You know me: I’ll go after almost any aspect of modernity, including technology, agriculture, or even written language. Let’s now take a big swipe at “The Law.” But first, we’ll need to get a few common reactions out of the way.

When I suggest that a rigid, codified legal system is an abomination that humans are better off not suffering, strong objections instantly arise on the basis that a lawless modernity would be a chaotic nightmare for all sorts of reasons.

I totally agree: modernity absolutely needs a legal system in place. So, sure: anarchy is no way to run modernity, but here’s the catch: modernity is no way to run humanity, or life on Earth more generally. Modernity, it appears, initiates a sixth mass extinction, and is thus effectively synonymous, just as unsustainable is synonymous with failure. Modernity has no deep-time ecological vetting, and is a transient offshoot that has—in a relative eye-blink—caused tremendous disruption to the prospects for a happy life for countless members of the Community of Life, including, of course, future humans.

So, ask not what modernity needs, because doing so is basically asking what the sixth mass extinction needs. As far as anyone knows, and certainly as the actual evidence reveals, the two are inseparably part of the same phenomenon. So, let’s get over prioritizing what modernity needs. Laws are among those “necessities” of the sixth mass extinction—a.k.a. modernity.

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