By Eric Le Roy
Content 18+ No matter who or what finally gets blamed, the Los Angeles fires – still not under control as we speak – recently swirled to such ravenous levels of destruction that most people couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Terrified and flabbergasted, they didn’t know what to do next; you could see it in their eyes. All of a sudden even movie stars like Mel Gibson and James Wood simply became ordinary people again; no fire that ever raged behind them on a film set bore any resemblance to this one. I saw an almost tender, bewildered vulnerability emerge in them as they described the fiery carnage.
Then they became angry. Very angry. And they had a right to be because, no matter what started the holocaust (I hesitate to use this word for obvious reasons, but please indulge me for now), there was a hell of a lot of ‘operator error’ going on in LA.. If this was to be a different kind of essay, I would go into that – I’d be doing the equivalent of kicking ass and taking names. But I won’t. Besides, all the anger in the world, all the justifiable fury and inevitable finger-pointing based on such a scale of human grief caused in part by official ineptitude, would not change anything for now. The future, maybe; let’s hope.
Nor will I level any acid remarks on how the rich celebrities got their comeuppance as their mansions were gobbled up in the hellfire, because it’s not right to do so. I feel sorry for them. As I said, I suddenly saw them as people who were enduring the shock of losing their homes, not as movie stars who could probably figure something out later, unlike most of the rest. The difference between haves and the have-nots in this world is that the ‘haves’ can always flip the script to Plan B. But this doesn’t mean that if you have two daughters and lose one of them, you feel good because there is still one left. Perhaps, by the slenderest of margins, it’s better than being left with no daughter at all, but it’s still not good. So it is with rich celebs as opposed to peons and paupers.
However, I have a different focus for this essay, for what I really saw was the stunning fragility of what we call civilization. We live in this temporary construction of ours as if it represented some kind of impregnable fortress standing high and mighty, our proud skyscrapers mingling with the clouds, and our technology chasing all the gods from the mountain tops and the skies.
And who cares, I mean really, who cares if the rivers and seas are now merely human washing machines where we get rid of crappy stuff like FISH and wash our plastic with an oil ‘detergent’? Who cares that the ground under our feet is soiled with our funk and spew and general detritus – why worry about such minor distractions when our technology is bound to rescue us from the worst sides of ourselves? For haven’t we surpassed the old bonds of nature? Don’t we know how to control it like a dog chained up behind a chain link fence? Hasn’t human ingenuity made an indentured servant of Nature – a Slave, in fact, if you want to get onto the subject of synthetics, hybrids, and genetic engineering?
Well, not quite, as it turns out. Sometimes, you see, Nature decides to clear its throat. Ahem, it says. And suddenly, presto, bingo, boom boom boom – here comes an earthquake or a tsunami or a hurricane. Or maybe it’s just a gentle reminder, like a power failure. Look at them scurrying around waving their smartphones and grabbing at the darkness! And look at how all those looters and vandals have seized their chance to empty the stores! CIVILIZATION RULES! Hooray !!!
Or maybe Nature will answer in a different way. A New Virus. Those pesky viruses seem to creep up on us from unknown origins (maybe even from our own ingenuity and technology, who can say for sure?) and, before you know it, the whole world is in trouble. Covid. You think that was the last of the viruses? Maybe for a little while. But one suspects that we may be entering, not only the Digital Age but the Age of the Virus. You know, chemical warfare. It will make a fine addition to nuclear warfare, perhaps cleaning up on the straggling survivors. Human Civilization after the hot winds blow the big mushroom to the side: Ugh, Ugh! A Virus!
The arrogance. The sheer arrogance of it all. If you are religious, then of course you will ignore or ridicule what I am saying because God is your answer no matter what, and no matter how often he takes a rain check on your prayers. If you are a technology buff, you will label me a know-nothing fool and a trolling crank on top of it. You will think I am just another apocalypse- mongering blowhard trying to get attention.
But the truth is, we are here by accident. Oh yes, evolutionary and genetic logic does apply. Important turns were taken along the way which, if left out, would have spoiled the party. But when you try to convince yourself that the human race is somehow exempt from all the other species which have suffered extinction, think again. The homo sapien is only one of many hominid (or human) species that have existed here. According to the Natural History Museum,
“Apart from our species, the gallery features eight other kinds of human: Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, Homo erectus, Homo antecessor, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo floresiensis (nicknamed ‘the hobbit’), Homo neanderthalensis (the Neanderthals) and the recently discovered Homo naledi.”
Where’d they go? Well, they went the same way as the Dodo Bird and the Whooping Crane.
The truth is, the homo sapien, like all other things in creation, is nothing more than a passing thought in the wealth of emptiness of deep space. A single maybe-you-see-it-maybe-you-don’t blink in eternal darkness. The universe has existed for 14.5 billion years. The earliest hominid traces go back to about 1.8 million years ago, so as you can see, the humanless planet was doing OK for quite a while before even a hairy, grunting version of ourselves came along. The human race as we know it goes back maybe 70,000 years, and the so-called Agricultural Revolution was circa 12,000 years ago. Just to give you an idea, it is estimated that the dinosaurs lasted for 165,000,000 years, and they became extinct 61,000,000 years ago. (these are millions, I’m talking about). During that time, the earth has gone through a multitude of natural ‘environmental’ disasters.
Let’s take note of a few of them that happened, not since we arrived, but long before:
There have been not merely the extinction of a life form here and there, but Mass Extinctions.The most famous mass extinction event, of course, is the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction of dinosaurs, which most scientists believe was due to an asteroid impact. Also, there were large volcanic eruptions such as that of the Siberian Traps around 252 million years ago during the Permian-Triassic period that produced enormous lava flows and set loose huge amounts of ash and gases into the atmosphere, leading to catastrophic climate changes and extinctions.
We worry now about climate change and the overheating of the planet; however Earth has suffered several ice ages throughout its history, where mammoth ice sheets covered large areas of the planet. These ice ages were caused by variations in Earth’s orbit and axial tilt, leading to periods of colder temperatures and glacial expansion. But, according to Climate,gov, “Our 4.54-billion-year-old planet probably experienced its hottest temperatures in its earliest days, when it was still colliding with other rocky debris (planetesimals) careening around the solar system. The heat of these collisions would have kept Earth molten, with top-of-the-atmosphere temperatures upward of 3,600° Fahrenheit. Even after those first scorching millennia, however, the planet has often been much warmer than it is now. One of the warmest times was during the geologic period known as the Neoproterozoic, between 600 and 800 million years ago. Conditions were also frequently sweltering between 500 million and 250 million years ago. And within the last 100 million years, two major heat spikes occurred: the Cretaceous Hot Greenhouse (about 92 million years ago), and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (about 56 million years ago).
Still other catastrophic events have taken place, including mega-tsunamis triggered by underwater landslides, volcanic eruptions, or asteroid impacts. Moreover, Earth’s tectonic plates have been in constant motion throughout geological time, leading to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and the formation of mountain ranges. The movement of continents due to plate tectonics has also caused significant geological events in Earth’s history.
As you can see, our miniscule presence on this planet – and any harm we may do to it (quite a lot, actually) – pales before the titanic events the earth has sustained long before we got Our Grubby Paws on it.
In short, human civilization, magnificent as it sometimes seems, is nothing more than an elaborate anthill. And far from leaping about with hate filled glee over this baleful recognition, I simply know it’s true – the same way a terminal cancer diagnosis remains true no matter how much you squawk about it. You might as well strap yourself to an ultrasound machine and just watch those malignant boogers proliferate. From a tiny village to a megacity right there inside your pancreas or esophagus. And you can watch it like a football game.
The older I get, the more I understand the fragility of life, and I don’t mean in an intellectual sense. I mean I feel it, as if my next heartbeat could be my last. This doesn’t translate into terminal fear, like a guy afraid of heights standing on a narrow ledge 60 storeys above the ground. It just means that I feel the weight and power of everything around me, like the whip of the wind, the lunar wintry anonymity of the air when the temperature suddenly drops late at night; the charcoal face of the Black Sea when the sky has become a dictatorship of iron clouds.
Actually, I believe it is Humility kicking in, a gut-level awareness that I am no wiser to the ways of the cosmos than the average frog, turtle, beetle or butterfly. I simply am – a plaintive little human ‘gadget’ desperate to validate myself in some way: prayer, anger, wisdom, violence, tears, or whatever. Above all, the real common denominator of my existence, as with everyone (although many cannot admit it) is Fear. I am not speaking of cowardice, like a guy who is afraid of a bar fight or a job interview. I mean the existential terror of the void that underlies all we do, the void-terror which is at the root of all compensatory religion.
It represents a fascinating paradox (at least I think so) when we try to combine this primordial horror of extinction – which I would suggest that everything, including flies, mosquitoes and cockroaches, experiences at the moment of annihilation – with the swaggering, ego-saturated arrogance with which the human race believes itself to be the conqueror of Nature. In fact, I have always found something simultaneously ludicrous and contemptible about the self-congratulatory mindset of the homo sapien, in fact the most destructive entity the world has ever seen and precisely the one that the earth would be better off without.
But the human race has never been short of vainglorious pride and exultant self-promotion; never has this been more true than in all the well-intentioned ‘Save the Planet’ rhetoric we have been hearing ever since people realized that climate change and air pollution were doing a number on us.
The fact that the cosmos is terminal does not mean we shouldn’t all stand up and be counted. Of course, we should try to clean up our messes; of course there is a time to celebrate and rejoice, a time to live and to die. Religion may be on the out and God may be dead, but I am struck by the verses at the beginning of the Book of Ecclesiastes in the old Hebrew bible:
“Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”
The human, with all its songs, declarations, and documents of wisdom – all fabulous monuments to itself, will find one day that Day is at its end. The fires in Los Angeles showed us the faces of human people at their best and worst, but the main thing I will remember is that deer-in-the-headlights look I saw so often when people understood (though they will naturally soon forget) how frail, ephemeral, and mortal they are. As we are.
The planet will be our cemetery even as wild flowers grow again to prodigious heights on mountains and hills, honking geese and sable crows adorn the skies, wild beasts cry and honk and hiss from the valleys, and strange presences wander forth , casting great shadows across the plains of the flourishing Earth.
