Many people are of the belief that humans are above the rest of nature and are not animals. Many people believe that humans are primates possessing a superior intellect and the ability to manage themselves and their environment. Wherever you may land on this matter you are likely of the opinion that we, as a species, are smarter than say a guppy (small, live bearing, tropical fish often sold as pets). But are we? Like it or not, here and now is the point in time for us to show what we are. You see, put a male/female pair of guppies in a ten gallon tank with water and food and soon you will have too many. They will breed exponentially until living in filth and simply continue to do so with mutated, stunted bodies and very short life expectancy. Why did they not stop when they had maybe a dozen and then try and just maintain that and so live in a 10 gallon paradise? Mind you, paradise though captive as fancy guppies are man-made and not likely to play a role beyond quick meat in the wild – picture a Chihuahua in the jungle. Is it because they are just fish? Are we smarter than that? Future anthropologists will know the answer to this question but it’s up to *us*, those here now and reading this, to define what that answer is in this century.
Surely, this is an inevitable period for any planet’s apex species as why would a species think to control its numbers if not forced to? The fight to the top involved increasing their numbers and securing a comfortable dominance. This then allows for increases in scientific and technological knowledge which would extend the individual’s longevity and increase the rate of birth survival thus bringing them to where we now find ourselves. We could have been huge beasts or small ant like creatures but there’s a finite limit in population due to the finite resources available. In the second half of the last century it was common to hear talk about nuclear energy and weapons and how alien planets would also have to survive these periods somehow – is a species able to control warring once weapons sufficient to destroy the planet are present? The same applies here – is a species able to change tack and stop growing when needed? There would be no reason for such a trigger to be in place via genetics as no species here before has defeated this problem. Likewise, there would be no trigger in place culturally as it’s the opposite of what we have been doing since ever. Indeed, the idea of ceasing growth and reducing population is distasteful to most it seems. It’s unnatural and often thought inhumane. Knowingly traveling into the territories of the bad stuff is the very definition of inhumane though.
Many people today seem to feel out of place or without purpose. They want definition. They want purpose, belonging – a meaning to their lives. To find those things perhaps we need to better understand who we are and that’s where history fits in. Who are we? Are we god given beings of superior intellect here on this planet as our right to play video games, go to the movies and drink premium coffee without exiting our powerful and comfortable vehicles? I suspect many people under the age of maybe 60 don’t fully realize how young we are. Our lifestyle is not natural even for modern man. Only 80 years ago did we have electrical service in many homes. In the USA this came to be during the 1930s. The refrigerator, as we know it, around the same period with them becoming affordable enough for most homes by about 1950. Prior to those, life was surely much different – even meaning that weight loss was a normal part of winter. Are we in touch with ourselves as a species? Let’s look at this another way – there are about 8 billion people alive today and there have been just about 100 billion alive ever. Here with us today are about 8% of all the homo sapiens that have ever lived over the past several million years – alive, breathing and consuming today and doing so very much differently than *all* those who came before.
We seem to think we are a very advanced species but perhaps we are really a young species on the brink of failing one of its first rights of passage tests – can the species not breed itself to extinction when it reaches this stage?