In trying to understand why modern intelligent and caring humans would persistently resist the idea of ‘taking care of nature and each other’. Simply by putting human rights above national sovereignty as the best means of maximize humanity's freedom and security. I was motivated to start collecting human traits that we all have had and are easily witnessed in others. So far, I’ve found a dozen.
So there are at least a dozen inherent flaws of the Human mind that undermine humanity’s survival. Flawed thinking that nurtures the seeds of our own extinction unless we find the wisdom and courage to change it. Things change! Can we?
FACT: Our species comes with no survival guarantee. Some argue we can achieve eternal life in heaven. Some religious scholars believe God intended us to make a garden of Eden on earth or “earth as it is in heaven”. But human life on earth will eventually end. At most - we have until the Sun cools and expands to engulf our planet in approximately 4.5 billion years. But that inevitable cataclysm need not be the end of our species. Life on earth will end, and it’s possible, humans can survive by finding another home in the heavens. Not likely any time soon without grasping "the Laws of Nature". But it is entirely possible if we don't kill ourselves off by ignoring the Golden Rule "of Nature's God".
We already have all the essential tools necessary for our survival. So far we have taken the worst that nature has thrown at us. Earthquakes, Floods, tornadoes, Hurricanes, volcanoes, small asteroids, smallpox… even human nature (war, the bomb, genocide, the Third Reich and communism). We have even demonstrated our capacity to leave this planet. Unfortunately, there are certain characteristics we inherited from our ancestors that once provided some advantage to us as individuals or tribes. Today these same characteristics limit our species chance of survival. These capacities are specifically mental characteristics. I will unscientifically and collectively refer to these flawed characteristics within our ”mind” as our real enemy. If you find more, please let me know!
1. capacity to believe anything.
2. Conscious refusal to do what we know we should.
3. We don’t listen to experts.
4. Persistent in overestimating our understanding of things. Rule of 7 Plus or minus 2…?
5. Easily distraction from what is important.
6. Short, selective, and prejudiced memory.
7. Undervaluing the female of our species.
8. Indifference or apathy regarding the suffering of others.
9. Reluctance to work well with others- or unite in universal cause.
10. Natural resistance to changing our mind (a Pleistocene value for conserving body energy. Our 2.5 lb brain consumes 20% of our body's energy.
11. Immobilized by frustration, failure, hopelessness, or the belief we cannot make a difference.
12. Addiction to technology and entertainment that dumbs down our intellectual capacity and actually shrinks our brain.
“…all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed.” The Declaration of Independence
"The things that are wrong with the country today are the sum total of all the things that are wrong with us as individuals." -- Charles W. Tobey (1880-1953) Governor of New Hampshire, United States Senator
"Every man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is so far doing a public service. We should be grateful to him for attacking most unsparingly our most cherished opinions." Sir Leslie Stephen
"For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are." -- Niccolo Machiavelli
(1469-1527) Italian Statesman and Political Philosopher, Source: Discourses, 1513-1517
"Human beings are not condemned, because of their biological constitution, to annihilate each other or to be at the mercy of a cruel, self-inflicted fate." - Albert Einstein
Seven blunders from which arise the violence that plagues the world: Wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principles. Mahatma Gandhi
George Washington urged us to “Labor to keep alive in your heart that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.
Conscience: An awareness that originates in the mind and yields a person's inner sense of what is right or wrong, leading to feelings of guilt or satisfaction based on their actions or moral principles.
My hypothesis is that if those moral principles are not fundamental principles/first principles/self-evident truths - then they are violating “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”. Thus not in touch with reality to the degree humans are cable. And that these individuals may still be trapped in their mind by personal, religious, political, or economic truths (flawed concepts) that not based on objective truths.
"In the last analysis we must be judged by what we do and not by what we believe. We are as we behave." Geoffrey L. Rudd, The British Vegetarian, September/October 1962
Anatomy of the mind: It’s power and its flaws.
“Almost all our suffering is the product of our thoughts. We spend nearly every moment of our lives lost in thought and hostage to the character of those thoughts.” Sam Harris
"Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Pan American Day address, April 15, 1939.
The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot unlearn the lies they have been taught to believe.” - Alvin Toffler
"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one." - Charles Mackay
"The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend." - Henri Bergson, French Philosopher and Educator
Evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr once argued with Carl Sagan “that intelligence is a kind of lethal mutation”…“some humans will survive, but…will be scattered [without] a decent existence, and we’ll take a lot of the rest of the living world along with us.”
“The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane.” - Erich Fromm, The Sane Society
As hunters and gatherers, we were fine. But once we started separating ourselves from nature it may be too difficult to reverse course given the rapid evolution of weaponry and war. Technologies capacity for abuse is rapidly out-pacing our capacity for personal or government change/transformation.
"We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. We are monkeys with money and guns." - Tom Waits
"It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head." -- Sally Kempton Source: "Cutting Loose," by Sally Kempton. Esquire, July 1970
"The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals." -- Henry David Thoreau
(1817-1862)
The word 'anosognosia' is a medical term that may explain the human condition. It means 'when a person suffering a disability is unaware of that disability'.
"What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment ... inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose": Thomas Jefferson
"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule." - Friedrich Nietzsche
To be well-adjusted to our world should now be considered a serious mental illness by the American Psychiatric Institute. And as time goes on it appears we are even more crazy.
"There are two things I know to be infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely convinced about the former" Albert Einstein
“There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.” Frank Zappa, musician quoted in the Montreal Gazette.
In trying to understand why modern intelligent and caring humans would persistently resist the idea of a world federation by putting human rights above states' rights as the best means of maximize humanity's freedom and security -- I started collecting a list of human lethal traits that we have all witnessed. So far I’ve identified at least 12. cw
"The human mind was not designed by evolutionary forces for finding truth. It was designed for finding advantage" Albert Szent-Györgyi
“Our brain evolved to meet the needs of hunting-gathering societies, not the complex civilization we have developed. Today we are ill-suited for the challenges we face, and those who hold power too often lack the mind and integrity needed to use it wisely.” —Peter Seidel, 2009
"The terrible thing about the quest for truth is that you find it." -- Remy De Gourmont
(1858-1915) French Symbolist poet, novelist, and influential critic
"No one really knows why humans do what they do." - David K. Reynolds
Experts suggest that human intelligence has evolved with our brain and the emergence of language. But human evolution spans about 7 million years. It is believed our human species emerged about 2 million years ago and was adapted largely for the Pleistocene era of basic threats (predators, hunger, competition for space or mates). Our ‘modern’ behavioral capacity emerged over the top of that foundation over the last 50,000 years with our social evolution often at conflict with our more basic behaviors.
It could be postulated that the primary function of the human brain/mind connection was to increase the survival capacity of both individuals and groups. Some believe that our species has become dumber over the last few thousand years for two reasons. First, the exponential expansion of the volume of knowledge out paces our brain’s capacity to learn it. More troubling (and controversial) is the trend of our evolving societies increasingly protecting those who have disconnected their thoughts and beliefs from actions that would ensure the survival of the individual or our species. This may be harmless. It may even aid the survival of a specific group …but overall our species appears to be getting dumber at negotiating any significant changes to our social/economic conditions or our environment. For the last 5000 years we have been engineering the environment to meet our needs as individuals and groups…without much regard for the environment that engineered our brains/mind and bodies.
Increasingly we fail to link knowledge gains to the betterment of our species or its long term survival. Our Pleistocene brain simply wasn’t engineered for a genome era in which our technology and collective actions (on a finite planet) has the evolutionary force approaching the impact of asteroid extinction event.
"The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are drifting side by side to our common doom." -- Clarence S. Darrow (1857-1938)
"The problem is not those in power, the problem is right between our ears." - Larken Rose
The more we learn about the wealth and solutions that exist to solve the world’s problems - the more optimistic we might have become. However, the more you understand the workings of the human mind and what we have done with our extraordinary intelligence and technological capacity - the more pessimistic/depressed you might become. It should be clear to any rational mind that what our species needs is people with the courage and spirit to bridge this gap between knowledge and capacity — with effective action. So the most dangerous threat now appears to be our virtual incapacity to develop a shared sense of what is real and what is not, what works and what doesn’t. And work with virtue to change that.
While most of the details here are indisputable there appears to be great uncertainty about what actions are effective in inspiring average or intelligent people to bridge the gap.
Copernicus should have woken us up. Humans are not at the center of the universe. There is no guarantee that our species will survive on earth. Throughout the history of life on this planet, millions of species have come and gone. Our time on this planet is limited.
There is overwhelming evidence of at least 5 mass extinctions over the last 450 million years. (http://www.skepticalscience.com/Earths-five-mass-extinction-events.html) It’s not clear weather any mass species extinction would have wiped out a human species IF they had been around at that time, but we are certain of one thing. More mass extinctions will occur. Many scientists believe a sixth is underway now and that human political, economic, and environmental insults are accelerating it.
While this hypothesis and the lethal impact of climate change on the survival of any species is highly speculative, we can be certain that some event or series of events in the future will bring mass extinction trauma to our planet again. Will we be ready?
Conclusion: If we fail to seek systemic solutions to immediate problems, we will bankrupt our bodies energy, our mind’s interest in making a change, and recognizing our hardwired need to serve others in finding value and purpose in our selfish, greedy, and short sighted thinking.
"In the long run, a single-planet species will not survive," Mike Griffin, NASA Administrator, Rolling Stone Magazine, 23 February 2006 P46.
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