“Why war?” is a question that haunts everyone, including both Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. For Einstein, it was a question that had no rational answer. For Freud, war was an expression of the “death drive” for violence and destruction that was inherent in every human. If Einstein was hoping for optimism, Freud was drawing from his theoretical insights into the human character, a conclusion confirmed by the unequivocal message of history.
Continue reading Why War? – The Quadra ProjectTag Archives: Quadra Project
The Dynamics of Denial
If global climate change is posing an existential threat to humanity, then why don’t we do something to prevent it from happening? Parts of our planet are already experiencing temperatures that are too hot to sustain normal human activity, and thousands are dying. We are now being plagued with massive forest fires that are decimating critically important carbon sinks, and burning up homes, settlements and even whole towns. Widespread species extinction is endemic. Exotic tropical diseases are migrating northward to unprepared countries. Our oceans are heating, acidifying and rising. Glacier melt will be impossible to stop—just one, the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica, is destabilizing from its underside, threatening a 65 cm rise in the world’s oceans. The collapse of Thwaites would unleash an inevitable collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet and an eventual 3.3 metre ocean rise, likely by the end of the 23rd century, if we’re lucky. Meanwhile, greenhouse gas emission have been consistently going up rather than down. What explains this incongruity?
Continue reading The Dynamics of Denial
The Quadra Project – The Mouse Experiment
On July 9, 1968, John Calhoun began his mouse experiment called Universe 25. He designed the perfect mouse habitat of 16 buildings each divided into 16 apartments with their own feeding stations. A plentiful supply of food and water was always available. No predators or diseases. The ideal temperature and humidity. Two male and two female mice were placed in Universe 25 on that July day. Calhoun and his team then watched what happened over a nearly four year period (New Scientist, Dec. 14, 2024).
Continue reading The Quadra Project – The Mouse Experiment
The Quadra Project: The Sinking of Carbon Sinks
Of the 37.4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide we emitted into the atmosphere in 2024 from burning fossil fuels, about half was sequestered by the planet’s oceans, soils, forests and other natural processes. But evidence is suggesting a weakening of this service, some of which is related to heat—and 2024, was the hottest year ever recorded since we were a Homo species inhabiting Earth. Among other factors, photosynthesis—the process that plants use to convert atmospheric carbon dioxide into sugars and an oxygen byproduct—begins to slow when temperatures rise too high, until it stops at 45°C. Consequently, certain areas of the planet sequestered absolutely no CO2 in 2023.
“We’re seeing cracks in the resilience of Earth’s systems. We’re seeing massive cracks on land—terrestrial ecosystems are losing their carbon store and uptake capacity, but the oceans are also showing signs of instability,” says Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (“Are Earth’s Carbon Sinks Collapsing?” by Patrick Greenfield, The Guardian Weekly, October 25, 2024). “Nature has so far balanced our abuse. This is coming to an end.” Should this happen, we will be unable to meet any of our climate goals.
Continue reading The Quadra Project: The Sinking of Carbon Sinks
The Quadra Project – Pure Consciousness
What is pure consciousness? In simplistic terms, it seems to be awareness of awareness. That is, it is not an awareness of the content of awareness such as being conscious of fish or trees or ideas, but an awareness of the awareness itself. As such, it would seem to be a distancing from the content of awareness—of the things that we think about—to the awareness itself. This detached awareness from experiences and ideas would give us the perspective to assess the substance of our thinking, to give us special insights into how we think, and perhaps more appropriately, to allow us to assess how we behave.
Continue reading The Quadra Project – Pure Consciousness