HUMAN INDOLENCE

The baseline denial of the human species grows as it refuses to accept and manage a limited ecology for itself on this planet. If the entire human species were given the scientific education to understand its place in global ecology, this could lead to the betterment of all life on our planet. Instead, the more privileged segments of human population globally are tending to tribalism, political obsession and anti-science. The harsh realities of overpopulation are too difficult for them to face. They are pampered and selfish from abundance, drawn from the planet at the expense of its overall health.

I am no Greenpeace-styled environmentalist. I include myself in that population of pampered and selfish human beings, since I am an American by birth. Ramming whaling boats with another diesel-guzzling ship is a fine example of who I am not, as an environment-conscious human being. Only the privileged would have the luxury to perform this wasteful melodrama on the high seas. I doubt wise old whales were impressed. My view of environmentalism is focused on education and individual actions to improve life on the planet, all life.

The turning of the better educated and more open-minded to the thoughts of Jordan Peterson, Douglas Murray, Sam Harris and others is simply a light brake on human descent into a catastrophic transition from a species on evolutionary ascendance to a species potentially surrendering to artificial intelligence for its survival. We already see the effect of artificial intelligence's prototypes on the human condition. Those with access to those prototypes are not becoming more skeptical, more inquisitive and more inventive in general. In fact, I would speculate that a smaller percentage of people in the developed world know how a light switch works now than knew this simple example of electronic technology in the mid-20th century.

Human inertia (laziness) is a parallel to physical inertia of inanimate objects in recently maligned Newtonian Physics. Without incentives (food, shelter, warmth, light)) to be creative in order to prosper, human beings relax into a state of indolence, which is subsequently only stirred by absolute depressive boredom or confrontation with mortality due to disease or loss. In the relatively secure and bored, the hormonal actions of a stressed frontal lobe lead to an opposite reaction by the human mind and body. Perhaps this is the mechanism which inspired leaders like Angela Merkel to agree to attack their own Western European heritage with mass migration to shake out the cobwebs of its indolence.

I fear that the undernourished wraiths parading to the Northern Hemisphere's borders are not coming in search of dynamic human evolution. I fear they are coming to join in our fattened indolence. This is a pin in the optimistic interpretation that they will bring intellectual dynamism and hard labor to our societies. But looking at the migrants of the recent decades in The West brings the harsh realization that they consume more than they contribute in post-industrial societies. Part of the reason for this is their tendency to have high birthrates in their new situations.

The tsunami of human indolence will pass. In its wake, the planet will be depleted. However, we are one species, like others before us. Even our destructive nature cannot eliminate all other life, which will rebound when our population adjusts or is decimated ultimately by our own stupidity, laziness and denial.