I normally don’t write a whole post in response to a comment, and can’t predict whether it is any more than a one-off phenomenon. But isn’t that just like the universe to change things up once in a while?

A reader (Robert) of the last post asked three “big picture” questions that I felt warranted responses inappropriately long for a comment thread. We may as well just dive in…

Any Hopes?

Robert asks:

Is there anything you hope for, for the planet as a whole—as to what it looks like far into the future? Say, 1,000 years from now? 1,000,000 years from now? 100,000,000 years from now? That life still exists on the planet and some kind of “ecological balance” has been restored? I realize it’s a strange question…so maybe worthy of a strange response from you. But appreciate your perspective on these things.

Whether or not my response is strange. I, for one, don’t find the question to be strange. Modernity is all most of us know, so the prospect of its failure/disappearance naturally creates a mental vacuum that invites feelings of panic, fatalism, and/or nihilism. What hope could possibly survive, if modernity is doomed?

Perhaps I am helped by having an astrophysics perspective on space and time. The universe is vast beyond what our intuitions can handle, and our experience of time is a minuscule slice of the whole. Thus, I immediately like questions that span orders-of-magnitude in time. Life itself is unfathomably amazing, and I mean that quite literally in that our meat-brains have no hope of ever grasping the full genius that flows out of the inseparable partnership between evolution and ecology (evology?).

Products of modernity—i.e., humans of our culture—are often hypersensitive to any threat to modernity, possibly largely connected to pride in human accomplishment. The fundamental flaw, I propose, is the facility with which a brain may sever/ignore mind-boggling connections and interdependencies in order to produce a mental model that fits in its cramped cranium. John Muir was onto something when he noted that “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”

Modernity is a package deal. Pick your favorite aspects of modernity—medical care, low infant mortality, thermal comfort, grocery stores, etc.—and you’ll find it inseparably hitched to a sixth mass extinction. The universe simply does not care if you can manage to separate the phenomena in your puny head. Of course you can. Big whoop.

At some level, any hopes I might have for the future are almost as pointless as my wishing that modernity had never been initiated (largely by agriculture, 10,000 years ago). Despite this, being human, I do have wishes and hopes swirling in my meat brain.

Hopes come down to values. Because I have come to value the universe more than I do modernity (wins hands-down in scale, grandeur, duration, complexity, genius), my hopes bear allegiance to the emergent amazingness we are lucky to witness. To that end, I hope that:

1. Modernity stumbles before human enterprises commit a sixth mass extinction (and necessarily self-terminate Homo sapiens in the bargain);
2. Humans continue to enjoy a place on Earth after modernity fails, living authentic ecological lives;
3. Biodiversity recovers and builds to new heights;
4. Evolution continues the Homo line beyond sapiens—in an ecologically cooperative arrangement;
5. Life thrives on Earth until the intensifying sun caps it in a billion years.

It’s a very life-centric perspective, and also more anthropocentric than might be expected, given my intolerance for human supremacy. It isn’t necessarily inconsistent to wish one’s own species to have a continued role in ecological existence without the supremacy/exceptionalism angle.

Logically, because Earth is one tiny and insignificant speck around a thoroughly unremarkable star, and because life will presumably perish once oceans inevitably boil in a billion years or so, it makes no sense to hope for any of the items on my list. If you’re satisfied with logic alone, then go ahead and embrace nihilism: truly nothing matters in a purely logical sense. I try not to be a captive of the left hemisphere, appreciating more than logic in a more-than-human world.

Okay: maybe that last bit does come across as “strange” to the well-trained robots among us.

Praise for Humans?

The next question:

I love your notion that we must separate the human species from modernity, that they are really two different things. That being said…is there anything you find unique or inspiring about the human species? I personally realize there could (and have been and probably will be)—encyclopedias written about humanity’s collective ignorance and cruelty (see: racism, Holocaust, wars, genocide, selfishness, pettiness, etc., etc., etc.…probably can throw modernity itself in this list too haha)…but is there anything you find inspiring or unique about homo sapiens?

I’m always heartened when someone “gets” that humanity is not modernity, and that failure of modernity need not mean failure of humanity. When I’m labeled a doomer, it feels very off to me personally, because I’m naturally a cheerful fellow, and only doomerish about modernity…which is hardly anything to get worked up about—being a brief unsustainable episode in a larger and more fantastic universe. There really is a great deal more to life than our silly, fleeting, insubstantial arrangements

To be perfectly clear, I don’t dislike humans at all. I might not be fond of what a majority have gotten up to in the last 10,000 years, but let’s be a bit forgiving, yeah? Our species has been around for about 300,000 years and might number something like 100 billion across all time. The practices of fewer than 10% of all humans in 3% of their time on the planet perhaps should not cause us to condemn the species as a whole. Indeed, many human people valiantly and vehemently resisted modernity’s intrusions—often crushed, tragically, but not always.

What do I find unique and inspiring about humans? Loads! I’ll start with the fact that we’re often very funny. We tease and joke and pun and laugh at irony. It would take a great deal of non-existent evidence to convince me that this quality is not as old as our species—or most likely inherited from previous models.

In fact, it’s worth sharing my technique for separating humanity from modernity: I access what (little) we know about human life before and outside of modernity. See, for instance, some of the books on my list from last summer for windows into humans living authentic ecological lives. Judging human nature based on members of modernity (likely every person you’ve ever met or seen on television) is outlandishly skewed—akin to assuming that prisoners, billionaires, or the Wehrmacht are perfectly typical representatives of today’s population. Millennia of perverse living have conditioned us all to be dreadfully un-representative of humans, as odd as that must sound.

I admire the natural curiosity and keen observational skills of humans. Similar traits crop up in some other animals as well, and I think that’s great: tuned into the universe.

Humans are cooperative, empathetic, caring creatures. Modernity emphasizes competition and dominance, but the associated conquest-driven violence and warfare are not accurate characterizations of band-level living that dominates our history. I’m not saying that such life had no violence, but the form was much different and much more humane: skirmishes demonstrated strength and said “don’t mess with us” without the goal being to kill or eradicate strangers. Projection of the familiar prevents modernites from forming an accurate take. Poor assumptions fly in from nowhere to paper over our ignorance.

Our species is remarkably adaptable, able to live in ecological reciprocity in vastly different climates. This, unsurprisingly, likely stems from our cognitive capacity to adjust lifestyles to suit different ecological realities. It is that same remarkable attribute that also opened Pandora’s box via power concentration, hierarchy, agriculture, technological innovation, etc.—eventually escalating to mass-extinction scales. Thus it is unclear how proud we should be of this unique trait.

Complex language is another incredible facet of humanity, although I would not claim it to be unique (e.g., cetaceans). One might worry that this capability—also connected, of course, to cognitive capacity—is likewise a bridge too far in an ecological sense. But dolphins haven’t wrecked the place, and humans did not do so for ages beyond comprehension while wagging their tongues the whole time. Language assists remarkably on the empathy front. This desire to understand others crosses species boundaries, so that humans have always admired and sought to learn from other living beings. Perhaps humans are unique in their quest to forge relationships with other life: to help, connect, and protect. That’s worth a bit of pride.

Praise for Modernity?

The final question:

Is there anything you find inspiring or of value about modernity itself? Obviously—as you’ve explained—it’s something that will fail eventually and has caused so much damage to the collective planet of life on Earth—but that being said (and not sure how you can compare any “good” to all of this “bad”)…but…do you find any beauty or value in anything that has resulted from modernity? I personally (my own opinion) find beauty and value in the knowledge we have gained…whether for better or worse. As far as I know…no other species on Earth has the capability of understanding about atoms, physics, our place in the Universe, the existence of other planets, the reality of all species’ collective fate on this speck of blue dust we call Earth in a huge Universe … So I find a lot of beauty and value in the knowledge modernity has produced…even with all of the suffering it took to acquire that knowledge…and the fact that all of this knowledge will eventually go away. Just curious your perspective on this.

This is a tough one. I am definitely capable—and even predisposed—to find elements of modernity to be valuable. But then I catch myself, realizing that it’s one enormous and inseparable set of phenomena—including the sixth mass extinction.

Definitely early in my journey I valued science—and the knowledge so–obtained—above probably everything else. This is why peak oil and the possibility of modernity’s collapse freaked me out, initially. We must—at all costs, I thought—do whatever we could to prevent collapse and thus save our precious knowledge from being lost in enveloping chaos. Solar panels to the rescue!

Part of this was personal. While not responsible for any seismic advances in knowledge, I could lay claim to a few chips here and there, and didn’t want all that hard work to be forever lost. My empathy extended to colleagues: all their work could likewise be washed away in a tsunami of ignorance.

I am still tugged by this issue, however narrowly-assessed such attachment might be. Knowing physics as well as I do opens a window that few enjoy as to how the universe really seems to work at its most fundamental level. And yes, it is beautiful—beauty the universe created, not humans or modernity, to be clear. Knowledge on this front—albeit obtained by net-negative modern methods—has allowed me to appreciate that complexity beyond cognitive reach is capable of stacking up into phenomena of breathtaking beauty and splendor and mystery. I have been able to utilize this foundation to come full-circle in some sense to honor our animistic roots. In a way, the machine has produced a level of awareness that itself exposes the machine as a naked emperor. What if the knowledge accumulated—while also accumulating irreversible ecological harm—turns out to be important in dismantling (hospicing) modernity? Like any other human, I am utterly unqualified to judge.

All I know is: here we are, having acquired an impressive amount of knowledge at devastating cost. The horse is out of the barn. I can’t pretend not to possess this knowledge now, and despite its cost do find that I value it.

If I play a counterfactual—of which I am not a fan—I can ask if we would have been better off never having acquired modern knowledge. Again, it comes down to what one values. Given my leaning toward attributes of the world outside modernity and not shoddy products of cognition, I do think the Community of Life (including humans, naturally) would have been better off without the entire bolus of agriculture, written language, money, and the sixth mass extinction (a.k.a. modernity).

At this point, my hope is that the costly knowledge might play a role in defeating Leviathan. I can be at peace with the eventual prospect of letting all our “precious” knowledge die when the beast is finally dead. In its place will be rediscovered knowledge of ecological relationships and ways of living. That’s also a very satisfying knowledge base, and one that may in fact carry more obvious meaning to its keepers.

Views: 1593