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September 08, 2007
Humanity at an Impasse (Political)
Although the specific terms would have sounded unfamiliar to Charles Darwin and fellow "naturalists" when Origin of Species was published in 1859, it’s now quite clear that Homo sapiens is exerting a destructive influence on Earth's planetary ecology. My reason for choosing those terms is to call attention to current evidence from multiple sources that our species evolved comparatively recently in Africa, and then waves of our ancestors began a series of migrations over 100,000 years ago. By the end of the last Ice Age, or 10,000 years ago, the surviving descendants of those migrations were engaged in establishing the enduring human settlements later found on all of Earth’s large land masses, save Antarctica. Scientific progress over the last five centuries has allowed virtually all such residual cultural isolates to be discovered while also establishing that they share the same genome.
Thus we humans are both the most recently evolved primates and certainly the most successful in terms of total numbers and ultimate global distribution. We are also just beginning to discover that we are the first species capable of exerting enough impact on Earth's ecology to accelerate the extinction of multiple species; ironically including our own.
The characteristic most responsible for that environmental dominance has been our cognitive ability; once thought unique, but now recognized as present, albeit to a much lesser degree, in multiple other species. Contrary to the once popular belief that animals are mere “brutes,” incapable of the logical and emotional responses which characterize human behavior, we now know that many species exhibit feelings appropriate to their circumstances and several have demonstrated enough cognitive capacity to devise purposeful new behaviors and pass them on to the next generation. Thus the differences between human and animal cognition appear more quantitative than qualitative.
If we focus on the impact of the cultural changes attributable to human brain function over just the last several centuries, we see that modern science and technology led to a quadrupling of the human population during the Twentieth Century alone. At the same time, it also expanded the complex global economy required for the maintenance and continuing expansion of that population, even while fighting two "world" and multiple other wars during the same interval. Ironically, it is the continuing increase in human numbers that is primarily responsible for the creation of new wealth, while disputes over how wealth should be divided have always been major sources of the human conflicts that lead to war.
The lesson now being taught by climate change, but clearly discernible in several more limited ecologic niches, is that the prompt, almost routine, economic exploitation of new technology may create unanticipated problems requiring considerable time to become obvious. To the extent they have also become important to a particular economy, their correction may become so costly and contentious as to be nearly impossible.
Thus our human conundrum is becoming clearer, almost by the day: as our numbers increase, so does both our tendency to compete with each other and the malign environmental impact we exert; thus urgently needed solutions are rendered progressively more difficult. A glaring example: dealing effectively with global climate change, which now seems only the most urgent of several threats to human survival, would be greatly facilitated by stabilization of the human population at far below today's levels; yet the highly polarized belief systems subscribed to by the contentious sovereign nations making up the UN preclude any discussion, let alone implementation, of such a solution.
On the other hand, simply marking time and carrying on business as usual while those nominally in charge of the planet continue to dither doesn’t seem like an acceptable option either. In the final analysis, we humans may well have been screwed by our own cognitive prowess.
How all this is logically related to cannabis and Proposition 215 will be discussed at some length in the near future.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at September 8, 2007 06:52 PM