This is the seventeenth of 18 installments in the Metastatic Modernity video series (see launch announcement), putting the meta-crisis in perspective as a cancerous disease afflicting humanity and the greater community of life on Earth. Here, I attempt to paint a picture of how we might think of ourselves as humans on this planet, as integral members of the community of life. If we’re good, evolution might keep us for a while—along with lots of friends currently in deep trouble.
As is the custom for the series, I provide a stand-alone companion piece in written form (not a transcript) so that the key ideas may be absorbed by a different channel. The write-up that follows is arranged according to “chapters” in the video, navigable via links in the YouTube description field.
Introduction
This episode is the next step in our effort to synthesize the lessons from the series into a more appropriate way to see ourselves as human members within Earth’s community of life.
Not a TED Talk!
We frequently encounter presentations geared toward motivating specific actions—like buying something, donating to a cause, or some other “ask.” But I didn’t lay the foundation of the last sixteen episodes in order to roll out my “secret plan.” I don’t have a hidden agenda, or a fix-all recipe that if we just follow I claim will make everything alright. I present no genius, utopian vision for the future, all worked out.
In other words, this isn’t a TED talk, which were once brilliantly characterized as “middlebrow megachurch infotainment.” Such talks, by the way, often perfectly capture the hubris of the human mind. “Here is a problem that has plagued humanity for ages. Yet, in my cleverness I can frame it thusly. And, poof! That simple (imagined) trick is all it will take to never have to worry about this again.” The artificial—and superficial—performance makes the viewer feel artificially smart, and also placates the troubled mind by pretending that we now have one less thing to worry about: problem solved. But does the “problem” go away, then? Of course not—just the worry. TED talks are popular in part because they prop up our false conviction that the problems of the world are no match for human cleverness: a celebration of human supremacy.
I offer no tidy solutions, here. I’m not selling anything. And I’m not pretending to have figured it all out. I’m as confused as anybody as to how the future unfolds, and willing to admit it. In fact, one of my key points is that our brains are not going to figure all this out and somehow outperform age-old ecological wisdom. The one thing I’m pretty clear on is that we can’t go on like this. Something seismic has to change.
Who Are We?
I’m going to try to address the question: Who Are We, Anyway? I will do so by way of a series of questions that are all of the form: Could you even exist without …?
The Sun
Could you even exist without the sun? Well, hell no! Our sun is the source of energy for virtually all life on Earth. This is no place for mental fantasies about dilithium crystals and replicators. You, today, as a real biological person in a non-fantasy world cannot exist without the sun.
Atoms, Rocks, Gravity, Electromagnetism
Could you even exist without atoms, rocks, gravity, or electromagnetism? Well, we can’t do anything without atoms and the rich (electromagnetic) relationships between them (making molecules, chemistry etc.). Rocks plus gravity makes the Earth, and Earth makes us. Does this mean you can look at an individual rock and deduce that you can’t exist without that rock? That would be your hyper-logical and literal left hemisphere being absurd again. Any given rock is dispensable as one of many, but you would not exist without some rocks, somewhere. Or perhaps more correctly: without a lot of rocks everywhere.
Clean Air, Drinkable Water
Could you even exist without breathable air or drinkable water? Without breathable air, we’d be dead in minutes. We would not last more than a few days without water. So that’s a “no.” I will also remind you that 96% of the mass in our bodies is in the form of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen—all of which derive from air and water (some processed by plants and microbes).
Continents, Oceans, Rivers
Could you even exist without continents, oceans, or rivers? This one may not be immediately obvious, requiring more work to connect. But I think anyone would be foolish to propose the counterfactual: that we somehow don’t depend on them (simply based on our brains not being up to the task of appreciating the rich connections). They’re integral and important elements of our complete context. They move and store nutrients, regulate the climate, and provide a variety of habitats to support biodiversity. I would hate to try living without them (e.g., on Mars)!
To this last point, I’ll throw in Earth’s magnetosphere as a bonus: could you even exist without that? Without the magnetosphere, the radiation load on Earth would be about a hundred times higher, so our biology—as constituted—would shrivel in cancerous ruin, as would most of the community of life. Ostensibly “smart” people musk know this!?
Microbes
Could you even exist without microbes? I’m not just talking about the considerable evolutionary heritage that we utterly depend on to exist, but about the microbes living today. These little dudes are found everywhere as a biological foundation, performing countless essential ecological services at the very base of the food chain. Even in a literal sense, you are not you without the microbial life in your own gut! You depend on them to digest food!
Photosynthesis
Could you even exist without photosynthesis? This mechanism generates the primary energy source for most life on Earth, converting essential sunlight into chemical energy. We’re talking about plants, trees, plankton, algae. Clearly every second of your existence depends on photosynthesis, as practiced by other life.
Fungi and Their Networks
Could you even exist without fungi and their networks? Fungi perform crucial nutrient cycling—breaking down (decaying) spent life and distributing the nutrients through mycorrhizal networks. Plants and trees form essential symbiotic relationships with fungi to exchange nutrients and sugars. Without them, we’d probably have nothing to eat. Let’s never try the experiment, yeah?
Worms or Insects
Could you even exist without worms or insects? Worms and other “bugs” perform various critical functions (for plants and other life) such as soil maintenance, pollination, and nutrient cycling. They form (together with arthropods more generally) a substantial fraction of the food base on the planet. Take them away, and we no longer exist.
Wild Fish, Birds, Reptiles, Mammals
Could you even exist without wild fish, birds, reptiles, or mammals? Oh No! I left out amphibians and my precious newts! Will they forgive me? Can I exist without them? As in the previous cases, these groups are integral parts of functional ecologies, interacting with microbes, plants, plankton, fungi, insects, etc. in such a way that it is almost impossible to believe that humans would magically be left supported without them. This leads to a more general set of reflections.
Do You Feel Lucky, Punk?
Take any group out of the community of life and collapse is the likely consequence. These members have all co-evolved in the full context of each others’ presence in an intricate web of interdependent reciprocal relationships. Nothing is separate or isolated, but part of a complex whole—including ourselves, of course.
Importantly, we don’t have to understand for it to be true! The universe doesn’t check in with us late-comers first before establishing intricate interdependencies. The newt doesn’t know, cognitively, all the dependencies it lives by, but there they are all the same. Why would the human animal be any different?
Now, anyone is free to muse about whether we really need some component of the community of life to survive ourselves, but what do those musings stack up to, compared to the wisdom of evolutionary vetting in a fully parallel, fully contextual ecological reality over deep time? Our meat-brains were obviously not evolved to grasp that whole, and thus our cognitive limitations are to be expected. So, you might muse about the importance of some ecological strand in the web of life, but, as Dirty Harry might put it: Do you feel lucky, punk?
Nothing Without …
A big part of what I’m trying to convey is that we are nothing without ____! We could not exist without a huge list of entities, beings, and relationships. It makes no sense to talk of a human being as somehow existing apart from the whole. That’s just not a thing: never has been, and never will be—except perhaps in our incomplete thoughts. Hurting ecological health only hurts ourselves, just as damage to our body is harmful to our whole being.
You are not You
To make it more personal, you are not you without all. It makes no sense to consider yourself as being separate from the web of life—or the sun, rocks, gravity, continents, etc.. It helps me to think of a squirrel as a fruiting body of a healthy forest—one glorious and genius part of an integrated whole. Likewise, you are an extension, or an appendage of sorts, of what’s all around you. Just because you may be unaware of all the connections and relationships doesn’t mean they’re not present and vital to your existence.
We’re all connected by physics, atoms, nutrients, origins, DNA, and countless relationships of various kinds. You are one of many simultaneously-existing biophysical expressions, complete with an evolutionary heritage and present-day dependencies that reach deep into Earth’s past, present, and future—more deeply than our brains are prepared to grasp. But we don’t need a thorough understanding to have an appreciation, or deference, of sorts.
We Do Not Own Ourselves
As some of the earlier episodes emphasized, we own almost nothing about ourselves. Biological features like replication, metabolism, muscle, bone, senses, neurons and brains were all invented before us and then copied/pasted with minor tweaks along the way to make humans.
Brains are Heritage
As part of the same theme, our brains are mostly heritage. The same neurons are shared across the animal kingdom. We share brain structure with worms (e.g., regulating heartbeat and other vital functions), with reptiles (basic survival instincts), small mammals (limbic systems; emotions), and larger mammals (cerebrum). Our thoughts are, naturally, shaped—and constrained—by our brain structure. And that structure is established by evolutionary heritage. In this sense, human thoughts are not even wholly our own, but are characteristic of the social animals we were shaped to be.
I would go further to say that we have exactly zero control of the neurophysics that forms our every thought: we just participate in the ride via awareness. But that’s a bridge too far for many, and I won’t push it here.
Not Owners/Masters
If we don’t even own ourselves, then we certainly don’t own the planet! We are not its masters, and are not made to rule it. That common mythology is far from the mark (see my reflections on Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael for more along this line).
If we’re lucky and well behaved, Earth might continue letting us belong to it…for a while longer, anyway.
Huban MEings
What do you notice about the following three words: humility; humble; human? Right: all start with H–U–M.
Modernity, however, is this big hubbub based on hubris. So, really we should call the denizens of modernity hubans. And, as self-centered as we are, maybe we’re Huban MEings! It’s just a problem of letter placement, really. It’s all been one comedic and tragic dyslexic mix-up. But humor aside… Let’s aim to be humans, embracing humility and humbleness
Is It Up To Us?
What can we expect to accomplish? Wasn’t all of this inevitable, and is there any sense in swimming against the current? This can all be true while noting that our actions still have influence over our fate—and the fate of many other species. The key is in how we respond to the package of stimuli, and this series is part of a set of stimuli that could alter attitudes and behaviors—and thus outcomes. Maybe this series and similar reactions are inevitable as well, so let’s buckle in and see where our compulsions take us!
Whatever the case, it is important to note that we are constrained by ecological realities. This is not an arbitrary game. We can’t set whatever rules we fancy and expect them to mesh into established relationships. We’re best-off as students of other life, taking cues on how to live ecologically, in reciprocal relationship, integrated into a web of life. It’s not easy: an alien way of thinking—to hubans, anyway. Humans of the past managed it.
Our Older Brothers and Sisters
A common theme in Indigenous cultures goes something like:
Our older brothers and sisters on this planet (plants and animals) have much to teach us about how to live in this world.
This isn’t to be dismissed as primitive animism. It reflects hard-earned wisdom—that works, in practice. Within it is a tacit acknowledgment that our own fanciful notions are not to be trusted: they can take us off course and put us outside of nature’s graces. We would do well to heed this wisdom, spending time asking what we can learn from the way other beings live.
Closing and Do the Math
Next time I’ll wrap up the series by trying to answer the frequently-asked question: What can I do? I worry that my failure to deliver satisfying answers will make for a lame ending to the series, but I’ll do my best.
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"I'm all about squelching self-worship of the human brain" (Tom)
Yes. It's a Copernican-type problem. Do we center around ourselves or do we center around what is not us? That which sees itself is Ego. Ego only sees itself, yet humanity is far more than Ego. So what is humanity?
Humanity is an engine of sensing that self-reflexively sees its sensing (nothing else in nature that we know of shares this trait). A Non-Egoic view of humanity either (1) withers at sensing Non-Meaning or 2) senses Meaning in what it is not.
Sensing Meaning in what it is not gives us Primitive Animism, but anything else?
Imagine a Non-Egoic science that sees the data of both what it is and what it is not.
Consider the hubris of Carl Sagan standing on an ocean bluff at the beginning of Cosmos proclaiming: "The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be." How does he know this? He doesn't. He's simply proclaiming a faith born of Ego that only senses its own knowing in existence. He's only sensing what Ego sees. The weakness of the European Enlightenment is not recognizing how Egoic and Non-Egoic thinking work.
There is knowing that is not Self or Ego's knowing; yet recognizing data for this knowing requires going inward. We only see outward as clearly as we see inward. As I see it, this is our human task; Non-Egoic science. The link below is a 6-page essay opening my book on the subject.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/06mntymg2hyih6c7ddjs8/Start-Here.pdf?rlkey=1lbbq4jreanfx781anojegwrq&st=fcbpn1hv&dl=0
Despite the fact that we are well aware of many belief systems —Deep Ecology, Ecocentrism, Biocentrism, Taoism, even Animism— that espouse the worldview that we are a small part of a complex web of interdependence, it’s excruciatingly clear that we have lost our sense of connection to the ecosystem that maintains everything. Instead, we have been cluelessly dominating and exploiting nature, riding roughshod over this small planet as though we own it. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We can outline our plans for a fundamental societal shift in how we view our relationship with the natural world, and it’s probably a good exercise to undertake (as my Latin teacher used to say, "self-confession is good for the soul"). But I fear it’s too late. Modernity is doomed, and no exercise in applied contrition and humility, especially at this late stage of the game, will save it. On balance, this is a very good thing. When the last vestiges of this horrific disease are gone, perhaps the surviving humans (if any) will have learned to, once again, live according to a philosophical perspective that extends moral consideration to all of being, affirming that all forms of existence, from biological to geological to cosmological, have inherent value. Perhaps the death knells of Modernity will, once and forever, set aside the twisted, hubristic notion that humans are the center of the universe or the pinnacle of existence. In the meantime, probably the best we can hope for is to take steps to ease the terrific shock wave that is about to hit us.
Well put. And absolutely, aiming to save modernity is entirely the wrong move. Hospice, and move on.
On the surface this all seems to be true. However, there are nuances.
If we lost our sense of connection to the ecosystem which maintains everything, that implies that we had that sense of connection to begin with. Where did that sense come from? Do other species have that sense of connection or do they just do what comes naturally, what evolution equipped them for? If they didn't have that sense, how did we acquire it? If we did, then it must have been fleeting (once we didn't have it and then we did, now we don't).
On the question of modernity being doomed, it was always too late to save it as it couldn't possibly last, as Tom has mentioned so elegantly in a previous post.
It's hard now to see how history could have been any other way. And the future is determined, though we don't know exactly how or what it will look like (other than some broad outlines, like the removal of modernity).
"If [other species] didn't have that sense [of connection to the ecosystem which maintains everything], how did we acquire it?"
It's called culture. I.e., a set of ideas and values shared by a human collective.
Other species don't need a 'connection' to their ecosystem – they fit in automatically, without having to hold any ideas about how best to do so.
The present, almost global, culture (modernity) is relatively new, in evolutionary terms. Those cultures which lasted for many millennia (and which will may prevail after modernity has gone) proved they are compatible with the 'substrate' which supports them, aka the community of life.
Culture is not only a human construct. Any socially-learned practice is culture. If one were to exchange two-year-old crows (same species) living in Alaska and Arizona, and somehow prevent their socializing to the local populations, I suspect they might both perish, not knowing how to live in that place (i.e., being from the wrong culture). Pre-modernity human cultures were incredibly varied, because ecological settings were incredibly varied. Culture—in its origins—was largely about "how to live in this place." Long-lived cultures did so in ecologically sustainable ways, almost by definition.
A very thought provoking essay and I agree with most of it. To me, one of the problems is do we actually have control of anything?
According to some interpretations of the theory of relativity the future has already happened and cannot be altered.
You hinted that we don't even control our own thoughts and I suspect this might be true.
Are we really just here for the ride, driven by forces we neither understand or control, which are going to wipe us off the planet because we are an evolutionary dead end?
Or as Robert Wyatt put it: "Demented forces push me madly on a treadmill. Let me off please I am so tired"
We do not know if we are an evolutionary dead end. In our current mode, things don't look so great. But as we are adaptable beings, and seeing that 95% of our species' time on the planet has not been in the present destructive mode, we have a basis for reserving judgment. Ride or no, humans will react to the stimuli around them, and potentially in constructive ways. We can't opt out of the treadmill: that's how everything happens—like it or not.
A timely accompaniment to this series from Bill Rees – posted four days ago. Echoes many of the points made by Tom. Great minds & etc…
https://youtu.be/GPmMeF0B4v4?si=hXvzJnkEA9SybL03
Humus – soil – the etymological root of human and humility.
Thanks for this thoughtful series – hoping our society evolves to a place where such thoughts are carefully considered and acted upon.
Thank you. A very nice essay. One question: was “ Ostensibly “smart” people musk know this!?”. Was musk a mistake or a tongue in cheek reference to Elon?
He along with other silicone valley (SV) plutocrats seem to be in full denial about the climate crisis and doubling down on endless growth as a necessity. I’m concerned that they will make things much worse if an effort to protect their wealth, status and influence.
It was no slip of the fingers. Musk and his ilk tragically see themselves as heroes of humanity (of the Human Reich, maybe).