found a wounded fisher one stormy winter night in the middle of the snow covered road, he was damaged enough that i was able to scoop him up in my coat and was amazed at how muscular it was and how its fur glowed in the streetlights. my dad worked at the state enviro&forestry college so i was able to get him some help (not sure how it turned out) but couldn't get over how badly we had fucked up that such a critter (so alien in our domesticated world) was in the city and than the road, brought me to tears. -dmf
For the first and only time in the long history of life on Earth, a product of natural selection has understood the process by which we became to be what we are: we actually learned to understand our hard-wired instincts and fathom our subconscious mind but we have failed to find the willpower to overcome those instincts.
We also learned a lot about matter and energy, and even managed to date our cosmos.
As a scientist, I treasure human knowledge. We got SO close, but then we blew it. Some think that intelligence inevitably destroys itself.
We humans could have been God-like stewards of planet Earth.
i disagree with the professors final statement - it's wishful thinking. i also don't know what he's talking about when he says "we got SO close" - to what? All the knowledge we garnered over the millennia have been MISUSED and turned into destructive power in some form (from banking to mining to fishing and war, spying and ruining the environment everywhere we set foot).
i completely agree that "intelligence inevitably destroys itself." We've never overcome our 7 deadly sins. Spirituality, the arts and humanities have been ignored for the furtherance of increased energy dissipation (ala Chefurka). Structural design flaw, i'd say. The question/quandary is why would Nature evolve us without an ability to counter our tendencies to over reproduce and pollute. Was this "engineered" by the very intelligence we evolved? Seems so.
What if one of our resident billionaires hires some lab to develop a genetically engineered mild, common cold like ailment that has the side effect of rendering 19 out of 20 people sterile? Over population solved in one generation.
My god! That broke my heart all over again! The most impassioned words from Mahler's /Lied von der Erde/ came back to me:
ReplyDeleteO beauty! O ever-living, -loving, intoxicated world!
found a wounded fisher one stormy winter night in the middle of the snow covered road, he was damaged enough that i was able to scoop him up in my coat and was amazed at how muscular it was and how its fur glowed in the streetlights. my dad worked at the state enviro&forestry college so i was able to get him some help (not sure how it turned out) but couldn't get over how badly we had fucked up that such a critter (so alien in our domesticated world) was in the city and than the road, brought me to tears.
ReplyDelete-dmf
Professor Pianka wrote to me today:
ReplyDeleteFor the first and only time in the long history of life on Earth, a product of natural selection has
understood the process by which we became to be what we are: we actually learned to understand
our hard-wired instincts and fathom our subconscious mind but we have failed to find the willpower
to overcome those instincts.
We also learned a lot about matter and energy, and even managed to date our cosmos.
As a scientist, I treasure human knowledge. We got SO close, but then we blew it.
Some think that intelligence inevitably destroys itself.
We humans could have been God-like stewards of planet Earth.
i disagree with the professors final statement - it's wishful thinking. i also don't know what he's talking about when he says "we got SO close" - to what? All the knowledge we garnered over the millennia have been MISUSED and turned into destructive power in some form (from banking to mining to fishing and war, spying and ruining the environment everywhere we set foot).
ReplyDeletei completely agree that "intelligence inevitably destroys itself." We've never overcome our 7 deadly sins. Spirituality, the arts and humanities have been ignored for the furtherance of increased energy dissipation (ala Chefurka). Structural design flaw, i'd say. The question/quandary is why would Nature evolve us without an ability to counter our tendencies to over reproduce and pollute. Was this "engineered" by the very intelligence we evolved? Seems so.
Thanks for another great post Gail!
Tom
What if one of our resident billionaires hires some lab to develop a genetically engineered mild, common cold like ailment that has the side effect of rendering 19 out of 20 people sterile? Over population solved in one generation.
ReplyDeleteOr we could just let them starve to death.