Friday, July 22, 2016

Algal Blooms and Civilization



Site listing various organizations doing research on harmful algal blooms (HABs) such as the type being found in marine waters and, more infamously this year, Lake Okeechobee in Florida. A brief summary of the focus and scope of the research each organization is conducting is also included. A sample of the various types of research being conducted include prediction and management of taste/odor compounds in drinking water, cyanobacteria (particularly Microcystis, the type of bacteria composing the bloom in Lake Okeechobee) and related toxins in drinking water, and more.



So, the political, financial, and ecological barriers blocking solutions to the problems presented by HABs? In south Florida, for example, the Central and Southern Florida Project, an engineering scheme of 1700 miles of canals and levees to provide flood protection and allow agricultural development, distorted river flows and changed the natural, more ecologically balanced water flows. This has led to a massive increase in the flow of nutrient-loaded water/sediment runoff (notably nitrates and phosphorus from fertilizers, sewage, and manure) into freshwater and coastal environments. The Gulf of Mexico dead zone is the most infamous case, but Lake Eerie, the Chesapeake Bay, and south Florida are also facing significant HABs problems. 

An example of water management with negative unintended consequences occurred in south Florida last year when a shortage of fresh water flowed into Florida Bay killing 40,000 acres of turtle grass. This was followed by the release of excess fresh water down the St. Lucie which led to the outbreaks of HABs in southern Florida this year. These two actions illustrate how excessive man-made management overcorrections lead to harmful unintended consequences. This is part of an ongoing cycle of hasty and ill-advised over management of freshwater throughout the U.S. which has primarily been a reaction to century-plus ongoing development in and around water flows which has created unintended (but long foreseeable) harmful consequences—harmful in the sense of creating ecological imbalances leading to greater frequency and intensity of HABs and harmful in the sense that there have been negative consequences to human, animal, and plant health.

I scanned through at least 50 sites with articles or information about what HABs are, their causes, when they occur, and what has been done in relation to management as well as ongoing research. Of concern to me is the overwhelming focus on treatment possibilities which involve what seem likely to be another wave of management which has unintended harmful consequences of a different sort. The most obvious solution would be to reclaim private property both for the restoration of wetlands for ecological balance as well as to restrict the application of fertilizer and manure to lands zoned and regulated for agricultural purposes. Another solution would be to investigate sewage runoff and alternatives for sewage treatment, though this seems extremely difficult to change in a way in which neutral or positive effects could be mitigated. This is largely due to the use of advanced technologies to dispose of waste in concentrated urban environments impacting runoff and waterways hundreds and sometimes even over a thousand miles away (in the case of the Mississippi River).

I would like to write more about this topic, but the issue is the best use of my time. Dedicating time and energy to specific issues such as this is to focus attention away from all other possibilities during that time (plus recovery needed after such study and writing). I do not have statistical gauges measuring the effects/usefulness of such endeavors, though they do enrich my personal life and certainly allow me to build a more comprehensive and more realistic (and real) perspective on the world, especially when combined with efforts I make to integrate such knowledge with other issues/factors in the framework of how the world works, the stakes involved, and the impacts on environment, society, culture, politics, governance, and economics. The web/worldview that develops—and is ongoing—provides me with insights that seem to be missed within narrow, specialized, and non-integrated understandings of how the human world functions in relation to the real, physical world we inhabit. 

The overwhelming focus in relation to issues such as algae blooms—but also issues such as race relations, intelligence gathering, privacy concerns, land management, private property rights, legally created, regulated, and restricted individual rights and liberties, and forever more issues—is related to intervention and production. Research is focused and devoted to reactionary solutions to source problems while source problems are treated as invincible or inevitable when in fact they are directly the product of legislation, policy, and productive enactment. Doing nothing—allowing nature to manage the environment while minimizing human-generated impacts—is not considered a plausible solution. This is primarily, but not comprehensively, due to a centuries-long reliance on a particular ideology of scientific/technological, economic, and political humanism that began in earnest during the Enlightenment and culminated most profoundly in the Industrial Age and the subsequent Information Age—which did not displace the Industrial Age but simply expanded the scope and power of production of industrialization and productive development of land and all other available resources. 

The thrust of this productive development in the Western world has occurred through the economic humanism created and aided by governance humanism (and recycled through an interdependence between the two ideological forces). Underlying these ideologies is the belief that man has conquered and will continue to conquer nature, using resources for the purposes determined by another wave of humanism: consumerism. Underlying these humanisms is the ideal of the individual as an entity of supremacy in relation to all other animate and inanimate resources justifying the transformation of the latter into objects of human necessity and desire. 

One could argue that I am bastardizing concepts of humanism and that may be fair. I am more than willing to use another term to describe the ideologies underpinning the label. That said, what is more pertinent, I believe, is that these ideologies, in the West, are so pervasive and have been within our collective social and personal psyches that the very idea that changes in economic and governance practices related to production and development seem ridiculously absurd, incomprehensible, dangerous, or at the least impractical. doing so would require an ideological shift of epic proportions which would mean a mass transformation of social/communal and personal identity which would inevitably lead to changes so profoundly foreign and, to most, obscure that predictability would seem impossible. 

One particular prevalent argument against such profound ideological shifts is the simplistic and naive argument that the only alternative to the various humanistic worldviews is the Soviet/Chinese models of communism (ignoring some very intriguing northern European socialist and otherwise innovative developments over the past half century which, to me, represent only the beginnings of epic shifts rather than the culmination of a shift). The underpinning ideologies in those places post-WWII up until the 1990s were a conglomeration of butchered Marxism that veered much more practically (in terms of implementation) toward totalitarianism and centralized power. Rather than get into the problems with those ideologies, which are largely defunct now in terms of real-world practice, I’ll say only that it is absurd to imagine that the underpinnings of Soviet/Chinese governance and economics fueling resource harvesting and production differ much at all in terms of natural impacts on the real, physical world. The societal relations and cultural manifestations may have taken a different form to the naked eye on the surface, but in practice in terms of impacts on the natural world  were insignificant compared to the Western forms of humanism. All parties engaged in mining, agriculture, technological and scientific development, militarization, land development and human-generated management, and so on. The practices were so similar that it’s doubtful that the most important ideological underpinnings differed in any meaningful manner. 

What does all of this mean? How does this help offer solutions related to harmful algal blooms, for example, in any way? It provides an insight that I repeatedly try to make in terms of the scope of change necessary to make any noticeable improvements related to sustainability of life in relation to the real-world issues related to resource harvesting, management, development, production, and consumption as well as the impacts such acts have on the environment as well as social and personal life. The narrowness of focus within the personal (from entertainment to belief systems) and the social (from family to politics) guarantees that there will be the type of widespread personal and social focus on the ideological underpinnings controlling/limiting identity and practice.

Learning, while it may be playful as I attempt to make it for sustainability of interest, is also challenging, difficult work that necessitates sacrifice, discipline, and commitment. A willingness to let go of one’s foundations and to make adjustments in perspective—which are, at times, terrifying because of temporary uncertainties, ambiguities, and an indefinable sense of being untethered—are necessary. This requires a degree of personal and social maturity, as well as courage, that is so far beyond the reach of most persons and even further out of reach of society and culture that it is difficult to imagine how this could happen. If it does happen, my guess is that it will occur in other countries, other cultures, other societies besides the United States. Most likely, northern Europe and very importantly the so-called developing countries which are much more than willing to let go of the oppressive ideologies that have been imposed upon their politics, governance, and economics for centuries by colonial powers. 

Even if change is unlikely in the west, it is still a civic responsibility to shed past ideologies as well to be willing to give up the “easy life,” the “self-centered life” to do the work necessary, over decades throughout life, to become increasingly open to change, to be willing to share learning, to be open to criticism (of a helpful and useful nature, however humbling), and to incorporate practices of kindness and compassion toward those who may never adapt and change in such ways (if I didn’t have that outlook, as much as I struggle with it, I’d be even angrier and more disgusted by Americans and most of humanity, including a lot of friends and family. But I have discovered the only way to commit to this type of life—admitting that I still enjoy my self-centered recreations and leisures as I am not immune from the ideologies that have been embedded in our culture for generations on end—is to continue in my attempts to foster care for others regardless of how ignorant or misguided (which sounds arrogant, but try to imagine if spending decades doing this type of work on your own time with no financial reward or significant social acknowledgment or appreciation and coming to realization after realization that almost everything underpinning what we are doing is off-kilter in relation to reality, in a cycle of perpetual decline—which is completely at odds with the dominant narrative that we have been on a continual upward swing of progression for centuries, even throughout the entirety of civilized history. It’s absurd! Thus, dada and anti-dada as coping mechanisms related to futility tempered with care about the wellbeing of others. The reality, though, is that we live in dystopia while believing we’re making gains toward utopia — the positivity movement? Dear Lord!).

But focusing too much on what I’ve most recently written, sharing that disgust in various ways over time, covering the macro view of the big issues underpinning economic, political, and governance disasters, I have too often imagined that others partake in the sort of introspection and external examination (and interrelatedness of the internal and external) to the degree that they have made the connections between harmful algal blooms (HABs), racism, feminism, land use and management, property rights, entertainment, consumerism, and so on, in such a way that they are able to understand the vast complexities of the web of knowledge, insight, intuition, and wisdom that make up 99 percent of the iceberg beneath the surface of what I express and share.

Other than becoming a teacher, there’s no way for me to communicate any of this, it seems. For all of the blathering about crowdsourcing and the wonders of access to information on the Internet that allows everyone to become scholars and artists, it is all hollow in relation to what is necessary and it is extraordinarily naive to believe that these nascent practices will develop in such a way as to overthrow dominant ideologies invisible to most with results that somehow de-problematize what has been problematized (and thus made subject to control of everything from belief systems to institutions to production to identities) in such a way to enable something akin to a “wiser” problematization of issues which need to be addressed. On the other hand, I can see quite clearly that nature will eventually take care of most of these problems on its own, culling the herd of billions of humans down to hundreds of millions eventually. The latter is a “non-humanistic” viewpoint that often gives me a sense of relief in relation to the futility of civilization’s efforts to coexist with the environment and one another. But even in that mode of thought, I still value learning. It is personally satisfying and leads to some measure of fulfillment even if nothing worthwhile will occur during my lifetime. It’s an ongoing battle to check my own values and desires in relation to the invisible ideologies and ethics which lurk deep within my psyche. And notice I never brought psychology into play here. The reason being is that I believe psychology is sort of a reactionary response to the mental and emotional ills created by the inhuman (in a biological sense at the very least) society in which we live and believe, as if production/consumption could be a cycle that satisfies at the core of our being, as if sitting in a cubicle was what any of us was meant to do. I’m not trying to shame any individual in this sense at all. Rather, I am shaming the systems that manipulate us into succumbing, often unknowingly,  and even becoming eager to believe in and do that which we would never choose willingly with greater conscious awareness (or metacognition, if you like).

Hmmm… I don’t feel this is complete at all, like I’m missing something important before wrapping it up and calling it an end—which is really just a temporary break between projects. I wish everyone would take everything I express as well as everything everyone else expresses as an ongoing sharing of the totality of their being, even if just the tip of the iceberg, because then certain expressions would be considered aspects or manifestations or modes of who I am and each person is rather than the totality they are considered to be in moments. I recently had an exchange with a person who clearly had a preconceived notion of me and decided to define who I was by one particular expression one particular day and decided that it was the fundament of who I am rather than possibly an insignificantly aberrant aspect of my being, a throw away moment in the scheme of things even as it did represent something about myself. But if anyone only took the completeness of my postings on FB, ignoring all other communications and interactions we may have had, it would become obvious that I have a diversity of interests, a complex personality, ugly warts, extraordinary octaves, aesthetic depth, ethical integrity, recreational picadillos, and so on. 

It’s interesting how I had a sense of purpose in writing this when I began and mostly throughout and now that I’m through it seems I’ve completely forgotten what the purpose of this endeavor was. Sharing, I guess. Naive hope for change. An attempt to eschew any measure of sarcasm or cynicism as a means for renewed or deepened connections with greater comprehensive understanding. A dissatisfaction with how information is conveyed in snippets of narrowed and specialized information such as HABs without any complexity in the context in how it’s related to economics while also providing insights and information about what underlies faith in our particular economic system (I didn’t even get into why it’s so attractive to the wealthiest and most powerful men and women int he world and amazement that those who benefit in only meager ways, while mostly suffering in ways they don’t even understand, support the system).

Hmmm … Oh yes! I forgot to wrap up what I was getting at related to psychology. I can tell I’m running out of steam. Anyway, the point I was trying to make was that psychology is a reactionary response to a broken society in much the same way building levees and dams is a dysfunctional response to problems of flooding and building canals to farm in places that were never meant to grow food (or provide for livestock) daily, weekly, monthly, annually for decades on end. Change the underpinning ideologies, change the systems that develop from new and more responsively responsible narratives, change resource management and practices, adjust lifestyle and quality of life expectations (focusing on something more meaningfully satisfying for the soul than entertainment and other outputs of the production/consumption cycle) and psychology is unnecessary. We aren’t genetically designed to be dysfunctional; we are made that way by being forced to fit into a system that ignores our evolutionary reality—we are social and cooperative creatures much more than competitive and self-centered creatures. The latter idea is a distortion created by a particular way of looking at the world that arises from individualist humanism and plays extremely well for manipulation through production/consumption ideology. Psychology is just not part of the solution. As a practice, it may be necessary for many to survive in this culture, these systems, but that’s just it: it is particular to these cultural and economic and political and social narratives rather than something fundamentally necessary for being human in a culture with different narratives about what is meaningful.

One last thing: I don’t believe the university is the place for me to pursue my ongoing interests and learning. Each field is too specialized, too narrow, resistant to integration, committed to furthering the ongoing narratives, committed to problematizing anything that hasn’t already been subjected to power/knowledge, politically enmeshed in power dynamics, too much a tool of the state and the economic system, and ultimately insufficient in spreading any possibilities for the types of learning I value most. I did my time earlier in life and I’ve learned so much more outside that system. I’ll never say never for going back if something changes in a way I can’t foresee, if I believe an avenue for meaningful teaching could arise, but I just … this has been my position for two-plus decades and everyone I know who was gone on to receive post-grad and doctoral degrees has shared enough for me to know that my learning and creative project(s) in life are not suited for that environment.

Okay, that’s it for that. No more brain power. Must eat. FYI: sites used in gathering information about algal blooms:












There were more, but these provided plenty of the information I used for information-gathering, insight, analysis, and critique.