This is the sixteenth of 18 installments in the Metastatic Modernity video series (see launch announcement), putting the meta-crisis in perspective as a cancerous disease afflicting humanity and the greater community of life on Earth. This installment tries to round up perspectives developed so far, and throws in a bit of mythology at the end.
As is the custom for the series, I provide a stand-alone companion piece in written form (not a transcript) so that the key ideas may be absorbed by a different channel. The write-up that follows is arranged according to “chapters” in the video, navigable via links in the YouTube description field.
1. Introduction
The original intent for this episode was a summary of the episodes so far, the goal being to help synthesize a single, coherent view—to facilitate holding all these perspectives at once. I still pursue that goal, but add on a bit about mythologies that I realized needed to go somewhere, and fit reasonably well here as a contrast to the perspectives I have laid out.
The following sections each correspond to an episode in the series, numbered accordingly and linked to the associated write-up (with embedded video). Because the treatment here of each topic is comparatively cursory, please see each full episode for more complete context.
2. Cosmology
We are one of about 10 million species in a gossamer-thin shell of life around a dust mote of a planet orbiting an insignificant speck of a star as one of 100 billion pinprick stars in a smudge of a galaxy that itself is unremarkable among 100 billion other smudges within sight. Our universe, which may itself be one of countless instances, likely contains at least millions of times more galaxies than we can see, given the finite travel speed of light in a universe of finite age.
Anatomically modern humans have been around for only about one-ten-thousandth the age of the universe. If the universe is all about us, it sure has a funny way of showing it!
3. Early Life
Billions of years of evolution patiently worked out genius solutions to the extraordinarily hard problem of how to live, reproduce, metabolize energy, build proteins as chemical catalysts, process nutrients, and lots of other nifty capabilities. We share one-third of an amoeba’s considerable genetic makeup, as a testament to how much we rely on this ancient heritage. We’re effectively just fancier versions of aggregated single cells in a cooperative, symbiotic arrangement. We share a tremendous amount of kinship with all life on Earth.
4. Evolution
The community of life is bound by an intricate web of relationships too complex and multi-dimensional for our primitive brain hardware to fully grasp. Evolution had unfathomable amounts of deep time to experiment and produce this tangled web, which is put to the hard test every second of every day, and has lasted for the simple reason that it works. Things that don’t work in relation to all the rest are not tolerated to stay.
5. Our Biological Inheritance
Not only did we inherit basic tools and processes of life from microbes, but all our senses and—yes, even our precious brains are hand-me-downs worked out in a long evolutionary chain before us. We didn’t invent much of anything about ourselves. We don’t have the best vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, dexterity, speed, stealth, strength, or ability to fly or swim. What we don’t know and can’t sense could fill a universe!
6. Accidental Tourists
Humans are not here on purpose, but by pure happenstance. The road here involved an unimaginable number of twists and turns—and just as many lie ahead. If evolution was aiming for us, it has lousy aim, producing 10 million other species along with us. We are accidental guests on planet Earth, not its purposeful owners.
7. Ecological Nosedive
Since agriculture began 10,000 years ago, humans have executed a super-exponential growth trajectory at the expense of the more-than-human world. Biodiversity is tanking, fast, as the activities of modernity displace, diminish, and eradicate the multitude of “economically useless” members of the community of life. By all appearances, we have initiated a sixth mass extinction, which incidentally can’t be good for large, hungry, high-maintenance animals like humans.
8. Timeline
All this is happening very fast in ecological terms. Comparing the time humans have been on Earth to the life history of a 75-year-old, agriculture started just 3–4 months ago. Science burst onto the scene a mere 4 days ago. We’ve only used fossil fuels at any appreciable scale for the last 36 hours, and most of our considerable ecological destruction has happened in the last 12 hours. From this perspective, it looks like an out-of-control rampage—as abrupt as slamming into a brick wall.
9. Recipe for Disaster
Once we started “totalitarian” agriculture, everything changed. Control over what plants and animals lived or died, over the fate of water and land, and over other humans was accompanied by settlements, armies, cities, kingdoms, conquest, domination, and human supremacy. On ecologically relevant timescales, this fleeting, untested experiment does not appear to be going well.
10. Ditch the Bad?
Contrary to our habits and propensity for wishful thinking, we can’t separate the Likes of modernity from the resultant Dislikes. The pursuits of modernity have devastating impacts on the living world, and denial/escapism isn’t a legitimate response.
11. Renewable Salvation?
Renewable energy is not any sort of solution to the core predicament. Yes, replacement of fossil fuel energy by solar and wind helps CO2, but oh what joy if that was the main problem! First, renewable energy is not actually renewable in practice because the technology is utterly dependent on non-renewable materials in a never-ending treadmill of mining that recycling doesn’t solve. More importantly, the central aim is to keep modernity fully-powered—and to what end, exactly? The implicit goal is to continue pursuit of Likes that are responsible for all the Dislikes and for initiating a sixth mass extinction. Way to go, folks! We’ll get it done one way or another, right?
12. Human Supremacy
Perhaps one of the deepest challenges is that we live in a culture of human supremacy—originating, I believe, in the agricultural departure from our original ecological context. We, as a global culture, have come to consider ourselves as the pinnacle of evolution: as its masters; its rightful owners; God’s gift to the world; superior over all things that creepeth over the earth; justified in any action for the short-term benefit of humans.
Even if we had perfect democracy, gender equality, racial equality, technology, etc., the actions taken by a human-supremacist regime will be ugly and brutal for the community of life, acting only to accelerate ecological decline and thus our own peril.
13. A Species out of Context
As I’ve mentioned a time or two by now, this all started when some humans stepped away from our original ecological context to begin totalitarian agriculture. By totalitarian, I mean plowing fields, eradicating “weeds” and “pests,” expanding, assimilating, conquering. Forgetting who we are as a species sent us on an unsustainable rocket ride into unknown territory—which is exhilarating, but very risky. It’s a path not vetted by evolution to work. All evidence is that it is failing the ecological test badly, and that it can’t work, in the end.
14. Cancer Diagnosis
Modernity is like metastatic cancer. It is a growth-based condition starting in a single species (organ) that is uncharacteristic of its time on Earth. It represents an evolutionary dead-end, as it is not integrated into the web of life and has no biophysical path to sustainability. It acts like a resource-consuming zombie, whose effects have now spread (metastasized) to afflict the entire community of life. The engorged tumor of modernity is displacing life wherever it spreads, and it is very difficult to stop. Importantly, humans are not the cancer, but the afflicted species. It is not part of our DNA, but something our DNA makes us especially susceptible to contracting.
15. What Now?
Learning that modernity is terminal is likely to lead people into various stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Having traversed this landscape, we might recognize that it’s time to call Hospice. We can allow modernity to slip away, in a dignified death. A recommendation is to begin severing your own dependencies, starting at the psychological and emotional levels, which can pave the way a calm and slow retreat. We can think of it as falling out of love with modernity: it hasn’t been honest with us, and is a bit of an abusive jerk, really. We can look for meaning elsewhere, in experiences that cost no money and require no non-renewable materials or industrial energy/processes.
Synthesis
Okay, so the goal is to try to hold all these things together. I don’t expect anyone to accomplish that right here and right now. But keep the various elements handy—on speed-dial—to help make sense of this world. In my view, failure to appreciate these pieces can lead to tragically erroneous conclusions about what future paths are feasible or even desirable.
For me, having absorbed this perspective, modernity comes off as unhinged and dangerous. It’s a really dumb idea: the product of deep ecological ignorance. Modernity is a sort of flight-of-fancy: a mode that our flexible brains allowed us to pursue, while lacking sufficient cognitive power to really understand what it means or think it all through.
Eventually, evolution will be the judge, in its slow and patient way. Evolution gives novelty a chance to prove itself: seldom issuing snap judgments. But in the end, it is unforgiving toward schemes that don’t work in an ecological context. Any innovations need to work in reciprocal relationship to the whole web of life. Modernity manages to exactly fail this condition.
The next two episodes will also aim to assist synthesis of these ideas and how we might respond.
Battling Mythologies
One thing I hope this series has done already—without being explicit about it—is challenge various assumptions and beliefs common to our culture. Things a culture firmly believes without clear proof (almost anything about the future) can be called mythologies, and we’re full of such faith-based foundations. Many of the following statements are held to be true or even self-evident to denizens of modernity. But through the lens of this series, they can also be assessed as being demonstrably wrong, if not delusional.
Modern humans have no mythologies. If we restrict our notion of mythology to Zeus on Olympus, maybe not. But the definition is broader than that, and you can bet we have them. See if you recognize the following statements as common tenets in our culture. Yet all are a matter of belief rather than fact. After each is a set of linked numbers in brackets pointing to relevant episodes that counter or address the myth.
Humans are the pinnacle of evolution. For some, humans are the very purpose, or goal of the world (universe).
Earth belongs to humans. Moreover, it is commonly believed that we are meant (chosen) to rule it.
Humans are apart from nature. Many in our culture see humans as having transcended mere animal status. We rose above it, somehow, on a different plane.
Humans have a destiny. For some, this translates to a divine destiny. For many, it is a destiny to master knowledge, or life, or the planet. Plenty of folks (adults, even) believe that our destiny is to colonize space!
Human lives are worth more than any other. Our culture elevates (self-fabricated) human rights above those of all others.
Human technology knows no bounds. This is a deep tenet of faith in our culture. We think any problem can be solved by smart people using novel tools. In general, when someone uses words like “no limits,” it is usually safe to stop listening to them.
The human brain has unlimited potential. Related to the previous one, we practically worship human brains above all else. I wonder how many people bridle at the mere suggestion that this statement is not true (a useful warning sign). It’s fascinating to me that one of the most dangerous and fiercely defended myths is the most trivial to see as delusional. Maybe those two facts are related. But really, it’s a biological meat-organ, people—evolved to navigate life in a complex and variable world. It has limited cognitive capacity, limited memory, limited bandwidth, limited parallelism, limited contextual richness, limited emotional range, limited time on the planet to develop, and additional limits anywhere we care to look. So stop it, already.
This is not a complete list of mythologies, but note the common theme: all the entries above involve the word human. To me, this indicates that we have tremendous blind spots and capacity for delusion when it comes to self-perception of what it means to be human.
Closing
In the next episode, I’ll touch on a alternate—and I believe healthier—perspective for what it means to be human on this planet. Only two more to go!
