A Species out of Context

This is the thirteenth of 18 installments in the Metastatic Modernity video series (see launch announcement), putting the meta-crisis in perspective as a cancerous disease afflicting humanity and the greater community of life on Earth. This episode unpacks the great Wes Jackson aphorism that modern humans are a species out of context. Well, what’s the right context, and how are we out of it?

As is the custom for the series, I provide a stand-alone companion piece in written form (not a transcript) so that the key ideas may be absorbed by a different channel. The write-up that follows is arranged according to “chapters” in the video, navigable via links in the YouTube description field.

Introduction

This is the usual short naming of the series, of myself, and the topic of this episode (a species out of context) as part of our effort to put modernity into context.

Wes Jackson

“A species out of context” is one of many great aphorisms from Wes Jackson, founder of The Land Institute in Kansas. Bob Jensen wrote a fantastic book called The Restless and Relentless Mind of Wes Jackson. I was truly impressed both by the deep insights developed by Wes, and by the organization Bob brought to the book in distilling many years of scattered conversations into a coherent worldview. It may be the best book out there for conveying the full scope and origins of our predicament in a plain-spoken way.

Life is Genius

I’ve been playfully throwing around the word “genius” in non-cerebral contexts. My wife and I started doing it a few years ago, Initially in a joking manner about our “old man kitten” of 19 years. He was a genius for finding sunny spots for napping, or finishing all his food. Then the squirrels became geniuses for knowing what mushrooms are safe to eat. We recognized newts as geniuses for knowing when conditions were suitable for moving about, and for somehow avoiding freezing solid in winter. Plants are geniuses for sprouting and blooming at the appropriate times (e.g., not fooled by an early warm spell).

It drives some folks crazy that I would flatter dumb plants and animals with a word that should be reserved for supreme humans. I’m glad my tactic is working!

By allowing ourselves to use the word genius in unconventional ways, what started as a bit of a joke opened a window of admiration for the more-than-human world. I think it’s appropriate, though. Plants and animals are geniuses in so many ways, doing things we don’t have the faintest clue how to do ourselves. Just surviving in the wild—dealing with the unexpected, navigating uncertainty, adapting to changing and unpredictable conditions—takes an incredible amount of knowledge and good instinct. Sure, much of this genius manifests in non-cognitive ways, and without calculus, but I say who cares? Why should we define a standard of genius around our particular bag of tricks? When it comes to long-term sustainability (i.e., where it counts most), we seem to be the biggest dunces on the planet. Our brand of genius can be a liability in this regard.

We often think of geniuses as those individuals able to ace tests. Plants and animals are put to the hard test every second of every day. Those species still with us are proven test-takers, passing again and again—for millions of years! Sounds like genius to me!

Plants and animals pass the tests because they are in their ecological context. This is the context into which they evolved: a rich set of inter-relationships with other forms of life—relationships that in fact are co-evolving with the various species. Each species is deeply integrated into a whole: none stand alone (see Episode 4).

Abandoning Our Context

Humans also have an ecological context into which we evolved, as animals filling a niche in relation to the rest of the community of life—no less integrated and inter-related than other species. That’s how we got here: in context. We didn’t appear fully formed and free of any ecological entanglements.

It’s possible that we jumped the rails with fire, giving humans a unique and sometimes destructive tool whose control by life had no prior precedent. But we definitely jumped the rails when we tried a new experiment in the form of intensive agriculture. Why am I circumspect about fire but more certain about agriculture? Because the first one was part of the living world for a couple million years without ecological disaster (see note about megafauna extinctions in the Episode 8 write-up). That meets my sustainable timescale criterion. Agriculture sent us on a path toward a sixth mass extinction in a mere 10,000 years: different orders-of-magnitude.

Prior to agriculture, we had often practiced horticulture—tending to plants already embedded in their ecological surroundings. The more controlling sort of agriculture (plowing, mono-cultures, elimination of “weeds” and “pests”) represented a foray into uncharted territory—completely untested in ecological and evolutionary terms. Recall that those forces act on very long time scales, so that judgment has not yet been passed as to whether or not this scheme works, ecologically.

Meanwhile, we separated ourselves from our original ecological context. As a consequence, we now find ourselves squabbling over how we ought to live on this planet—which political, economic, ethical, material, energy, and technology schemes we should embrace. Proponents of modernity offer a wide variety of conflicting opinions on the matter, which leads me to think that none are correct. That’s because we’re making them all up in our ecologically-ignorant heads! We are untethered from ecological realities.

Original Brain Functions

I’ll bet if I asked ChatGPT for a statement about the human brain, it would assemble something like the following based on typical word associations “out there” relating to the human brain—echoing our cherished mythologies. “The magnificent human brain represents a quantum leap over anything that came before it: unlimited in capability, ingenuity, and problem solving skills.” We do tend to worship our brains.

Of course the human brain has a long and continuous heritage, which plays out during embryonic development like a fast-forward movie of evolution (ending in our late twenties when brain development is complete). We have similar structures to fish, worms, lizards, mice, and apes. Cognitive capability was an emphasis in our evolution, as evidenced by our brains’ size and expensive appetite for metabolic power.

Our brains evolved versatile capabilities that made us keen observers and gave us advantages in recognizing cycles and patterns in nature—useful for anticipating the rollout of various bounties. We became expert animal trackers, able to read stories out of the dirt. A high degree of social complexity facilitated by our large frontal lobes allowed us to work successfully as a collective, which can be a huge advantage.

Brains Gone Rogue

But this versatility led to a sort of unintended loophole that also allowed us to turn attention and considerable cognitive power to efforts that deviated from our ecological context: intensive agriculture, rectilinear artificial environments (e.g., buildings and cities), and magnificent stunts like rocketing into space—temporarily.

The problem is that these activities and emergent lifestyles have no long-term vetting in an evolutionary, ecological context. Despite the common perception (I would say delusion), our brains don’t contain the whole world, but are a small subset of that world. Our brains are incapable of understanding the whole and all its tangled, interconnected relationships and complexity. Why then would we expect the fabrications of our superficial brains—which are largely ignorant of ecological interconnections—happen to mesh, ecologically?

Well, they don’t! It’s not even close! As a result, the tension between ecology and the contrivance we call modernity should come as no surprise.

I might even characterize modernity, crudely, as one giant, elaborate “brain fart.” We chased notions based on short-term benefits without having any concept of the ecological ramifications (beyond our pay-grade to evaluate properly, in any case). Compare the superficial cognitive origins of modernity to evolution’s deeper methods of slow and steady testing in the eternal presence of complex, interconnected, co-evolving relationships—where each “idea” is required to work over hundreds of thousands of years to stay in the game.

Our comparatively cursory brain schemes hardly stand a chance compared to the powerful and proven wisdom of deep time. So, is it at all surprising that our recently concocted ways of living on the planet should fail? Not only are our schemes formulated in ecological ignorance, but they often act in adolescent defiance of ecological groundings. Not a good look. We’re the first species to try a cognitive end-run around ecology, but it takes a fool to believe it possible to fool Mother Nature, in the end.

Fabrication Failings

Whether discussing modes of living on this planet, our contraptions, or our political/economic systems, our fabrications have simply not stood the test of time. This is very definitely true of the industrial age, but even 10,000 years of agriculture is blindingly new in evolutionary terms. Moreover, we see clear evidence that agricultural practices are unsustainable in the same location over thousands of years (or less).

Not only do our fabrications lack evolutionary vetting, they do not participate in deeply integrated reciprocal relationships with the broader community of life. Part of the reason is that our fabrications use bizarre materials that are not what life needs or can use. Our materials must be mined from the depths—which, by the way, is a decent indicator for operating outside of an ecological context.

Our fabrications are clunky, clumsy, flimsy, poor substitutes for what life has fashioned. We might be able to “swim” in submarines and “fly” in airplanes, but those contraptions become scrap heaps within decades. Meanwhile, the inventions of life remain in operation for millions of years. The scrap heaps we leave behind—being made of materials that are at best irrelevant but often toxic to life—are no good to man or beast.

Modernity’s creations basically are “not of this (living) world.” They have no place. They have failed—obviously and understandably—to establish themselves in reciprocal relationship with the community of life. Because these fabrications actively undermine ecological health, the practice will not find a place in the living world, and will prove to be unsustainable.

Cliff Launch

I used the image below in Episode 6 to illustrate the leap we have taken into the unsustainable void. At the time, it might have seemed out of place and premature. I promised that it might make more sense later in the series. We are now at that point.

This is what our meat-brains can get us: a dare-devil stunt that has no ecological foundation to provide sustenance indefinitely. The temporary flight phase is thrilling, exciting, and impressive. But without having been built on principles of ecological sustainability, it has no choice but to fail. Don’t expect some magical force of levitation (no evidence for such) to keep modernity airborne.

Again, this should come as no surprise. What else would we expect when fabricating an artificial world based on mere neural notions in a state of ecological ignorance? Pairing ecological ignorance with the capacity to erode the foundations of life is proving to be a poor combination.

Whiz-Bangery

All this spectacular whiz-bangery has certainly produced a lot of die-hard fans—giddy for what cool stuff comes next. They don’t want to hear that it’s a temporary party, or stunt. After all, it is real enough at the moment, so that looking only at that which is in direct sight offers a convincing case that the reality is modernity. It seems like a permanent—and accelerating—reality in part because our individual lives are very short compared to timescales that matter. Living our short lives during the Great Upswing leads to inevitable errors of extrapolation. But don’t be fooled. Break the spell. Fall out of love with (ecologically abusive and jerky) modernity.

The spectacle of modernity is incapable of running a marathon as it runs ecological health into the ground. Like a spectacular and dazzling fireworks show, it will end. Normal life on Earth looks very little like this present anomaly.

Magic shows likewise present to our eyes phenomena that we intellectually know to be false, while being utterly convincing to our senses. Lots of things are possible on a temporary basis—almost illusory. Rapid inheritance spending can produce for a short while a lifestyle that shares little in common with one that involves working for a living. What we see with our own eyes in the present doesn’t make it a long-term reality. We at least can peer into the past and recognize the brevity of this period. Those who imagine modernity to be a “new normal” don’t actually have an ecologically viable plan for how it all could work in the long term. They basically assume or assert that it will, largely as a matter of wishful “thinking” (but only to a “brain-fart” standard), while simultaneously dismissing ecological concerns—since they know next to nothing about it. It’s just easier that way. Many fantasies become possible.

Perhaps the most sinister trap, here, is pride: we built this; we made the world to suit our tastes. Human supremacism, discussed in the last episode, leads us to reject the very ecological context that both got us here in the first place and that remains vital to longevity on this planet. Worship of our own brains—and the conceit that we can master (or dismiss) the complex workings of the living world—is a lethal fallacy that ought to be apparent as being delusional.

Exhibit A is the ecological nosedive treated in Episode 7, demonstrating our peril. In addition to the ecological disaster, we face climate change, aquifer depletion, resource exhaustion, escalating health crises, the prospects of agricultural failures, rising inequality and social unrest… How many alarm bells have to ring before we recognize that modernity is not working, and can’t, in the long term?

Sadly, you’re not going to hear complaints from the plants and animals that are failing to survive in an existential fight unlike anything in their species’ history. They are struggling mightily to keep a foothold in this rapidly-changing, topsy-turvy world. They will simply keep trying their very best to hang on, but will continue to fail through no fault of their own. You see, as we foolishly escaped our ecological context, we recklessly re-fashioned the world so that we are destroying the ecological context crucial to millions of other species—including ourselves, eventually. The plants and animals might not have a cognitive mental model for what’s going on, but they darned-sure know they’re stressed, and that something major is not right.

Well, that got a little more intense than I expected it would. But such is our world. Next time we’ll get to the namesake of this series and compare modernity to metastatic cancer. I think it might help people to begin separating the phenomenon from the host species.

Tom Murphy is a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego. An amateur astronomer in high school, physics major at Georgia Tech, and PhD student in physics at Caltech, Murphy has spent decades reveling in the study of astrophysics. He currently leads a project to test General Relativity by bouncing laser pulses off of the reflectors left on the Moon by the Apollo astronauts, achieving one-millimeter range precision. Murphy’s keen interest in energy topics began with his teaching a course on energy and the environment for non-science majors at UCSD. Motivated by the unprecedented challenges we face, he has applied his instrumentation skills to exploring alternative energy and associated measurement schemes. Following his natural instincts to educate, Murphy is eager to get people thinking about the quantitatively convincing case that our pursuit of an ever-bigger scale of life faces gigantic challenges and carries significant risks. Note from Tom: To learn more about my personal perspective and whether you should dismiss some of my views as alarmist, read my Chicken Little page.

Originally published by Do the Math