of human history simply because previous societies have risen
& fallen but there was always somewhere else to go. Today
we don't have that luxury. The Earth is an artifact of our species
& there are no luxury suites on the Moon.
Today the world is far over-crowded and natural resources have
been dangerously degraded. Ethnic/religious/ideological groups
are warring w each other with increasingly powerful weapons, and
people without sufficient psychological resources are engaging in
horrifiyingly destructive behaviors. And we are all terrified.
To put our troubles into even greater perspective, we are also wit-
nessing one of the major turning points of all Earth history.
So far in the history of the biological Earth, there have been five
major species extinctions. The dinosaurs died out in the last one,
the Cretaceous. We are in the middle of the sixth one today.
Already the fossil record of our time---should anyone be around to
read it--will reveal this. There has been much controversy over
the causes & origins of previous extinctions, but there is no doubt
as to the agent of destruction in our present crisis.
Plainly it is a plague of biological origin, all the more dangerous
for being a complexly-organized species that multiplies with
great rapidity and wantonly destroys other species as a by-product
of its own insatiable appetites. In spite of many attempts to arrest
this epidemic, including episodes in which tens of millions of
individual organisms have been destroyed in a brief amount of
time, the species itself continues to proliferate at an alarming rate
of speed.
Of course the species i am speaking of is Homo sapiens, also known
as US.
MAN THE RIDICULOUS
Instead of Homo sapiens, 'Man the Wise', perhaps we shd be
known as Homo ludicrens, 'Man the Ridiculous' since our col-
lective actions have resulted in worldwide biological degreda-
tion & destruction. We are quickly reaching a point wherein
we will no longer be able to sustain life on Earth as we know
it, yet we are unable to stem the human-made tsunami that is
now looming over us. Presumably we are rational creatures
who can plan & carry out complex transactions that will result
in enrichment & enhancement for all, yet in reality we are un-
able to do so. In fact, given the commonplace that "only a sick
animal fouls its own den", we must consider ourselves to be
sick as a species---sick, as in mentally ill.
MAN THE INSANE
Schizophrenia, the thought disorder that prevents the sufferer
from comprehending the difference between reality & his/her
distorted view of it, is a fundamental form of human illness. A
person suffering from such a disease is liable to engage in be-
havior destructive not only to him/herself, but to others as well,
and at the same time will be helpless to undo the resulting
tragic consequences. Enlarge this concept from the individual
to the species and you can see why such a diagnosis might be
collectively appropriate. This Western mental-illness model
can provide a helpful perspective for understanding such an
irrationally destructive species as our own. In other words i'm
saying
WE'RE CRAZY.
Please understand i am not saying that everyone is literally schiz-
ophrenic, just that many if not most people are so tied into a dis-
torted mind set that they have no idea what a real reality might
be or how destructive their delusions are.
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