(This a new
editing of an essay published in the Dissident Voice in about September,
2008. It is exactly what I wish to
say today.)
If an
invasive species spreads ‘out of control’ because of adaptations new to a region
and lack of any evolved relationships that inhibit it, we use a disease model
for the ecology. If a group of
cells goes “mad” and reproduces uninfluenced by the existing order of organs
and metabolic function, we call it a cancer; cells made by the body, but
“foreign” and deadly to its proper functioning. The hominid genus, Homo, developed a new, powerful adaptation that overrode
historical evolutionary function, rapidly spread into all bio-zones and
ultimately began geometrically increasing in population, and increasing on a
variety of other measures. These
changes we humans have claimed with pride: our spreading growth and dominance
of the earth’s physical space and material sources.
Every
species acts in the world as an ‘exceptional’ entity; that is, no species is
shy and retiring in the face of ecological success. But every species is on essentially equal footing with all
other species in the sense that they are using the same basic tools for
adaptation and are functioning on the same basic time scale. One species might evolve a generation
length that speeds up adaptation rates, but only a little. Another might increase the costs for
breeding, making more demands on the quality of the individual genotype, but
again within the same order of magnitude typical of other species.
But, Human
Exceptionalism is the result of an actually exceptional condition. The human adaptation is new to our
immediate region of the universe.
We are not on an equal footing with the other species of living
things. Our capacity to respond to
environmental conditions has gone from the generational change rates of
biological evolution (DNA/protein mediated) to the change rates of
Consciousness Order processes (mediated by ‘story’). This new process of adaptation is orders of magnitude
faster, it is also orders of magnitude more fine-tuned to detail and it confers
levels of power to action previously impossible for biological entities.
These
questions suggest the dilemma: (1) Is such an exceptional adaptation a disease
on the body of the biological world?
The human species has increased from a few hundred thousand living by
evolutionary rules to 7 billion as our adaptation expresses its geometric
growth potential. (2) Can an exceptional adaptation be inhibited to remain within
the restraints of the biological world and still be exceptional? Other species with powerful adaptations
fit into the biological order, but none have been as revolutionary as this one.
(3) The Consciousness Order adaptation contains the enigmatic capacity of
awareness with the seeming potential to decide how to use our adaptation; how
might we, and can we, decide to self-limit our total impact on the biological
world?
Our actual
exceptionalness fuels the dangerous Exceptionalism of our behaviors and
beliefs. This is really tricky: We
are truly exceptional with the most powerful adaptation, as far we know, in the
whole universe, yet for the survival of our world we need to be humble in the
face of our completely obvious totally huge outrageous wonderfulness. Basically, we can do anything we want
and it seems that nothing can stop us.
We have learned the rules of physics – except for a few that we will get
soon enough. We are learning to
make genes dance for us. We can
suck the energy right off the sun and stuff it into computers that can do a
billion billion calculations a second.
We’ve got TV and refrigerators.
Perhaps there really is no reason that we should be humble!
Except for
one little thing; well, maybe two or three. The surface of the earth is the ultimate Exception in the
universe, not us. We humans are only passengers on, and in, a space that is
among the most rare of physical stabilities. Even in the fullest explosion of
our hubris there is no way that we could, with our own efforts, make the
earth’s surface a living place or sustain it if the subtle designs of our solar
system began to change. We, as the
saying goes, ‘live at the pleasure’ of our biosphere. That is Reality.
And yet, we
do not act in that reality.
Consistently failing to believe and function in The Real is
insanity. The natural
Exceptionalism of a species to act in its own interests (this a part of the
living condition and not to be confused with its counterpart in the
Consciousness Order) is compounded by our ability to tell stories about how
special we are. The design of
belief as a guide for behavior allows us to hold such stories as truth… and voilà:
Human Exceptionalism at a pathological level. Our real and remarkable capacities lead us to believe in
imagined powers far beyond our true relationship with our world. A thing of great power, with little
appreciation for the consequences of that power and almost no ability to
control itself is a great danger to itself and others.
There are,
of course, many ways that we are not exceptional. Our form and function are biologically based, we are animals
with an evolutionary history that powerfully guides our behaviors. We are food for other organisms just as
other organisms are food for us – part of the food web. Plants supply us, along with every other
aerobic organism, with oxygen and glucose (at base, the only food there is on
earth); there is no other source.
It is
unimaginable that a “primitive” tribal community could forget that they depend
on the land, water and air to sustain them and yet we “moderns” forget; we even
argue that it somehow isn’t so. Almost nothing could be crazier. There is no question that the vastly
complex societies in which we live separate us and seem to protect us from an
unfamiliar and potentially dangerous natural world upon which we depend.
That world
is difficult to know about and to care about when we have so little experience
of it, when we have so little occasion to learn to love it: When the cost of
food is going up, the mortgage payment is a little harder to get together each
month and your kid gets sick. Some
tiny disembodied half-figure yells from the TV screen that the problems will be
fixed if you let them control the world, or some part of it. It seems silly, with such pressures, to
think about plants making the oxygen that we breathe. Truly, the Madness is compelling. Ask any recovered madman or addict.
My argument
is not to change the world. There
is no way to move from the Madness that envelops our societies and our
species. I think our trajectory is
set. But I recognize this
understanding in hundreds of people, and know that there are millions and even
possible billions that feel these things; people who suspect that what they see
and live is madness; wonder at their own sanity for wondering about the world
they live in. I want to say to
them that there is a way to live with at least some dignity and with less than
more of Madness.
Life has
always been a crapshoot. But
living as a full member of the species of your birth can make it a purposeful
and fulfilling one – no matter how it goes down. It can be done!
Every one of us has the human pedigree. We
were all born as full-fledged members of the honorable human, hominid, primate,
mammalian, vertebrate, animal, multicellular, living lineage. We all have the absolute right to
specieshood, it is really our only inalienable right; and it is the basis from
which we can act with sanity for a sustainable biosphere. It should inform our
political and economic actions and responsibilities. And that would make us
very special indeed.
We have
been led to this pass in part by the sense of our exception from nature. And yet the greatest expression of our
powers would be in reconnecting with the realities of the biophysical
order. If one or a hundred
successfully recover their specieshood, there is no gain for all, though there
is for each of them. If it should
be a thousand or a million not only is the quality of their lives better – even
in a dangerous world – but more might discover how to join in. The realist in me says that the
personal gain is well worth the effort, but there is no hope for the multitudes
of us. The dreamer says that this
is the only way: discover and become again a member of your own species, and if
enough succeed the world will be changed.
