I think one characteristic of humanity is that as a whole we are inherently stupid, very stupid! And I think I know the reason why…
Looking back at former civilisations, it is always noteworthy how blatantly ignorant humanity was about the consequences of its own actions. We look back now and think we know better than we did before. Do we?
Even knowing what we know, time and time again we over-estimate our current intelligence level. Not only do we fail to learn by other people’s mistakes, but even when we know what is good for us, we are reluctant to change.
I think many people today are becoming too complacent. I think we think that we can still out-smart anything and everything that comes our way, that our technology will always provide us with an answer. Will it?
We think we can solve any problem that comes our way, that nothing is too great for us to overcome. Is it?
I invite you to take a look at the following article, specifically the Kardashev scale. Please, go do that now. I’ll wait here, I promise.
So. How did you go? If you didn’t click the link it talks about the three or more stages of civilisations that have ventured into space and how much they have explored and can manipulate their territory. Articles like this say that we will likely achieve “type II status” within a few thousand years (conquering our solar system). But delving into stage III and predicting how long it will take? Why? Are we really that arrogant and naïve? Really?!
Here we are –as puny as ever– barely having managed to map and explore a solitary planet in any sort of true detail (forget about the bottom of the watery bits called oceans for a second) and some of us are speaking of [presumably us] dominating an entire galaxy, or the entire universe?!
Such arrogance! As if we are the first ones to attain any sort of intelligence level. It’s even more optimistic than a pretentious little child bragging about swimming across an entire shark-infested ocean in record time just because they have set one foot into the bathtub. Good luck with that! It could very well happen given time, but it’s not going to be an easy task, certainly nothing anyone would be brazen enough to predict. There are so many hurdles and other obstacles to overcome in a baby’s life. That’s where we’re at by the way, the one-foot-in-the-bathtub moment.
I can just imagine advanced alien creatures that could simply wipe us all into oblivion with some kind of antimatter weapon… you know… a truly fearless species with a billion year head-start on our technology and one that hasn’t evolved from anxious apes. Something akin to a T-Rex with an IQ of 10,000… that’s the sort of hiccough one might consider when planning our civilisation’s progression into deep space. A massive encounter (for us) wouldn’t just hinder that projection it could mean our total annihilation.
But we do make all kinds of assumptions and then try to predict the future. Don’t we? I’m ironically predicting that based on this trend, pretty soon, we’ll realise that our current civilisation is exceedingly arrogant and suffers from an effect I like to call “social inertia”.
You know, I’ve gone off on a bit of a tangent again. This blog is really about our own survival. I write this because I know things and I feel I have a “duty of care” –not just to humanity– but to all animal and planet species. Besides, writing makes me feel like I am doing something useful instead of simply bottling my knowledge up inside my head and not acting upon it. I am strangely compelled by instinct to write this; it also helps somewhat with my depression.
I like to think that I am changing the world, ever so slightly. So why am I talking about deep space, human stupidity and arrogance all of a sudden? What has that got to do with our environment?
Well, because during a time when greenhouse gas emissions are ever-increasing, we are still urbanising natural spaces at a horrendous rate of speed. We are effectively destroying our free-growing, self-spawning air recyclers. What could possibly be more senseless than that? What could be more stupid that a civilisation that knows about something and stubbornly refuses to act on it? Why do we continue? Do we really think that science will one day provide a more impressive, beautiful, sustainable & economical method of CO2 -> O2 conversion than the humble tree?
In this respect, our society is worse than ignorant. Ignorance is supposedly not knowing something. Or not even really knowing that you don’t know something. But stupidity is worse. Stupidity is knowing about something and then not acting upon it (for whatever reason).
Stupidity is shooting yourself in the foot. You know you have a foot. You know you are holiding a gun. You know about aiming the gun. You know it might be loaded. You know what happens when you pull the trigger. And for whatever stupid reason, you point the gun at your foot and pull the trigger anyway. That is the very definition of stupid.
We also know we can’t create DNA molecules from scratch. We know that natural biodiversity actually makes us happy. We know that all species are part of a vastly interconnected ecosystem and that they are all beneficial. And yet we are willing to risk the extinction of thousands of plant and animal species, partly due to simple greed. Knowing what I know, I think that is very, very stupid indeed… I think we are shooting ourselves in both feet.
But why are we that stupid and greedy? And can we put it down to basic stupidity and greediness? Could it be laziness too? Apathy? Complacency? Or is the reluctance to change more deep-rooted, something else entirely?
So part of this blog hopes to answering the two questions: “why are we that stupid?” and “what can we actually do about it?”
Our species stands in the most dominant position on Earth. We pride ourselves on that. Yet as we pat ourselves on the back for our “cleverness of invention”, we mostly destroy everything natural around us and seek a synthetic alternative.
Inevitably though, many new technologies develop some really ugly and unforeseen consequences later on. Why do we try to reinvent the wheel? Why do we do that? We know about prevention and cure. We know it’s easier to prevent something than to cure it. So can we ever have our cake and eat it too?
A few months ago, Microsoft was proud to announce that it had invented a computer the size of a pack of gum. Great. Really, I mean, good for them. I’m sure the investors are happy.
But when will we ever be happy? When we have made a computer the size of a pea, a grain of rice, or still smaller?
And how long will humanity endure?
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