An evolutionary cul-de-sac

Nature is exposing the potentially fatal flaws of 'human nature'

By Tomas Rehacek

With spring drawing closer, it is now safe to say that North America passed a winter almost without snow. Many winter weather-related events were canceled, while people indulged instead in outdoor activities suited to unusually mild temperatures. Meanwhile, Europe was experiencing something very similar until temperatures plunged suddenly in February, during which a thick crust of ice covered much of the Black Sea and long stretches of the Danube River-extremely rare occurrences in this day and age. Tragically, many people froze to death during the cold snap.

Cold weather and snow also touched down in southern Spain and penetrated even farther south. Pictures of gleeful children building snowmen in Libya and Tunisia blanketed by snow were somehow strangely juxtaposed next to those of disgruntled drivers awkwardly navigating cars on slippery roads in Algiers.

Also, the Arctic summer ice, which works as a global thermostat, could disappear completely by 2015. And then there's the recent discovery of giant plumes of methane escaping from the Arctic seabed of eastern Siberia. This latter development is so alarming that climate scientists have quickly mobilised to form the Arctic Methane Emergency Group, which has already drafted a letter addressed to world leaders warning about the severity of the issue.

Falling out of balance

It's not hard to notice that our climate is already out of balance, and there is no evidence anywhere suggesting that we will break away from 'business as usual' anytime soon. On a more general level, it's fair to say that there has never been a point in human history at which people have been so utterly disconnected from their physical environment. For thousands of preceding generations, people lived in harmony with the environment, vitally aware of the positive correlation between environmental health and their own well-being. This formerly sacred relationship has become seriously dysfunctional. The big question is why?

From an evolutionary standpoint we are expected to continue to develop intellectually. Indeed, the technological and scientific achievements that we have chalked in the past century alone testify to our seemingly boundless inventiveness and skill. Unfortunately, we use most of our wit and genius to perpetuate an entirely unsustainable way of life. At best, we use today's technology to extract more natural resources while wreaking environmental havoc. Needless to say, much of this natural wealth is hoarded by a privileged few who have no intention of sharing what is 'theirs' with the rest of humanity. Furthermore, many of our technological advances are employed to preserve such inequality by means of power consolidation.

Hard-wired for gratification

With the ongoing environmental degradation surrounding us, one has to wonder: What is it going to take to change our existing modus operandi? And more importantly, why do we still continue to undermine and destroy the life-supporting systems without which we cannot survive? Many arguments point to human nature itself as being a source of our misguided behaviour. Human beings evolved at at time of ostensible scarcity and immediate reactions that were a prerequisite for self-preservation. Being at the mercy of nature meant that people often suffered due to bad hunting or growing seasons, or because of weather conditions to which they were not adapted. Hundreds of thousands of years of living in such an environment, where quick reactions and perfected survival skills made the difference between being eaten by a predator and having a piece of mastodon for dinner, have helped to shape our current mindset.

 

Unfortunately, this mindset has also rendered us lethargic when it comes to averting problems before they occur, unless a 'smoking gun'-evidence that irrefutably pinpoints the causality of a problem-is found. Another inherited weakness is our inclination to value the present at the expense of the future. Such a function is firmly embedded in our thinking processes, which poses a particular danger because it rends us less capable of deferring gratification. And even when we are capable of focusing on problems that are likely to arise over the course of weeks or even months, we tend to ignore problems to be faced years down the road.

Neglect by design?

While the 'human nature' argument has its definite merits, it is also important to realise that much of our behavior stems from basic instincts and primitive reactions, which could be trained in other ways were it not for a socio-economic structure that encourages our present tendencies. Our current paradigm has proven amazingly efficient in distorting our values.

By singling out only those social operations that are worth pursuing in our system, global society has accepted an aberrant set of priorities. Along the way, the values ingrained in our global mentality have been skewed, while the definition of 'success' has been flipped on its head. As a result, the system rewards harmful behaviour that has serious social and environmental consequences. What is even more striking is that these outcomes are perfectly predictable, as the actions emanate from a system that is, as John McMurtry says, "structurally life-blind". Yet, one cannot simply opt out from participating in the system. What is even worse is that one is hard pressed to even minimise his or her participation without sacrificing the means of self-sustenance.

As the flaws in our global financial model become more exposed, the time has come to realise, in the words of Charles Eisenstein, humankind's "magnificent potential, [and] that life and the world can be more than we have made of them." The full price to be paid for not fulfilling this potential could well be our self-extermination.