Evolutionary Cul de Sac

There are plenty of intellectuals in today’s world who believe that the human species is on its way out, most of whom cite some combination of nuclear war and the unrepentant manner in which we’re in the process of ruining our environment.

Trying to understand this point of view, I have to say that it’s possible that the human mind that has evolved over the last 200,000 years may be ill-equipped to deal with life on a small and fragile planet.  We did passably well when the most damage we could do was the mass slaughter of people via conventional wars, or the loss of a few species via over-hunting, e.g., the story of the American bison in the 19th Century.

Now we’re looking at nuclear holocaust, sea-level rise from global warming, and ocean acidification from skyrocketing CO2 levels, at the same time that we’ve put one million species at risk of extinction.  Worse, human civilization is doing practically nothing to stop this from rolling forward, let alone turning it around.

There is a reason we don’t give young children driver’s licenses: they don’t have the mental capacity to understand dangerous situations that materialize when we move two-ton hunks of steel around at freeway speeds.  It’s possible that this is a metaphor for the current state of development of the human mind.  With all its selfishness, tribalism, stupidity, and blood-thirstiness, it just might not be the right tool for the job.