To: Sunday
Telegraph: Comment |
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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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