I'm beginning to think that the traits that evolve over millions of years to produce an intelligent species that dominates a planet, are the same traits that make that species incapable of managing that planet successfully.
Extreme greed for your tribal group, your family & yourself may be just what's needed for hunter-gatherers to survive, thrive and spread across a planet, but it's a recipe for disaster when its impacts are global.
A predisposition to greed that once was useful, is now maladaptive, but we're stuck with it. The in-built inclination to think selfishly, locally & tribally makes common solutions requiring global cooperation and solidarity difficult, maybe impossible.
All our biggest problems are international, global problems, yet our political structures & information systems are overwhelmingly national at best.
We can't even seem to conceive of the global solidarity needed to fix or ameliorate the climate crisis:
We can't even seem to conceive of the global solidarity needed to fix or ameliorate the climate crisis:
https://twitter.com/astroehlein/status/1415342724606271492
Even in a global pandemic, when we all face the same enemy - the virus - we fail to unite against it, falling back on greed-based approaches instead of solidarity:
https://twitter.com/astroehlein/status/1415561817657651201
Physicist Enrico Fermi looked at the stars & asked why there's no sign of intelligent life elsewhere:
"Where is everybody?"
Some suggest a "Great Filter" event or situation that wipes out intelligent life before it spreads.
Perhaps intelligent life is its own Great Filter.
"Where is everybody?"
Some suggest a "Great Filter" event or situation that wipes out intelligent life before it spreads.
Perhaps intelligent life is its own Great Filter.
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