Why are we led by insane principles?

If you look around today, aside from what beauty still clings to life in this world … what do you see?

Well, if your eyes are open, what you should see (amongst other things) is this:

• Upward of 6 billion people consuming resources;
• Ecosystems & other species paying the brunt of that consumption price;
• The poor, weak & vulnerable paying the remainder;
• No one at the top pays ANY of that price (99.9% buffered against the consequences);
• An economic system driving & relying on resource consumption;
• Even in an economic downturn, we consume more than the planet can cope with;
• A species extinction rate that more than a decade ago was 1 in 20 minutes, and now 3-5 times faster;
• Politicians, business & many voters in denial, because it’s too scary to face reality;
• Dwindling options for solutions;
• The absolute wastage of the potential of almost every human on the planet.

Why would anyone want this to be our legacy?

Why would anyone blindly follow such a system?

Why indeed are we led by such an insane system of low standards?

Well … one hypothesis, is that it’s all just an evolutional of behavioural psychology, which has come out of survival, but we haven’t been able to let this go as a collective, even though individuals have moved past it, because the system is entrenched, with great momentum & powerful vested interests protecting it from change … even though such change would be in everyone’s best interests.

A study I read about some years ago, showed that in any significant debate, discussion or argument, the vast majority of people will tend to gravitate towards one of two extreme polarised viewpoints … and this is merely a survival mechanism.

Imagine for a minute you’re one of our earlier hominid or mammalian ancestors, and there’s a squabble over food or other resources that between two tribes or population … what might the winning side do to the other? You got it, they may kill them … and so it’s inherent in survival to be able to pick a strong side, though this differs slightly in human beings.

Within human populations, we have language; so while several dozen different viewpoints may arise, people will still only gravitate towards two of them … we use language to espouse our case, the reasons why people should join our team, and all this comes down to two … why is that?

1. Simplicity versus Complexity: a complex rationale is harder to understand, a simple one is easy to understand … so simple ideas, no matter how stupid or insane, have an advantage in gaining numbers of support over complex ones … no matter how right or necessary the case may be;
2. Short Term Momentum: so as people start to gravitate towards simpler ideas, they gain popularity & thus exude a sense of security, again no matter how stupid or insane the viewpoint you’re actually allying with;
3. Intergenerational Momentum: once people start making such alliances, power bases are built, and the ideals that won people such power & security are entrenched in ideology, kind of like a religion …

All of this because no one wants to be on the team that died or goes without.

So … why should you listen to this argument this time given its complexity? Yes, that’s a very good question.

Our planetary civilisation, our species has come to a turning point where, if we do not act intelligently, we will all be wiped out … THERE WON’T BE A WINNING SIDE!

I will go into this in greater detail in another article, but the problem is we face too many problems on too many fronts; we need EVERY human brain operating at capacity on whatever they’re best at (no matter how seemingly unimportant the activities of others may be to your personal set of values).

You may or may not be aware of all the issues we collectively face, but let me make a short list for you:

• Air pollution (toxicity);
• Water pollution (toxicity);
• Soil pollution (toxicity);
• Radioactive pollution (across all 3 of the above);
• Poisoning of the food supply (toxins in food through environment & additives);
• Greenhouse gas emissions (natural & human induced);
• Ozone depletion (solar exposure & atmospheric change);
• Magnetosphere change (250,000 year cycle, exposes atmosphere & Earth to solar wind);
• Species extinction (1 distinct species of plant or animal gone approximately every 4-7 minutes);
• Loss of genetic diversity (making species more vulnerable);
• Loss of symbiosis & biodiversity (making ecosystems more vulnerable);
• Disconnection of ecosystems (making species migration more difficult & blocking evolutionary change);
• Desertification (water starvation increasing the size of the world’s deserts);
• Habitat destruction (further pressure on species, increased isolation & vulnerability of ecosystems)
• Extinction level NEOs (Near Earth Objects capable of global extinction level impacts);

So … should you panic? No, you should THINK.

I would ask you to ask of yourself this question:

• Is the same insanity that got us here in the first place, likely to be a good path to follow to get us out of it?

Stop for a minute, and repeat that question in your head a few times … contemplate the depth of the question without seeking the answer … let the answer just arrive naturally in your mind and LISTEN for it instead of trying to force the answer to obey your existing belief paradigms.

So we have all these problems, and we got here because of evolved behavioural psychology for survival … but it’s not working for us, because that evolved behaviour came from millions of years of non-technological existence, and only a few hundred years since the industrial revolution … the change has been so rapid, and unfortunately, we’ve become entrenched and brainwashed by the civilisation we built for survival.

We are presently led by insanity if we believe these systems have any hope of bringing us out of this precarious position, they do not … they do have some means of temporary reprieve, but nothing capable of lasting the test of the events with probabilities that span geological & astronomical time scales.

• The Earth is going through another magnetic reversal after approximately 250,000 years (average between cycles);
• The Earth is overdue for an extinction level impact.

So … assuming we can survive the issues we’ve caused ON the planet (which is not certain), we still have to prepare for and survive these (and other as yet unknown) events of greater time scales.

The present leadership, as I mentioned do have some alternatives … but you’re not going to like them, they involve unnecessarily killing billions of people just to prop up the failed system they control. IF THEY DO THIS it is likely they too will perish at the next larger hurdle, because they’ll have killed off the capacity to solve it.

Which leads us to some more questions, in order to battle the belief system of the status quo … but I think I’ll tackle that in another article at a later time.