nakedcapitalism | As Ilargi himself acknowledges, even by the standards of his fare,
this post on “overshoot” is plenty sobering. We do seem to be on our way
to precipitating a mass species die off (as in it’s underway already
and humans seem remarkably unwilling to take sufficiently stern measures
to stop it). The end of civilization as we know it seems almost
inevitable, given that most “advanced” economies are seeing serious
erosion of their social fabric, as reflected in falling social
well-being measures.
However, the provocative point that Jay Hanson argues is that our
hard-wired political habits guarantee our undoing. It’s akin to a
literary rendering I read long ago of Dollo’s theory of evolution, which
went something like this:
Species develop characteristics which give them competitive advantage. Dinosaurs get big so no predators can eat them up. Saber tooth tigers develop monster jaws so they can chomp on mastadons and other large prey.
But the problem is that species continue to develop these characteristics beyond the point of maximum advantage. Dinosaurs get so big that they need to get a second brain in their midsection to manage their bodies and they die of anatomical schizophrenia. Saber-tooth tiger become such efficient killers of large prey that they begin to wipe them out, and their hypertrophied jaws are badly adapted to killing smaller prey, so they die of starvation. And humans have developed overly large brains and are in the process of thinking themselves to death.
By Raúl Ilargi Meijer, editor-in-chief of The Automatic Earth. Originally published at Automatic Earth
There is not one single person I’ve learned more from than Jay
Hanson, back when I was even younger than I am now. Jay is not the
greatest writer in the world, his talent is that he has the right kind
of unrelenting curiosity, needed to dig deep into the reasons we put
ourselves where we do (it’s hardwired). This curiosity made put together
the best library of information on ourselves and the world we live in
that one can ever hope to find, at dieoff.org, much of it not published
anywhere else. I took a month off 15 years ago and read it all back to
back. The dieoff library was – mostly – finished by then. So it was a
nice surprise to have someone send me the following piece, which is
recent. It may look bleak and dark to you, but the challenge is to find
where you think Jay goes wrong, and what you know better. That will not
be easy, Jay’s a mighty smart puppy. I guess the essence is this: our
brains are our destiny. That this leads to things we don’t like to
acknowledge is something we will need to deal with. Walking away from it
is neither a solution nor the best way to use the one part of us that
may help find a solution. Which is also our brain.
Jay Hanson: I
have been forced to review the key lessons that I have learned
concerning human nature and collapse over the last 20 years. Our
collective behavior is the problem that must be overcome before
anything can be done to mitigate the coming global social collapse. The
single most-important lesson for me was that we cannot re-wire (literally, because thought is physical)
our basic political agendas through reading or discussion alone.
Moreover, since our thoughts are subject to physical law, we do not have
the free-will to either think or behave autonomously.
We swim in “politics” like fish swim in water; it’s everywhere, but we can’t see it!
We are “political” animals from birth until death.
Everything we do or say can be seen as part of lifelong political
agendas. Despite decades of scientific warnings, we continue to destroy
our life-support system because that behavior is part of our inherited
(DNA/RNA) hard wiring. We use scientific warnings, like all
inter-animal communications, for cementing group identity and for
elevating one’s own status (politics).
Only physical hardship can force us to
rewire our mental agendas. I am certainly not the first to make the
observation, but now, after 20 years of study and debate, I am totally
certain. The net energy principle
guarantees that our global supply lines will collapse. The rush to
social collapse cannot be stopped no matter what is written or said.
Humans have never been able to intentionally-avoid collapse because fundamental system-wide change is only possible after the collapse begins.
