It Is What It Is ...

I've been engaged in a fascinating debate this week on Jay Hanson's WarSocialism discussion list (see www.dieoff.org). The result of the discussion is downright depressing, and can be summed up in a few points:

• Humans are at the end of the modern age and are about to face a massive dieoff, which will likely be caused by nuclear war, an influenza pandemic, or ecological ruin. Not to mention, there is going to be mass chaos after the cheap oil is gone.
  
  
• Neither humans nor evolution have any kind of end plan or goal. As the saying goes, "it is what it is."
  
  
• The idea that human destiny is to colonize the Universe is not looking good. There are many factors that make interplanetary space travel basically impossible.

This leaves me with the conclusion that we humans are a one-in-a-trillion freak occurrence in the Universe, and we are about to go. We will likely go in an unpleasant way — extreme violence, starvation, or disease.

My own assessment is that losing jobs will just be the beginning. Before long we will be engaging in cannibalism again, like our chimp relatives. Also, I learned that a third of chimp males never make it to adulthood because they are murdered by chimp gangs, and that we share about 95% of the same genes as the chimp, so extreme violence is embedded in us as well.

This is sounding very, very grim, and tonight I'm about to give up all hope. But I know I won't, and I don't want to sell out my principles for food — I'm not sure how long I'll be able to hold out on that one.

The bottom line is human beings are a very sick, dysfunctional, and violent species. It's so sad because I see a lot of good in us too.

Space flight to other planets is impossible:

From Tom —

I recently saw a bumper sticker with the following slogan; "Earth First. We'll strip mine the other planets later." This is the perfect slogan for all the space cadets out there who believe the star trek, star wars science fiction fantasies Hollywood has filled our heads with throughout this soon to be fading, electronic age. Maybe we alpha males can even get lucky and score with some hot, green alien chicks while were propagating our benevolent expansion of the heavens as an added bonus. Captain Kirk sure seemed to get lucky a lot.

I find talk of colonizing other planets in other solar systems amusing because it's a perfect example of the arrogant, anthropocentric hubris that characterizes human beings which is what got us into this predicament of overshoot after in the first place. Colonization of other planets is practically impossible for at least a few logical reasons such as follow. The list is by no means comprehensive.

1. We are the product of billions of years of fine-tuned, ecosystem evolution and exploitation and our very existence is completely contingent upon the exact and delicate balance of atmospheric, climatic and terrestrial conditions (aka capital) that have yet to be verified on any other planet we could hope to reach before the consequences of our species overshoot overtake us.

2. As arrogant and capable as we are, the human body can't survive years in a gravity-free environment because our muscles, heart and bones are subject to radical atrophy. Any planet that we could potentially exploit is probably light years away and the laws of physics preclude such contingency. Don't bother talking to me about short-cuts through "worm holes" because no such thing has ever been verified. Worm holes are a science fiction hypothesis at best.

3. A significant feature of overshoot and collapse is the exponential conversion of capital into a waste stream leaving a degraded (read trashed) ecosystem behind with less viable resources for future generations. Translation: We won't have the energy nor the money available to get off the ground into space to export our benevolent intentions to other parts of the universe. In a nut shell, this is why space programs no longer practically exists for space exploration. Space exploration is past peak. We went to the moon, it was sterile and mainly useless and we'll probably never get any further.

Indeed flight was once thought to be impossible but the laws of aerodynamics permitted such after all (as long as the contingencies of capital, technology and energy are available). However, the laws of physics and specifically the laws of thermodynamics predict Homosapiens is destined (doomed?) to existence and eventual extinction here on good old planet Earth. It seems it's the only planet we'll ever really get to strip mine after all.

We Can't Evolve Our Way Out Of Our Problems

From Scott —

Several points to make about the likelihood of short term human evolution here. One is that evolutionary changes in primates and apes do not happen in just a few generations. It requires hundreds or even thousands of generations to evolve as a species. Humans have remained pretty much unchanged physically for over 100k years (not including the Neanderthals, which seem to have been a separate sub-species or population of humans that did not interbreed). Socially humans made a last significant change somewhere around 50k years ago into more or less what we are now. That is around 2,500 generations of humans since the last major distinctive change occured. If you want to put a stake in the ground for 'modern civilized humans' as the point of evolution that we made our last significant change (I do not believe this, this is just an example of scale) at about 12k years ago at the dawn of modern civilization, that is still over 500 generations of humans which remain basically unchanged from the dawn of history.

Another point is that as a population gets larger, like in humans today, the likelihood of a chance mutation or genetic alteration being passed on and affecting a large segment of the population (and hence leading to a genetic alteration and/or evolution) is pretty much drown out. The massively larger population of unchanged genes would be the ones that are passed on. 7 billion people are not going to evolve much, until/unless there are some abrupt environmental changes or pandemic that radically kills off large segments of the population.

Another factor that has risen from the human genome research is that humans have very similar genes to one another, as compared to our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees. As I recall, both types of chimps share something like 97% of chimp specific genetic traits, whereas humans are more like 99% similar in human genetic traits. This is not to be confused with the fact that humans and chimps share somewhere between 95%-99% of functional genes. The point here is that humans have far less genetic variation within the species than other primates, so the chances of our evolving from our current population is far less.

Given the three reasons stated above, we are not likely to evolve in just a few generations when a lot of 'stuff' is very likely to hit the global fan. We can and may well adapt culturally, but not genetically. Also one genration does not make Europeans a bunch of sloths. Humans (as well as chimps it seems) are prone to war; take away resources and you will fight your neighbors for them. Given that our ancestors likely diverged from the chimpanzees sometime about 5-6 million years ago, the war gene is deep in our genetics (and probably over 6 millon years old). Chimps have been observed to go to war with and kill rival chimps, BTW. They are also prone to cannibalism. Sound familiar?

Evolution Has No Goal

From reductio0adabsurbum:

Sorry Todd, but you're wrong again. Evolution has no "goal", no direction, and no purpose. It just is. Natural selection in a nutshell: if the gene(s) that is(are) responsible for a particular phenotypic variation which endows the possessor of that(those) genes with a reproductive advantage, then that(those) gene(s) will be propagated into subsequent generations more so than will those genes that are less able to do so. That's pretty much it. You may feel dissatisfied by how inhuman and unfeeling that may be, but just because we as a species with our culture think we need purpose, (an illusion of) continuity that projects into the future, it doesn't mean that this need will be worked out into an objective reality. You can't overlay our own human frailties onto evolution or anything else outside our heads. Or at least you can't do that and expect that doing so will affect it in any objective way.