Will Their Egos Drive Humans to Extinction?

Humans Are Seemingly Unable to Control Their Selves

David L. R. Stein

• Editorial: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781644622421
• Categoría: Politics & International Relations
• Categoría: Essays in Politics & International Relations

What is happening to modern societies? Everywhere one looks one finds signs of moral and social decay. In the US today, a reincarnation of the 1930s Nazi Brownshirts-aided and abetted by demented billionaires and euphemistically calling themselves Antifa-are marching in the streets, attacking any who dare to disagree with them, destroying private and public property, proclaiming they are what they are not, and sowing sedition everywhere they go with seeming impunity. This social m

SIGNIFICANT SOURCES OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL INSTABILITY

Ecocide and Genocide

Humans have been thoughtlessly changing, destroying, and polluting their own habitats from time immemorial. Examples include: heavy metals pollution resulting from the cupellation smelting process[44], creation of an arid “dust bowl[45]” in central North America resulting from over-cultivation of huge tracts of semiarid prairie, destruction of the Aral Sea[46] from over-diversion of source water for irrigation, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone[47] resulting from human managerial incompetence, and many others[48].

In the process, humans have been changing, destroying, and polluting the habitats of many other species in addition to their own. Insolent and wanton habitat destruction in combination with the over-harvesting of animal and plant species needed by humans to sustain themselves has ravaged other species for thousands of years. Examples of animal species driven to extinction include: megafauna[49] around the world, the Dodo bird[50], Passenger pigeon[51], bison[52], and hundreds of other species. Examples of decimated animal species on the verge of extinction include: Beluga sturgeon[53], elephants, Huchen[54] (Danube salmon), and many others[55].

While the history of Easter Island[56] is somewhat controversial, there is general agreement that its habitat was virtually destroyed by its human inhabitants. Prevailing opinion is that an otherwise heavily forested tropical paradise was systematically devastated in as little as a few hundred years[57] through a combination of human overpopulation, over-use of otherwise perpetually renewable resources, and pollution—all of which produced a hellish environment that inevitably led to tribal warfare, starvation, and human cannibalism[58].

All who are familiar with the history of Easter Island likely will agree that it represents an object lesson for humanity in what not to do. Yet, there is scant evidence, if any, that humanity has learned the lesson of Easter Island. All around the world humankind continue to demonstrate colossal ecological ignorance and an insolent and wanton disregard for judicious long-term management of natural resources—as demonstrated by the continuing destruction, exhaustion, and pollution of otherwise perpetually renewable resources, as well as a continuing lack of recycling and an attendant exhaustion of finite natural resources.

Such unfettered resource exhaustion would be bad enough, but humankind also continue to demonstrate an insolent and wanton disregard of the need to maintain a healthy human habitat as well. For example, humans continue to pollute air, earth, and water[59] with agricultural and industrial chemicals, human garbage, trash, and waste. Moreover, humans continue to adulterate their own foodstuffs with unnecessary additives, such as colorings, drugs, flavorings, and preservatives; and we even continue to pollute earth’s spatial environment with abandoned exploratory space vehicles, satellites, and other space debris[60].

What other than egocentricity and ignorance—i.e., hubris and stupidity—can explain humanity’s pollution of its own habitat to such an extent that it becomes unsafe for animal and plant life, thereby transforming what could be, and should be, perpetual sources of renewable life-sustaining resources into dangerous hazards to life. Clearly, some human behaviors must change if humanity is to halt its historical insolent and wanton destruction of its natural habitat—of the kind which led to ecocide, genocide, and the near extinction of the inhabitants of Easter Island.

Religion and Genocide

Those who are devoutly religious believe their destinies are controlled by supernatural forces beyond human comprehension and put their faith in deities who promise them immortality if only they abide by their religious teachings. But is that an intellectually respectable thing to do? How convenient it is to believe we humans are impotent to affect our own destinies—as it excuses us from making any serious and sustained effort to stop actions, habits, and practices which could be counterproductive to our well-being and could even threaten extinction of the human species.

“Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts.”13

And, while avoiding responsibility for their own actions well may be a great source of comfort for many, it has the unfortunate consequence of promising immortality to humans independently of their actions while living on this earth. Why then worry about human corruption, crime, decadence, depravity, evil, and licentiousness at all? Is not the same eternal after-life promised to every devoutly religious person? Could life be any more wonderful than that?

To be sure, in addition to promising immortality or “heaven” to those who abide by their religious teachings, some religions promise eternal suffering or “hell” to those who fail to live up to them. But all religions are not so demanding, and even those promising both heaven and hell provide means for redemption and even death-bed absolution. Consequently, the positive rewards of living a devout life always outrank the punishments for not doing so.

Moreover, it’s difficult to overlook the fact that religions in and of themselves can be sources of human conflicts and devastation[61]. Nor is it possible to overlook the disastrous retrograde consequences which some religious cults and sects have had throughout human history. Furthermore, when religion competes for political power as it’s want to do, it fails to be a source of enlightenment and instead becomes a source of social discord, dysfunction, and instability. Perhaps the most egregious example is Islamist[63] extremism which actively promotes genocide and subordinates both civil and criminal laws to religious doctrine.

Sadly, religious faith in a promised immortality well could be simply another example of the human ego run amok in the absence of an adequately developed superego—i.e., a kind of willful blindness—which suppresses the harsh reality of human mortality to achieve a more self-pleasing result. In other words, it could be nothing more than a convenient cop-out to avoid having to come to grips with harsh reality. Are we humans guilty of such irrational behavior? Unfortunately, we are, as demonstrated by the fact that much of humanity’s woeful naiveté can be explained only as demonstrations of an inability to learn based on a deliberate childlike refusal to acknowledge what is obvious to any who are unencumbered by willful blindness.

Tragically, this kind of mind-numbing blind religious faith has the power to reduce human behavior to the level of unconscious farm animals being led to their slaughter. It did not well serve the victims of five centuries of European witch trials[64], nor did it well serve the Jews during the holocaust[65] engineered by the Third Reich[66], and there is no evidence that it has ever served others any better.

Accordingly, using religion to rationalize a lack of human responsibility for human actions—especially those which could threaten extinction of the human species—is, in reality, an act of cowardice resulting from human egocentricity and ignorance. If human history to date is any indication, humankind would do well to look to themselves and not to Divine Providence[67] for salvation.

Failing Educational and Governmental Institutions

Sadly, despite the fact that the US is the greatest force for human liberty the world has yet conceived, and despite the equally compelling fact that competing Neo-Marxism—i.e., an amalgamation of all variations of Marxist-inspired totalitarian political ideologies, including socialism, communism, fascism (né national socialism), and progressivism, which is now evolving into something euphemistically termed postmodernism[68]—has achieved nothing but a consistent record of disastrous, if not monstrous, failures—including responsibility for the unnatural deaths of an estimated one hundred million people[69] in the last century alone, the US continues to be plagued by utopian Neo-Marxist pipedreams which, if pursued, would inevitably lead to surrender of the liberties for which a dozen generations of US citizens already have fought and died.

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