Economy
Democratic hemlock: saving earth from our animal selves
“What a chimera then is man. What a novelty! What a monster, what chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy. Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the earth; depositary of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error: the pride and refuse of the universe”
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
Ever since Charles Darwin roused our species from comfortable delusions of divine grandeur we have procrastinated over the business of coming to terms with our animal selves. One hundred and fifty years later there is an unpleasant reality to confront. As humanity loses its Gods, only our inner animal remains to account for our place on earth and ecological legacy.
Very recently many have acknowledged our species’ capacity to directly affect biosphere processes. We live in an epoch that may soon be formally known as the Anthropocene, defined as the time when there was no doubt that the human animal was changing the world.
Yet humans have been very visibly changing the world at least since we began to clear large areas of land for agriculture. Since 1947 we have cleared roughly half of the earth’s tropical forests and total deforestation continues at the rate of some 13 million hectares a year. Not even the brown rat has managed to colonise such a wide range of the planet’s habitats as our species. So, by the standards we would easily apply to other animals, humans have become earth’s pre-eminent invasive species.
We have been astonishingly prolific too. By 2050 there may be between nine and eleven billion of us on earth. Virtually every environmental problem on earth is the direct consequence of this orgy of human population growth and our rapacious consumption of resources.
It is the very nature of the human animal that lies at the heart of this. It is our biology and behaviour that explains both why our populations swell and why we find it so hard to do anything about it. Our biology is what we are. This is forgotten when we discuss the politics of what we may want, how we go about getting it and how we got to this juncture.
So let’s look at some of the biology behind the politics; animal to animal.
About 100,000 years ago it was a time of crisis for Homo sapiens and our animal numbered as few as 2,000 individuals. We were then a species humbled and driven to the verge of extinction by the environment, yet it was our unique capacity for technological innovation that saved our bacon. Our mastery over the environment was at first due to tools, the use of fire, clothing and language. Many millennia later the agricultural and industrial revolutions further set us free from the natural limitations on our population growth. As a species we went from endangered species to a global pest in a very short space of time.
Today the disparity between the size of the human population and that of other animals has become stark, if not obscene.
Each day some 221,000 new humans are born. Compared to our closest living primate relative that we share some 98% of our DNA with, the Bonobo, has a paltry looking population of only some 10,000 individuals in total. So every day we add the equivalent of 22 Bonobo populations of humanity to the planet. Daily human births easily outstrip the total populations all the great apes combined. Even the total world population of some top order predators; African lions (≈16, 500); tigers (≈2, 500); and European wolves (≈18, 000) pales in comparison with the daily output of the human reproductive juggernaut.
Just how large should the human population be anyway?
The popular answer seems to be one that is ‘ecologically sustainable’ but this has become more of a slogan than a meaningful objective that can be easily quantified.
By some estimates the human animal is about ten thousand times more abundant than it should be naturally, without the use of technology. At the very least this gives pause for thought about how we should define natural – if our populations are natural at all? Our use of technology has enhanced our populations and only a few thousand years ago we tore up the old evolutionary contract we once had with the environment.
Today, we drive down a very different evolutionary road to that of other species and our claims to be part of the natural world must take this into account.
Technology has buffered us from biological reality so that we no longer have a sense of our animal selves and the environment we are all dependent upon. The hidden road that leads back to the natural world from behind the city supermarket shelf and petrol station pump is not one that many of us have travelled or know anything about. Technology shields us from the natural world as it helps us take from it, although it is tempting to think that it reduces our dependence upon it. But the reality is quite the contrary. We have an ever-growing stake in the viability of the earth’s ecosystems because of our growing and precariously resource dependent populations.
Even though the human animal can intellectually appreciate this, it does not mean that reason will triumph. A piece of ancient animal baggage lies at the heart of why human populations are unlikely to do anything much about their populations and resource addiction.
Our brain has not changed that much in 10,000 years. Our large neocortex, that thin and convoluted sheet that covers the top surface of our brain, allowed us to become the earth’s pre-eminent technological animal. But in another very important sense, the human brain makes us rather poorly adapted to inherit the role of global ecosystems managers. Our brain was long made to work in tribes. It co-evolved along with human culture that adapted us to work in moderate group sizes and to perform the complex social interactions this required. Tribal behaviour has followed us like genetic chewing gum stuck to an evolutionary shoe.
It’s not hard to see the evidence.
Today in almost 200 sovereign countries of the world there are some 6500 different spoken languages and at least as many ethnic groups. Along with twenty major religions there are thousands of variations on each and many minor faiths too. About 750 political parties exist in India alone.
Our tribal ways almost guarantee that it is extremely difficult for us to act collectively in the interests of global ecosystems. It is not something that we have ever done before. This has come upon us almost as a by-product and an afterthought of being a largely technology dependent and ever expanding population of apes.
Today, undiluted human tribalism is no less than the chronic poison of global actions necessary to stop the wheezing death of our ecosystems.
There are far too many of us now to do it the old tribal way.
As human populations swell things are beginning to look messy on planet earth. Doing something about it will be a much harder than you may think, because to the human brain, prejudice can seem quite reasonable in the pursuit of tribal belief. Chanting the mantra of “growth” can even seem quite rational too if it aligns with our prejudice and self interest.
Using manipulated information comes naturally to humans; we are schemers and had to be in order to survive. Self-interest is at the heart of what some might even call a form of politics.Our big brains equip us with a means of social manipulation to help us get our way and attain goals and increase our reproductive success and social status within our tribes. Nice has nothing to do with what some call “Machiavellian Intelligence”. We manipulate information other humans might gather about us all the time and attempt to detect manipulation by others. We’re certainly not the only animals to do this. But our ancient genes and big brain make us not only the most technological animal on the planet; they make us the biggest liars. It seems that the bigger your neocortex, the better you will be at lying to preserve your self-interest and tribal ways.
Fortunately we don’t have to be slaves to our genes or even our brains’ hard-wired propensity for tribalism if we choose otherwise. The important point is that people differ largely because culturally their institutions differ; they are products of their own cultural evolution too. Cultural pressures have reshaped what we might call human nature, adapting us to living in different tribal-scales and social systems. So it is not mandatory to lie or be selfish and cling to prejudice in the face of reason. It is nonetheless difficult for cultures to change if many of us still revel in the satisfaction of ancient tribal ways and especially if society rewards us with status, wealth and power for using what are probably close to being primitive instincts.
After all, Gordon Gecko was a primitive ice age hunter in a suit.
Our history of change in the face of self-interest is not encouraging though. In the past, not even when tribal dogmas have put civilisations in peril have they been abandoned. This is perhaps the key message of Jared Diamond’s book ‘Collapse’. Civilisations most often implode from within by irrational and self-interested human behaviour rather than insuperable external forces.
Democratic systems of government in their present form are unlikely to redress this very human deficiency. Democracy may even assist in almost guaranteeing that irrational outcomes are followed. In order to grasp why, we might need to get around to finally addressing the 2000-year-old concerns of an old Greek.
Socrates was the quintessential outsider and heretic condemned to death by a democratic vote of his peers after being charged with corrupting youth with his arguments and not believing in the Gods of the state. Before he drank his cup of hemlock he famously warned that democratic decisions would not necessarily lead to moral or rationale outcomes. After all, democracy may just measure the selfish will of many individuals, held captive by tribalism and partisan nature of information; the stuff of self-serving belief.
Ever since Socrates drank his cup of democratic poison, it seems we have done our best to ignore this final lesson. Worse still, some have used the manner of Socrates’ death for their advantage and sought to harness the inner demons of the primate ice age hunter within us all.
Shortly after the First World War, Edward Bernays proved the utility of using wartime propaganda and Freudian psychology to manipulate public opinion for mass marketing. ‘Engineering consent’ was to him essential for the democratic process too. Bernays championed the methods for manipulating people’s beliefs and desires en mass.
Today, politics and commerce have became plugged in and switched on to how tribal psychology and self-interest in humans can be manipulated. It has become the strange reality of much of the human habitat and democratic system. We seem to be almost oblivious to how human nature has made manipulating belief simple to do. The tools of spin, advertising and marketing are now ingrained in the machinery of the democratic process and government. Science and pseudoscience have become virtually indistinguishable to many as we are bombarded with partisan information marketed as knowledge.
This plays like a drumbeat to the tribal ear of our inner animal and to its rhythm we may well chant “growth”.
It appears all too easy to train the human animal to do tricks for a cunning master. Presumably if we have the tools to convince people what is in their tribal and selfish interests they might even be convinced to give hemlock to the entire biosphere.
And the biggest tricks of all happen before polling day.
The tribal and Machiavellian way is to support cherished beliefs with arguments and strategies that are unashamedly partisan, rather than beginning with an open mind. In doing so you support your tribe and what you may believe is in your self-interest. Dressing a primitive ice age hunter in ideologically political finery only goes so far in generating the ethical democracy of our imaginings, especially where we pretend that the majority has infallible wisdom.
“Information is the currency of democracy”, said Thomas Jefferson. But it is the quality and veracity of that information that is the main issue today, because just what does a vote measure if coerced by appealing to prejudice?
Knowledge is both fuel for human social evolution and the key to our species resisting the pursuit of prejudice. Knowledge also protects us from our basest selves. It is a vaccine against knee jerk tribal behaviour from the savage ice age hunter who lurks within us all. As our populations explode in the name of economic growth and selfish human interests, never has there been a greater risk inherent in the manipulation of information, its restriction, corruption or confusion with belief and prejudice playing to tribal self-interest.
Knowledge without agenda needs a new status in human societies that goes beyond lip service. Restricting the growth of knowledge, irrespective of tribal affiliation, is akin to withholding a vaccine in an epidemic that threatens to kill all life on earth. Democratic processes are impotent and perhaps downright dangerous without real knowledge.
The key to the protection of the earth’s biosphere is in a fundamental sense dependent upon the quality of knowledge and information provided by public institutions. We need to be far less naïve about our animal selves and self-interested priorities. Ultimately we need to decide if we will continue to respond to the Machiavellian dog whistle of our ancient genes and tribal ways that are all too easily summoned. Perhaps the essence of this revisits an old question; for just what is a civilised human? What ancient ways, those that are still the essence of us, should we attempt to cast off and protect the world from?
They are questions to ask at the crossroads, for it is a critical time for our species and virtually all others. No animal has ever had to decide this, nor would any other that we know of be capable of doing so.
Humankind must finally get to know itself as an animal with animal limitations and predispositions like any other. One hundred and fifty years later we must truly understand Charles Darwin’s theory and its implications. For we are animals and must never fool ourselves otherwise, or worse still perhaps, let others fools us of what they might like us to believe.
As a species, we might desperately try to maintain our halcyon days, driving flat out down that technological highway with other life on earth hitched to a rather out of place looking towbar, with no population safety chain or brake. Self-interest will almost guarantee that most of us will want to.
Instead we might face the future by better knowing the savage ways within us and think hard about Socrates’ terminal conclusion. Democratic processes in the absence of knowledge may condemn us, just as it condemned him.
Fortunately we can imagine a new destiny just as we can know that it is our animal biology that drives our politics. Our leaders are indeed apes in suits; this is a fact, not an insult, and we should all watch their actions closely with this in mind.
To this end, humans must use their unique capacity for cultural evolution to engineer institutions of knowledge that protect the planet from our ancient animal selves.
The earth can no longer afford it if we don’t.
First published in Dissent: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/
Dr Clive A Marks is a scientist, author and inventor with degrees in environmental science, education and wildlife ecology. He worked as a principal research scientist and department head with the Victorian government and honorary fellow with the Zoology Department at the University of Melbourne where he researched and published widely on wildlife management. He is currently the director of Nocturnal Wildlife Research and other businesses.