Mark E Clark
Biographic Data
| ID | 10800293 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mark E Clark |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mark E |
| FAMILY NAME | Clark |
| SIGNATURE | CLARK M E |
| AFFILIATIONS | San Diego State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5660-2153 |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 16 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Humankind at the Crossroads
And so we arrive at the turning point, the crossroads, the decisive epoch in human history that will determine whether or not our species survives. Will the present generation be able to extract itself from the dilemmas that human history has created for it, dilemmas that only humans, unlike all other species, can consciously perceive and respond to? Is humankind up to forestalling its own self-inflicted extinction or not? For the disembodied sch…
The Future
THE FUTURE: It’s our life, and our children’s and our grandchildren’s. What will it be like? Can all of us look forward to lives more or less like people lead today? Or are there going to be some drastic changes? If major changes are indeed inevitable, can widespread pain and chaos be avoided? Is it true, as M. Giscard d’Estaing, the former President of France, said: ‘All modern day curves lead to disaster’ 1 . What curves was he talking about? W…
Politics
We now come to the crux of our problem: how do people successfully organise themselves into stable societies? Today, most societies are far from stable. In many Third World countries, growing economic inequality, exacerbated by exploding populations, means rising instability. The Second World — the USSR and communist East Europe — has remained ‘stable’ over four decades only through imposing oppressive coercion. Even the industrial democracies, w…
The Cult of Efficiency
Efficiency! It pervades our thinking. How can we get the most output of goods and services for the least input of energy, labour and materials? What is the most ‘efficient’, the most ‘economical’ way of doing things? When ‘wealth’ is the supreme goal, the more efficiently wealth is produced, the better. For the sake of efficiency, we subordinate human values that in other times, in other societies, in other worldviews, had far higher priority. Th…
The Economics of Spaceship Earth
There is a delightful cartoon showing two ETs in a spaceship. As they approach Earth, one says to the other: ‘You’ll like this place — it has atmosphere!’ Indeed, Earth is one of the few heavenly bodies with an atmosphere, and no other is like ours. Earth is also unique in having liquid water, lots of it, and dry land covered with a thin, but highly fertile layer of soil. How true is the statement: ‘Below that thin layer comprising the delicate o…
On Acquiring a Worldview
One day I found myself in the library searching back and forth between the QP and R sections for the P books. Finally, in desperation, I asked the two student librarians: ‘Where have you put “P”?’ ‘Try the floor below!’ they replied. To their great amusement, I wandered off, repeating the alphabet to myself. Until we become senile (or have a temporary lapse of memory), the alphabet and simple arithmetic are part of our mental furniture that we au…
Religions and Worldviews
Philosopher William Hazlitt once observed that ‘Without the aid of prejudice and custom I should not be able to find my way across the room’. 1 That simple phrase in fact says something quite profound about the human mind, and hence about human behaviour. Walking across a room was his metaphor for living through the events of everyday life. He was talking about the inner mental map each of us constructs out of our familiar surroundings and in whi…
Rethinking Economics
Though couched in the esoteric language of economics, this perceptive statement simply means that it is not consumption which provides economic well-being, but the use of things like cars, shoes and houses that give long-lasting service. Yet most economists encourage precisely the opposite: ‘economic growth’ — an ever-expanding rate of production and consumption, with all the negative environmental outcomes they entail. Why are they unable to rec…
Energy and Exponentials
The vague presumption that modern technology is overcoming our dependence on the physical universe is sufficiently widespread to cause alarm, for it signals a general ignorance of the laws of matter and energy. This chapter, which relates the principles of energy to modern life, should dispel any such misconceptions. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the le…
Our Environmental ‘Credit Card’ Account Becomes Due
Thus did two economists begin an article on the relationship between the environment and the economy. Their words imply that human beings today are somehow exempt from any serious dependence on their natural surroundings; it is a premise that is surprisingly widely held. Most people living in industrialised societies presume that their lives are somehow uncoupled from Nature. Food no longer comes from the soil, it no longer depends on the weather…
Alienation
Ours is an age of scientifically based technology. Most Westerners consume 20, 30 or even 40 times more energy and resources than any earlier human society. We live in luxury once reserved for kings. We live long lives, mostly free from physical pain. Most of us are never hungry except when on a self-inflicted diet. We are seldom too cold or too hot; we do not have to do much hard physical work. We have amusement at the touch of our finger-tips. …
Nuclear ‘Defence’ — or Conflict Resolution
This was not an episode from ‘Star Trek’ or an update of H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds . It was a real alert. Bombers were about to take off; men in silos were ready to turn the keys that would fire off nuclear-loaded rockets. All because of a malfunctioning ‘electronic chip, about the size of a dime, which costs forty-six cents’. On such potential failures hangs the fate of the Earth. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors…
The Cultural Spectrum
Culture! Westerners often use this word to mean a taste for the fine arts, music and other aesthetic matters. But it has a much broader meaning, namely, the shared values, language and traditions that define a particular group of people, be they Australian aborigines, black Americans, or the ancient Greeks. Culture is learned as a child, and as children we each learned from those around us a particular set of rules, beliefs, priorities and expect…
The Emergence of Human Nature
Such was Thomas Hobbes’s seventeenth century view of the life of our primeval ancestors. Before the advent of civilisation and the rule of written law, men and women, driven by their inner natures, were condemned to unending violence. For Hobbes, the evils of humankind were inherent, a view still held by those who have never studied the human past. It implies a fundamental nastiness in human nature which only civilisation could possibly overcome.…
Defusing the Global Powder Keg
If we look at a map of the world and ask — Where is armed conflict going on? Where are populations growing fastest? Where is there the greatest poverty? — we discover that all maps coincide. Of the 120 armed conflicts taking place in 1987, all but four were in the so-called developing countries of the Third World. 1 Likewise, the highest rates of population growth are located in those same countries, and there also are found the lowest levels of …
From God to Man
In his ‘Essay on Man’ the English poet Alexander Pope, a pious Catholic, was eloquently pleading for a retention of the social order ordained by the Church. It is man’s God-given nature to be social, said Pope, and therefore self-fulfilment is possible only in relation to others. He reacted in horror at the notion emerging from the Age of Reason that humans are basically selfish, greedy and lonely and the purpose of social institutions is merely …
No prominent works on this page.
Humankind at the Crossroads
And so we arrive at the turning point, the crossroads, the decisive epoch in human history that will determine whether or not our species survives. Will the present generation be able to extract itself from the dilemmas that human history has created for it, dilemmas that only humans, unlike all other species, can consciously perceive and respond to? Is humankind up to forestalling its own self-inflicted extinction or not? For the disembodied sch…
The Future
THE FUTURE: It’s our life, and our children’s and our grandchildren’s. What will it be like? Can all of us look forward to lives more or less like people lead today? Or are there going to be some drastic changes? If major changes are indeed inevitable, can widespread pain and chaos be avoided? Is it true, as M. Giscard d’Estaing, the former President of France, said: ‘All modern day curves lead to disaster’ 1 . What curves was he talking about? W…
Politics
We now come to the crux of our problem: how do people successfully organise themselves into stable societies? Today, most societies are far from stable. In many Third World countries, growing economic inequality, exacerbated by exploding populations, means rising instability. The Second World — the USSR and communist East Europe — has remained ‘stable’ over four decades only through imposing oppressive coercion. Even the industrial democracies, w…
The Cult of Efficiency
Efficiency! It pervades our thinking. How can we get the most output of goods and services for the least input of energy, labour and materials? What is the most ‘efficient’, the most ‘economical’ way of doing things? When ‘wealth’ is the supreme goal, the more efficiently wealth is produced, the better. For the sake of efficiency, we subordinate human values that in other times, in other societies, in other worldviews, had far higher priority. Th…
The Economics of Spaceship Earth
There is a delightful cartoon showing two ETs in a spaceship. As they approach Earth, one says to the other: ‘You’ll like this place — it has atmosphere!’ Indeed, Earth is one of the few heavenly bodies with an atmosphere, and no other is like ours. Earth is also unique in having liquid water, lots of it, and dry land covered with a thin, but highly fertile layer of soil. How true is the statement: ‘Below that thin layer comprising the delicate o…
On Acquiring a Worldview
One day I found myself in the library searching back and forth between the QP and R sections for the P books. Finally, in desperation, I asked the two student librarians: ‘Where have you put “P”?’ ‘Try the floor below!’ they replied. To their great amusement, I wandered off, repeating the alphabet to myself. Until we become senile (or have a temporary lapse of memory), the alphabet and simple arithmetic are part of our mental furniture that we au…
Religions and Worldviews
Philosopher William Hazlitt once observed that ‘Without the aid of prejudice and custom I should not be able to find my way across the room’. 1 That simple phrase in fact says something quite profound about the human mind, and hence about human behaviour. Walking across a room was his metaphor for living through the events of everyday life. He was talking about the inner mental map each of us constructs out of our familiar surroundings and in whi…
Rethinking Economics
Though couched in the esoteric language of economics, this perceptive statement simply means that it is not consumption which provides economic well-being, but the use of things like cars, shoes and houses that give long-lasting service. Yet most economists encourage precisely the opposite: ‘economic growth’ — an ever-expanding rate of production and consumption, with all the negative environmental outcomes they entail. Why are they unable to rec…
Energy and Exponentials
The vague presumption that modern technology is overcoming our dependence on the physical universe is sufficiently widespread to cause alarm, for it signals a general ignorance of the laws of matter and energy. This chapter, which relates the principles of energy to modern life, should dispel any such misconceptions. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the le…
Our Environmental ‘Credit Card’ Account Becomes Due
Thus did two economists begin an article on the relationship between the environment and the economy. Their words imply that human beings today are somehow exempt from any serious dependence on their natural surroundings; it is a premise that is surprisingly widely held. Most people living in industrialised societies presume that their lives are somehow uncoupled from Nature. Food no longer comes from the soil, it no longer depends on the weather…
Alienation
Ours is an age of scientifically based technology. Most Westerners consume 20, 30 or even 40 times more energy and resources than any earlier human society. We live in luxury once reserved for kings. We live long lives, mostly free from physical pain. Most of us are never hungry except when on a self-inflicted diet. We are seldom too cold or too hot; we do not have to do much hard physical work. We have amusement at the touch of our finger-tips. …
Nuclear ‘Defence’ — or Conflict Resolution
This was not an episode from ‘Star Trek’ or an update of H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds . It was a real alert. Bombers were about to take off; men in silos were ready to turn the keys that would fire off nuclear-loaded rockets. All because of a malfunctioning ‘electronic chip, about the size of a dime, which costs forty-six cents’. On such potential failures hangs the fate of the Earth. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors…
The Cultural Spectrum
Culture! Westerners often use this word to mean a taste for the fine arts, music and other aesthetic matters. But it has a much broader meaning, namely, the shared values, language and traditions that define a particular group of people, be they Australian aborigines, black Americans, or the ancient Greeks. Culture is learned as a child, and as children we each learned from those around us a particular set of rules, beliefs, priorities and expect…
The Emergence of Human Nature
Such was Thomas Hobbes’s seventeenth century view of the life of our primeval ancestors. Before the advent of civilisation and the rule of written law, men and women, driven by their inner natures, were condemned to unending violence. For Hobbes, the evils of humankind were inherent, a view still held by those who have never studied the human past. It implies a fundamental nastiness in human nature which only civilisation could possibly overcome.…
Defusing the Global Powder Keg
If we look at a map of the world and ask — Where is armed conflict going on? Where are populations growing fastest? Where is there the greatest poverty? — we discover that all maps coincide. Of the 120 armed conflicts taking place in 1987, all but four were in the so-called developing countries of the Third World. 1 Likewise, the highest rates of population growth are located in those same countries, and there also are found the lowest levels of …
From God to Man
In his ‘Essay on Man’ the English poet Alexander Pope, a pious Catholic, was eloquently pleading for a retention of the social order ordained by the Church. It is man’s God-given nature to be social, said Pope, and therefore self-fulfilment is possible only in relation to others. He reacted in horror at the notion emerging from the Age of Reason that humans are basically selfish, greedy and lonely and the purpose of social institutions is merely …
Philosophy (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Economics (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · History (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Environmental ethics (5 works) · Psychology (5 works)