Human-wide Hubris #HwH
Are we getting to the point where current science has nearly convinced us that our ancient wisdom had it all right before we started tinkering with things? When we understood nature’s brutal balance? That on average nature generally balanced itself? And even when there were local temporary disturbances that felt like terrible imbalance, we knew the system would right itself? That we were all part of the web of everything? That everything experienced these fluctuations? Was that a way of recognizing our minuscule importance in nature? The antidote to self-importance? That enabled us to not take ourselves and our individual lives to be any more important than other lives? That all parts of the web of everything have equal importance? Even non-humans? And we respected that balance? Or things would fall apart? The web would break under too much pressure? Is that what our distant ancestors understood? What we have since lost?
But what happened? Why did we lose it?
We wanted to adjust circumstances around us to give ourselves some security? Once we got that, we wanted to tinker some more to make our lives easier? Then more comfortable? More entertaining? For some, they wanted more power? More stuff? They needed more people to do the work for them and make the stuff so that power could translate into wealth? That wealth and power are two different expressions of the same concept? Is this how our populations swelled? We were innovative in engineering the world in our likeness? Just the way we wanted it to be? We thought we could actually compete with the Christian notion of “GOD”? At least we told ourselves we could outdo the Christian notion of “GOD”? Because we were wise and were always on the verge of understanding just about everything about everything when another discovery opens up an entirely new avenue of potential learning and discovery? And, surely, we believe this will be the last scientific frontier? We will understand literally everything, once we figure out this last thing? So we keep going? Is that the drive of progressive thinking? That belief that we can keep at it and things will get better and better? That we can have more and more and not worry about the consequences until we have to confront them? Because the consequences are actually confronting us?
Did we really think we could all live that way? Or did we convince ourselves that we could live that way? That in our growing population we could each have the increasing power, wealth, security, and convenience we thought we deserved? How could that be possible? How could there be enough of everything to sustain a rapidly increasing population that expects a certain level of increasing power, wealth, security and convenience in each successive generation? That we would all eventually get our own personal infinity to do whatever we wished with? And keep the party going? Keep growing the feedback loop of the economy, the population, the innovation? At industrial scale? Forever? There were not limits? Is that what we all convinced ourselves of?
Is this the Human-wide Hubris? That we started to believe we could all have as much of everything as we want and keep growing our population? That we could defy the gods? Or nature? That we thought we were so smart that we could figure everything out and sustainably multiply
∞consumption X ∞growth
and have nothing major go wrong in that social experiment? We stole fire, didn’t we? We went to the moon, didn’t we? Can’t we do anything?
Was the Human-wide Hubris the end of ancient wisdom? Its undoing? Its cause for the disavowing of the recognition of the web of everything and the equal importance of everything in the web? Clearing room for the new expectation of increasing consumption to fuel more consumption? When could this have started? The foundations of western culture? Monotheism? Monoculture at all costs? Infinite growth? Infinite consumption? The inversion of The Oneness Principle? The notion of Self Importance? The denial of the interconnection of everything and its replacement with the connection of everything we think is important? Because what matters is only what we think is important? Could Human-wide Hubris be the Human-wide undoing?