To:    Sunday Telegraph: Comment
Re:    Taking a biological rather than a social view of human history
Date:  Sunday 10 September 06

In response to an article by Prof. Niall Ferguson: : "Born to rule: monarchy puts the success into succession"
 
Reading Prof. Ferguson's essay makes me wonder, not for the first time, why we study history as a "social" rather than as a "biological" science, when the latter would provide a far more objective perspective of ourselves as Earth's "Greatest Ape". A perspective, moreover, that is urgently required for us to understand our situation and the hopeless mess we are in, with an ever increasing population of technologically empowered, but essentially insatiable, human apes, addicted (quite literally) to a grossly materialistic and utterly unsustainable economy and way of life (both rooted, naturally enough, in our animal nature), which are placing an ever increasing drain and strain on our planet's finite resources and carrying capacity. We are, in fact, behaving as any other population of dumb animals - or bacteria, for that matter - would, increasing our numbers and impact on the environment until its ability to support us is exceeded and causes the population to crash, which is what will happen within the next few decades unless there is a radical and comprehensive change in human awareness, values, attitudes, aspirations - and behaviour.
 
We suffer from a strange kind of split consciousness. Any study of society and human behaviour, whether past or present, clearly reveals us to be apes, driven, not entirely, but very largely, by our dumb-animal nature, yet, against all the evidence to the contrary, we delude ourselves into believing that we are rational beings (Homo sapiens!), capable of saving ourselves and our planet from the fast approaching catastrophe that will soon engulf us.
 
If this perspective strikes you as being in any way credible, you might like to visit my website at www.spaceship-earth.org
 
 
 



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