Conservation

[muses] Conservation... We're all missing something and I think it threatens the well being of future generations - it's all very well to speak of trying to preserve natural resources, to strive so that there will still be the occasional tree where entire rain-forests once stood, or a couple of fish in the sea or maybe even a few drops of oil preserved behind glass for our children's children to marvel at, and indeed there are even people who do more than speak of such things and actually act in some way calculated to encourage others to do something about it. But these physical threats to the future are as nothing to the threat hanging over us all... the overconsumption of Ideas.

Ideas are being used up at an ever-increasing rate, and natural reserves of ignorance are dwindling... In the time it has taken you to read this several new ideas will have been used up, ideas which cannot be replaced... Nobody is even trying to conserve as yet unexplored ideas for future generations - indeed the entire effort of the scientific world is directed to rooting out fresh ideas and having them, getting them down on paper and claiming credit for them. Completely ignoring the fact that there are only a limited number of ideas in the world and once had they can never be un-had again, short of a collapse of civilisation... I think these people need to be stopped. Someone needs to stand up and defend wilderness areas of ignorance so that our children and their children's children can experience the joy of discovery for themselves...

Oh, bother and dammit... That was an original idea, wasn't it. One more gone then. Oops...

And what do we do with the toxic waste dumps of dangerous ideas? Continue to put them in libraries and just hope nobody ever goes there? This is utterly irresponsible... 

It's not like nice, safe nuclear waste which decays - a dangerous idea doesn't have a half-life... they're not just dangerous for a while, they remain dangerous forever. We're still paying the price for some of the first dangerous ideas ever had... religion... marriage... photographing cats... coffee...