I gotta stop saying that we humans are acting irrationally in our battle against the natural world, because that descriptor doesn't cut it. We are a success as a species (the optimist's view holds true) as we have effectively taken over the world and reshaped it to benefit our civilization. Like any other earthling we grow our numbers and spread out to overtake other habitats. Like the majority of living things, we consume the most accessible food or energy source, water source, before we are forced to dig deeper/climb higher/take more risks.
Yes there were tribes long ago that practiced sustainability and viewed themselves as part of the earth, but these were often cultural beliefs that developed after times of scarcity (collapse of food or water sources). And naturally too, tribes of humans that were far more willing to exploit resources, and viewed themselves more as conquerors or even stewards of the earth, grew greater and more powerful in number via technology. Eventually, we got to where we are today.
What's irrational is not our larger shared behavior as a species of mammal on earth, but our behavior as viewed from within the bubble of dominant human culture (aka consensus reality). We are behaving as animals or yeast even, and we are in denial that we are part of that earthling continuum. We think we are something separate that manipulates reality with our very thoughts, but I think our thoughts are babble that follows our actions.
We are supposed to be masters of our own destiny, as a species, but clearly we have been pulled by technology (from sharpened stone tools to fucking AI) with rationalization occurring along the way; the sense of ownership of the individual body/mind carrying over to ownership of symbols, sounds, concepts (your name,etc), ownership of property and objects. It carries over to the national level, owning land and rights to land within imaginary lines, owning wealth,…
I could go on but the point is that we are collectively trapped in many levels of abstraction, and it makes these present end times all the more darkly ironic and bizarre. I usually complain about being alive during this time,..the end of the world. People don't understand what I mean by "end of the world" though. It doesn't mean the world is ending next weekend. It means the world is ending next weekend, and the weekend after that, and the weekend after that, and the weekend after that. It's a breakdown that's been ongoing.
On the way home from work the other day it was so incredibly hot outside, and most of the sky was this unsettling yellow glow (filtered through a smudged gray lens). In the distance to the left there was a dark patch of clouds with bolts of lightning cutting through. And there I was, listening to death metal driving home and going about my business like everyone else (the landscapers, the construction workers, the bus drivers, the Law, the EMTs, the UPS, Fedex, Amazon, etc, etc etc). This is just the second heatwave here this summer. Huge forest fires occur often in the summer now and soon they will just be a normal thing, a thing to expect and cope with. Because one has to cope as they keep on going about their business. This is irrational, no? Or are we just going about the "necessary" tasks to keep business as usual running because business as usual represents survival. Actual survival on this planet as a human being depends on other stuff (externalities, as economists call them).
