Dear Future People
“Our fault was believing we were clever enough to fool Mother Nature, not that the universe neither knows nor cares we exist and our future lies in our own hands.”
This is not an apology for laboratory meat created with proteins extracted from sewage or flour made of pulverized worms that you eat if you are wealthy enough to afford food. No apology for the fact elephants are extinct, the sea acid, and water wars terrorizing.
Current policy in the United States has convinced us busywork such as recycling aluminum cans will save the earth, but it ignores 258 babies born in the minute it took to place one can of soda in a recycle bin. In an hour of driving our energy saving electric cars we forgot the 15,480 babies born demanding their own electric vehicle. Stripping earth of resources was our only option. Few thought seriously about controlling the birth rate.
Religion, economics, and politics are blamed for our failure but the reason is, simply put, in our genes. The fundamental drive controlling all life is to reproduce itself and expand territory at any cost and every opportunity. Humans are not unique. The same is true for slime mold, cancer cells, broccoli and elephants. Evolution is not a plan; it is an experiment in survival.
Modern humans have only been dexterous enough to become the apex species within minutes of geologic time and are, as yet, incapable of adapting to conditions we produce. Not that there haven’t been warnings. At least since our species achieved stability enough to develop writing we were advised where this instinct to reproduce would lead. Confucius, in 500 BCE, wrote about the dangers of overpopulation. By the 18th century, thinkers as diverse as Machiavelli and Malthus were explaining the consequences of overpopulation. In the 1960s, Paul Erlich produced The Population Bomb detailing your present situation. He proposed feeding an exploding population on plankton expecting, if we acted, oceans would not be poisoned by industrial effluent and excess. Our fault was believing we were clever enough to fool Mother Nature without realizing that the universe neither knows nor cares we exist and our future lies in our own hands.
So, no apology. We humans are just discovering the complex workings of evolution, genetics and brain function which may overcome a disastrous instinct to be fruitful. To paraphrase a famous saying, “We have just met the enemy and he is us." It will be up to you to overcome the stigma of religion, economics and politics…if you are still alive.
