By Eric Le Roy
Content 18+ As human civilization wends its wobbly way toward whatever ultimate outcome that God or ‘the gods’ (or neither of the above) have in store for it – OR, following the existential path – what people determine for themselves when assessing the rocky explosions of deep space, the empty patches in between of inconceivable width and length, it strikes me that there are two ways of tackling the following questions: Will human beings improve enough over time (or have they already) to ensure the continuation of the human race beyond factors it can not control as well as those it can? Or will the human race ultimately self-destruct, thus becoming in the cosmic scheme of things just another failed mutation or, as George Carlin put it, “a cosmic cul de sac.” – ?
Artem is betting on the former; I believe the latter. I have given this thing some careful thought, which probably means that I am wrong. But to me, it’s more than just a glass half empty/glass half full sort of thing.
My colleague has done his research, no argument there. Throughout his essay, he cites numerous impressive secondary sources, all of whom without exception ride the ‘Save the Planet, Save the Future’ bandwagon. These sources have a lot in common in their optimism, one of which is in ignoring a very sound, time-tested psychological principle: past behavior is a good predictor of future behavior. In street language: “Once a junkie, always a junkie.”
So, as I see it, here’s the problem: we must determine if – and, if so, how much – the human race has ‘improved’ over the course of its existence on earth. And there is no place better to start with than anthropology. According to Benjamin Plackett, “We Homo sapiens didn’t used to be alone. Long ago, there was a lot more human diversity; Homo sapiens lived alongside an estimated eight now-extinct species of human about 300,000 years ago. As recently as 15,000 years ago, we were sharing caves with another human species known as the Denisovans. And fossilized remains indicate an even higher number of early human species once populated Earth before our species came along.” (Plackett, “Direct Science”)
Of numerous ‘homo’ variations, the homo sapien alone remains, having outlasted some and driven others, most notably the Neanderthals, to extinction. In fact, harrying other species of life to extinction has been a leading characteristic of the homo sapiens ever since they started leaving Africa and migrating all over the world. The scientifically verifiable fact is this (at least to everyone but inflexible religious stalwarts of orthodoxy): everywhere mankind has moved, he has hustled to extinction every other living thing that stood in his way.
Here is but a single sad example : “Sometime in the late 1600s, in the lush forests of Mauritius, the very last dodo took its last breath. After centuries of untroubled ferreting in the tropical undergrowth, this species met its untimely end at the hands of humans, who had arrived on the island less than 100 years before. With their penchant for hunting, habitat destruction and the release of invasive species, humans undid millions of years of evolution, and swiftly removed this bird from the face of the Earth.” (Emma Bryce, Life Science, 2020.)
Ok, OK ! – you with chilly hearts might cry: What’s so important about a dodo bird? Well, that depends, but my example was just the tip of the iceberg. Felica Smith (professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of New Mexico) explains: “As [hominids] migrated out of Africa, you see this incredibly regular pattern of extinction,” She points to fossil records which show that every time our ancestors arrived at a new destination, large-bodied species — the humongous prehistoric relatives of elephants, bears, antelope and other creatures — started going extinct within a few hundred to 1,000 years, at most. Such rapid extinction timescales don’t occur at any other point in the last several million years (not since the non-avian dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid about 65 million years ago.) “The only time you see it is when humans are involved, which is really striking,” Smith said.
I could go on and on with this, but maybe you get the point. The human being is the deadliest, greediest, blood-thirstiest and most remorselessly destructive living force the planet has ever known. And now – Now, by Gawd – this actually very recent arrival, this brash narcissistic disruptor of earth’s timeless patterns, is going to sanitize our Slop and SAVE our Bacon??!!??
HOW? And by means of what wisdom?
Ah, cries Artem and his legion of supporters, we have improved! Just look around you! How rarely do we disembowel people in public ! How seldom do we hang them or divide their torsos with hacksaws kept deliberately dull? It’s true, we have tapered off to a commendable degree, but just look at our even more impressive legacy, for – come to think of it – never has our fiendish craft of mind been more prepossessing than in our invention of torture devices. I read a book about it once, and human genius was never more on display.
There was one method, for instance, where they used to hang the guy upside down and start sawing him through, beginning with the genitalia and proceeding, like a Lewis and Clark expedition through the mountains, forests and waters of the American West, all the way to the dandruff at the base of his scalp. Horrible. But why upside down? Well, it was because the ‘medical men’ of the day had figured out that it would make the blood sink to the guy’s head, and this density of blood would intensify his suffering. Get it? For these clever homo sapiens, just sawing the dude in half wasn’t enough!
Henry VIII is known for having two of his wives decapitated, but he didn’t stop there. When a cook was accused of trying to poison Bishop John Fisher, Henry had the chef boiled in a vat of his own broth. But they didn’t just dump him in. They put a bridle of some sort on him and attached him to the arm of a machine which could dip him in and then pull him out. Each time he emerged from the frothy hell, he stank a little more as the now soupy flesh began to slither and slink from his body. Apparently Henry’s guests had to hold their noses even while never averting their eyes.
Where are the Romans, where have they gone, those toga-wearing patricians swilling vino by the flagon while they merrily watched the pious Christians being clawed and chewed by lip-smacking tigers as the sell-out crowd waved its banners and screamed “Forza Azzurri!” Oh where have they gone, these engineers and architects of the ancient world, the builders of roads – the finest civilization the world had ever produced?
Ok, maybe we have cleaned up a few bad habits. Progress… Progress? Have we? Doesn’t it depend on how we define the term, always being careful not to confuse scientific advances, material innovation or even giving public voice to ethical amendment and rectification – with something more fundamental? Shouldn’t we try to try to get closer to the core and resist the seductions of what may only be cosmetic? Wouldn’t it be wise, considering that the argument in favor of our ability to ‘get it right’ in the future in reality constitutes a stunning reversal of what we have been doing since we first learned to walk on two legs and say “What the fuck?” – Doesn’t it suggest a violent acceleration of the evolutionary process – one that in fact is not possible? A process which we congratulate ourselves on changing – in a few centuries – what had been our regular ‘business as usual’ for 8 million years?
I mean I know we live in a fast-paced society, BUT……..
So the question becomes, not ‘could’ we? (second conditional modal verb signifying an unlikely outcome) – but will we? Artem has convinced me that, indeed yes, we are capable of it. And he points to our grasp of environmental issues which no one thought about a few decades ago. He runs off a list of ecologically perspicacious remedies that citizens have not only embraced but now avidly pursue, almost with a German-like love of order and a nurse’s insistence on washing her hands every ten minutes as she enters and departs the different sickrooms.
But this summons the question: how many people actually do this? And there are two ends to this question, one involving the rank-and-file, run-of-the-mill populace from middle income to low income to no income at all – and the other involving the rich muckety mucks and the giant corporations. I invite you, and I will call on Artem to go with me, to have a ‘day for the queen’ wandering about the big cities of the world. São Paulo. Los Angeles. London. Manchester. Napoli. Cairo. Bangkok, Let’s see how clean they are, and if the streets are full of people scurrying around scooping up every wrapper they can find. Let’s hike up and down India and some of the African countries and see if they are planting trees or dredging garbage up out of the rivers. Recycling elephant tusks that they have poached. That sort of thing.
Next, let’s look closely at the big corporate conglomerates. Sure, they all give lip service to Green this and Green that. And no doubt they circumvent the law in every way they can, because in Big Business NOTHING is more important than The Bottom Line. These companies invest enough – in lawyers to find loopholes and get them off the hook – to feed the entire African continent. Speaking of lots of people, even with the current baby drain, there are estimates that the current world population of 8.5 billion (circa) will reach 9.8 by 2050. That’s a lot of plastic that is going to be needed. And here’s a stat for you: according to Janet E, Kohlbase (ScienceDirect), in 2010, urbanization grew to encompass about 52 per cent of the world’s population, and the United Nations projects the percentage of the population living in cities to increase to about 67 per cent by 2050.” Of course the accuracy of these forecasts are subject to the same margin of error as any other prognosis, but the implications are clear: more people mean more messes to clean up. More crime. More tension. More dysfunctional behavior. An extra billion souls and their mischief. Sounds like a real community service project to me. Where can I sign up?
There are words which comfort us and those which don’t. For example, ‘dystopia’ is a bad word. ‘For some, when you say ‘Immigration’, a fuzzy feeling comes over them, but for a lot of people it’s the opposite. Same with ‘diversity’ and ‘globalization.’ Now the term ‘Civilization’ definitely falls in the camp of the positive. It even seems like some kind of magic dome to keep the sky from falling on us, an impregnable bubble that encapsulates us against the abyss, a way to wall out the Devil’s termites, even, strangely, a misty psychological gelatin to form a wavering film-like substance between us and ourselves.
Like the Metallica song “Moths to the Flame,” the presumed invincibility that civilization is there to provide presents a sense of security that in fact does not exist.
‘Cause he seems like he’s good for you
And he makes you feel like you should
And all your friends say he’s the one
His love for you is true (hey)
But does he know you call me when he sleeps? (No, no)
But does he know the pictures that you keep? (Oh)
But does he know the reasons that you cry?
Or tell me, does he know where your heart lies?
Where it truly lies’
Human civilization is like that in a sense. It is quite a great production but it hides many lies. It is often like a great stage performance or a high class restaurant full of violins and exotic tropical plants, flashy waiters and a maitre d’ as elegant and austere as a Spanish bullring matador. A surface masterpiece, both of them, but in the wings and the kitchen pandemonium is breaking loose all the time. The marvel is the stunning swiftness with which the hell-raising frenzy behind the scenes puts on a perfect public face with no more help than the swish of a curtain or a swinging door.
The gulf between what we see and what there really is I have always found compelling. Maybe it’s because, as a writer and lover of art, I have learned to peek through the small cracks in the facade. I have learned to feel the sometimes flamboyant – or at least sturdy – fullness of what is there by sensing the pathos, the subtle melancholy of what isn’t there. Human beings are almost entirely malleable: they can be turned into anything. A song can make us cry; propaganda can switch us into nazis, the blink of an eye can cause us to fall in love, the allure of a mob can lead us to put a man or woman to death. The tides of the sea manipulate the human psyche like the fingers of a skillful masseuse. In fact, I have seen people become ‘Born Again Christians’ without being able to detect the slightest bit of change in them except that now they walk around saying “Praise the Lord.” Yet they would swear to you, anger at the edge of their voices, that they have been saved, the slate of 40 years of dedicated assholery wiped clean in a trice.
Understand, I am not condemning the human race out of hand. The joys I have found among people are impossible to exaggerate, but so is the hurt, the disappointment, the cruelty. I do not for the very life of me understand how children can enjoy bullying other children, how an adolescent can derive pleasure from crushing a turtle or setting fire to a cat. But some of them do.
Some of them do, and no matter how convenient it is to describe them as being ‘the exceptions’, the fact is that these CHILDREN walk among us. And if THEY are not innocent, then who is?
It is the work of the civilized person to master his/her darkest sides, just as it is the job of the artist to perceive and render them in the manner of art. Alas, it is the job of the Tyrant, the Dictator, the Oppressor, to use these dark sides of human nature against the people themselves, and indeed they do – and are doing it– with spectacular success.
Moreover, as the world speeds up and people become more and more desperate to validate themselves, to gratify their longing and their lust in a ‘New York Minute’, to cry out “One, Two, Three, Look at Me!” – as in the child’s game – the more that this happens, the less I glimpse even a fleeting possibility that we will ever truly slow down long enough to change rules of the game or the destiny of our consumer collective, or educate to kind ness our ravenous mob of pillagers and pillocks. It would be like trying to perform heart surgery with a Glock. Or seeking to attain a universal vision of love with fentanyl. A simple change of heart. Sure. Quando gli asini volano.(When pigs fly.)
I doubt the human race will pull it off. Not on its own. And don’t start bugging God. He took a good look around at everything and jumped on a bus. He’s now living under an assumed name in Barbados.
What we are left with are the mirrors of our counterfeit existence. We eat tenderloin steak but we live in a tenderloin of life: a slum that we call Fat City. We are the alchemists of abstraction. And the funny part is that, as we go about ‘saving the planet’, we are still EVOLVING – only not in a way we should feel confident about.
We are merging with AI, and there may come a time when AI knows something we don’t. The human race will probably prove to have been an investment in some other thing’s future. We are the crypto currency of future entrepreneurs that run on batteries.
Sure, we live better than in the past – at least if you come from a ‘developed’ nation.
