount of food produces a "win" in the population size. "You are what you eat" does not only have meaning as a cliché. It speaks a truth about animal populations. The more we have to eat, the more of us we can make.
- Through our agricultural processes, we have embarked a journey of converting all biomass into human and food for humans. We did this by denying our competition any food. Chickens must live so foxes must die. Cows must live so wolves must die. Corn must live so bugs must die. We currently consume about 200 species a day to make room for humans and food for humans.
- Each year, on average, we produce more food. Each year, on average, we had more children. Our outlook on Nature as an infinite resource meant for human taming covered up the dynamic nature that species depend on each other.
- We require several biosystems to survive. We need oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen to form our atmosphere and grease the wheels of us and other life forms we depend on for food. We need dense plant cover to prevent erosion and facilitate temperate climates. We require fungus and bacterial systems to dispose of waste. Without these systems, we will not survive.
- The only variable of the food/population cycle that we have the strongest control over seems like the food side. Extra food always brings a win on the population side, if not where the food grew then where that food got shipped.
- Thus to reduce the human population in order to stop the consumption of our life support biosystems, we must produce less food.
Even if a 50-year limit seems like an alarmist position, many conservative scientists agree that 100 years looks like the maximum timeframe. Change must happen quickly for us to save a habitat that humanity can live in.
Some possible research materials for you:
http://www.ku.edu/~hazards/foodpop.pdf
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/10/011 02 6074943.htm
http://www.ishmael.com/Education/Science/
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Jt
crulx@iaxs.net -
Re:Space-age tech, cave-man goals.
We don't need better weapons, we somehow need better people.
I find this concept interesting. Are humans inherently flawed? Where does this flaw originate. At some point in our ~ 3 million year existance, we just (out of the blue) grew flaws?
Think about it. Doesn't that strike you as just a little bit odd? Me neither. Until I read a short essay on the origins of our agricultural society.
Take three minutes, read the essay. It might change your perception of where the flaws lie. -
Not caveman nature...
It's agraculturist nature.
The caveman was perfectly willing to live off the spoils of the land. What good is more land, after all? It's only when you need more land to grow more crops to feed your increasing population that the "elimination of everything in your way" becomes important.
How many different tribes of Native Americans are (were) there? Why wasn't there only one? Because they lived off the spoils of the land, and had no reason to eliminate their neighbors. Pick any tribal culture that lives off the land. You'll find the same cultural diversity living in relative peace.
Sure they had skirmishes. If you don't keep your neighbors off balance, they might think you are weak.
It's not caveman nature. They were far less violent than us. It was only with the agricultural revolution that humans decided there is "one right way to live".
Daniel Quinn has some pretty interesting books on where (he belives) we came from, and where we are headed. One of my personal favorite articles (actually the transcript of a speech) is here. -
Not caveman nature...
It's agraculturist nature.
The caveman was perfectly willing to live off the spoils of the land. What good is more land, after all? It's only when you need more land to grow more crops to feed your increasing population that the "elimination of everything in your way" becomes important.
How many different tribes of Native Americans are (were) there? Why wasn't there only one? Because they lived off the spoils of the land, and had no reason to eliminate their neighbors. Pick any tribal culture that lives off the land. You'll find the same cultural diversity living in relative peace.
Sure they had skirmishes. If you don't keep your neighbors off balance, they might think you are weak.
It's not caveman nature. They were far less violent than us. It was only with the agricultural revolution that humans decided there is "one right way to live".
Daniel Quinn has some pretty interesting books on where (he belives) we came from, and where we are headed. One of my personal favorite articles (actually the transcript of a speech) is here. -
Our social structure is suicidal.
I don't think that it's humans in general. If it was, we wouldn't be here, as we would have wiped ourselves out eons ago.
More it's our society. We encourage conformity, and discourage diveristy. This idea is not new, and certainly I did not orignate it, but I am doing my part to spread it.
Read it with an open mind. Pass it on if you find it insightful. -
Preaching to the choir...
But it's an interesting article all the same.
Essay on UNschooling. -
Re:What about the Vikings?Blockquoth the poster:
This 'noble savage' theory is as intellectualy bankrupt as social darwanism. Their are no 'good' guys, the vast majority of people throughout history are mean, nasty, and brutish no matter their location or race.
The main difference between the perceived 'noble savage' and us, is they were not bent on world domination. Humans (for most of human history) have not held the belief that they had the "one right way to live". That is a very recent shift (the past 10,000 years or so), and limited to society where food is kept under lock and key.
Here is a beautiful excerpt from a speech by Daniel Quinn:
It has been the work of my life to pin down and demolish the lie that is at the root of this mythology in our culture. It's to be found in the way we tell the human story itself in our culture. You can see it perpetuated in textbook after textbook, and if you keep your eyes open, you'll see it repeated weekly somewhere---in a newspaper or magazine article, in a television documentary. Here it is, the human story as it's told in our culture, day in and day out, stripped to its essentials. "Humans appeared in the living community about three million years ago. When they appeared, they were foragers, just like their primate ancestors. Over the millennia, these foragers added hunting to their repertoire and so became hunter-gatherers. Humans lived as hunter-gatherers until about ten thousand years ago, when they abandoned this life for the agricultural life, settling down into villages and beginning to build the civilization that encircles the world today." That's the story as our children learn it, and it has just this one little problem, that it didn't happen that way at all. Ten thousand years ago, it was not HUMANITY that traded in the foraging life for the agricultural life and began to build civilization, it was a single culture. One culture out of ten thousand cultures did this, and the other nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine went on exactly as before. Over the millennia that followed, this one culture, born in the middle east, overran neighboring cultures in all directions, finally arriving in the New World about five hundred years ago. At which point it began to overrun the native cultures of THIS part of the world as well. It is a truism that the conqueror gets to write the history books, and the history our children learn is history as WE tell it. And the central lie of this history is that HUMANITY ITSELF did what WE did.
There may not be a 'noble savage', but mean, nasty and brutish as "they" may be, "they" are nothing compared to "us". -
Exactly right (was Re:Extinction)
So basically they've decided to erradicate an entire species because they 'got in our way'.
You betcha. As Daniel Quinn has pointed out at length, the idea of wiping out anything that gets in our way is central to the majority of present-day human culture. Somewhat grim, and definitely not sustainable, but true.
Read Ishmael. Shudder. To mis-quote Ellison, sleep well, my heavy-metal babies.
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Re:People are still human
the Net has been a great influence on bringing the American ideas of freedom to the rest of the world.
The problem with Americans is they live under the false impression that they live in a free, democratic society, which is fundamentally a weakness. Democracy is a tired ideal and nearly 300 years of democratic idealists have failed to make it work.
Ok.. so the people of USA, UK and other Western/European countries have large Jewish electorates, larger than the Muslim electorate, and therefore democratically our leaders are right to support Israeli genocide etc. Right democratically, but it seems a little immoral. I am aware I'm not the first person to notice this.
The problem is, you look at other nations and think you're completely different, but to an outside observer you would look like identical twins -
In the red corner, we have the USA. They mostly believe that they have the best governmental system in existence and hopefully one day every one else will use the same system.
In the blue corner, China. They mostly believe they have the best governmental system in existence and it woud be nice if every one else used the same one.
An alternative perspective -
Re:We've been doing it for years...Yes, well the first world isn't as large of a percentage of the planet's population as the third world. And the third world is happily eating up all that food that we don't need now but keep producing more of. So no, the world will not be filled with old people, just the developed world. As for the rest of the planet, they will happily walk hand in hand with the US in consuming us into destruction. Read more about it here.
Sorry. It isn't over yet.
Jt -
Re:Oh, and by the way...
Err, no, it's not. There are better systems, and have been around for 3 million years. Look here if you don't believe me.
BTW, to say that capitalism is the most successful economic system in history shows that you don't know much about it. Especially when 90% of the population is enslaved to the other 10% under such a system.
How much time do you have to devote to your wealth building? Eight hours a day? I would guess that it's probably a lot more than that.
All I have to say to you is congratulations on your ascent to the top. You're a better person than I am. But don't think for a minute that your story is the rule and not an exception.
-- Shamus
Bleah! -
Re:In such a future, revolt would be a holy duty
Would hierarchy nod its head and vacate its throne? Who knows.
Well, at least according to Daniel Quinn, it doesn't matter if heirarchy relinquishes its throne or not. Apparently, all one has to do to abolish heirarchy is to walk away. If everyone leaves the heirarchy, the heirarchy vanishes... Will that happen? Who knows...
-- Shamus
You there smoking mother nature, up against the wall! -
This is nothing new...It's nothing more than the same old reactionary garbage legislation that's been coming down the pike. And it's not surprising that this is what congress has come up with either--after all, if it didn't work last year, then do more of it next year...
As David Quinn put it quite eloquently:When the Israelites escaped from Egypt in the 13th century B.C., they were literally a lawless horde, because they'd left the Egyptian list of prohibitions behind. They needed their own list of prohibitions, which God provided--the famous ten. But of course ten didn't do it. Hundreds more followed, but they didn't do it either.
Quite depressing, really. (The whole text can be found here, BTW)
No number has ever done it for us. Not a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand. Even millions don't do it, and so every single year we pay our legislators to come up with more. But no matter how many prohibitions we come up with, they never do the trick, because no prohibited behavior has ever been eliminated by passing a law against it. Every time someone is sent to prison or executed, this is said to be "sending a message" to miscreants, but for some strange reason the message never arrives, year after year, generation after generation, century after century.
Naturally, we consider this to be a very advanced system.
But what can you expect when the whole world has bought into the idea that there is absolutely nothing that any one person can do to change things?
-- Shamus
Bleah! -
This is nothing new...It's nothing more than the same old reactionary garbage legislation that's been coming down the pike. And it's not surprising that this is what congress has come up with either--after all, if it didn't work last year, then do more of it next year...
As David Quinn put it quite eloquently:When the Israelites escaped from Egypt in the 13th century B.C., they were literally a lawless horde, because they'd left the Egyptian list of prohibitions behind. They needed their own list of prohibitions, which God provided--the famous ten. But of course ten didn't do it. Hundreds more followed, but they didn't do it either.
Quite depressing, really. (The whole text can be found here, BTW)
No number has ever done it for us. Not a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand. Even millions don't do it, and so every single year we pay our legislators to come up with more. But no matter how many prohibitions we come up with, they never do the trick, because no prohibited behavior has ever been eliminated by passing a law against it. Every time someone is sent to prison or executed, this is said to be "sending a message" to miscreants, but for some strange reason the message never arrives, year after year, generation after generation, century after century.
Naturally, we consider this to be a very advanced system.
But what can you expect when the whole world has bought into the idea that there is absolutely nothing that any one person can do to change things?
-- Shamus
Bleah! -
Not a troll.(regarding the ishmael essay):
the guy is a troll. He questions the education system and the need for an education system but his idea that we should all piss off back to the Stone Age is moronicDid you read the whole essay? The Stone Age idea was a brief tangential thought-experiment, not a serious proposal. His proposal is "unschooling": that you let kids learn what they want to learn when they want to learn it rather than forcing them to sit at a small desk in a large room and be talked at for 6 hours a day according to a fixed curriculum. Unschooling is a valid method; it works.
If you're interested in these ideas you might also want to look at the Sudbury Method, which is basically Unschooling in a school setting .
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Schools--why?
He does raise the issue that if we gave these teaching positions the pay-level and respect they deserve it would be much easier to attract Doctoral-level people to fill them.
This seems more than a little ridiculous to me--the school system is doing exactly what it was designed to do which is to stifle curiosity, critical thinking, and any joy of learning and prepare children for their lives as adults in low paying, dead-end jobs. Probably one of the best essays on schools that I've ever read (by Daniel Quinn) can be found here, if you'd like to know why...
-- Shamus
"Bleah!" -- overheard at a press conference -
Re:MS more powerful than government? Nonsense.
I agree. Of course, this whole fiasco will probably be coming to an end soon.
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Re:Work Boycott
While this may work for a short term solution, it would be better to "infiltrate" these companies, and change them from the inside. It seems to me a better thing to convince someone that some way is the right way than to force them to go a way that they don't want to go. If a significant majority of geeks refused to work for these companies, they might back off. However, that is just because they have no other choice. If we can get a geek to work for them and convince them that they can make money without overcharging, extorting artists, et cetera, then I'd say we should do that. I recently read an article which relates to this idea to some degree. It can be found here.
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Ishmael (-1 Offtopic, +1 Interesting)
Speaking of culture, Daniel Quinn's book Ishmael discusses Culture and How Things Came To Be The Way They Are. Fascinating read.
darren
Cthulhu for President! -
on the ballthough i found that this story a bit drawn out the ideas talked about were very true. those of you who don't understand what katz is talking about need to really read the story. we are all censored even though we live in a free country. are we censored by the government? sure. but more so by the people around us. dont believe in the morals everyone else does. great for you. youll be shunned though. look at jesse ventura(sp?). someone finally had the courage enough to speak out about his views on religion. being an athiest i know that many are grateful someone finally stood up and said this. but look what happens. the majority of the country is religous and he is thus shunned for his views. what ever happened to the seperation of church and state.
if you didnt understand the article or what he was saying take a step back. try dropping all the prejudices and ideas that have been embedded in your brain and really take in what he is saying. killing deformed and retarded babies? it may not sound good but it is an idea that people should talk about. after hitting the 6 billion point we need to look at the way we are reproducing because soon enough there won't be enough room for all of us. if you really want to understand and dont see the ideals embedded in your brain maybe you should read ishmael by daniel quinn.
another good place to go and read that deals with over population and gets lots of the shunning i talked about visit the voluntary human extinction movement.
want to write me about this post? click here.
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Re:...But you can alleviate themIf people aren't learning 'the lesson' that we're talking about here, then why should we even begin to presume that they ever will? It's my belief that cultures learn lessons through experiencing hardships. The 'gentle' solution to this problem (preserving specimens in zoos and slow education) won't be enough because people respond to things like the Depression or the bombing of Pearl Harbor or AIDS, not easily-ignored problems like the extinction of a species that you won't find in the grocery store.
Is there some intrinsic value in keeping endangered animals locked up in unnatural surroundings? I say there isn't. Creatures become extinct because other creatures like to kill them, or because their habitat changes too drastically. Their place in this world simply went away. It pains me to be so blunt about it, but it's true. Instead of covering up our mistakes, we should try to raise the value of life in our culture.
YOU should try to raise the value of life in our culture. Go tell somebody that the animals on our planet are precious, and anything we do that hurts them unnecessarily should be stopped. That's what will turn things around.
Finally, read stuff by Daniel Quinn, and visit the Ishmael website.