It seems that not a year goes by without some sort of natural disaster where hundreds of thousands are killed. In the last month we’ve had 2 biggies, an earthquake in China and a flood in Burma. Although Burma was partially avoidable (i.e. if the hadn’t destroyed huge amounts of mangrove swamps in the delta) nothing really can be done to prevent disaster like this happening. And it’s probably going to get worse as the population grows. As we as humans kill of the rest of the living world (roughly 25% of all species disappeared in the last 10 years) it seems the world is getting its on back and trying to redress the balance. It’s amazing to think that in the 400,000 years or so the human species has grown from nothing to over 5 billion, from living only in Africa up to 100,000 years ago to now populating ever corner of the earth. Yet what price has this come at.
For the majority of that time, man was in harmony with nature, killing only what was needed to survive, and hardly changing the natural world at all. However that all changed only about 10,000 years ago, with the advent of farming. We somehow went from a species that co-operated to survive, shared resources and tried to look out for our fellow humans, to one that was greedy and selfish. With the ownership of land, buildings and resource we seem to have degenerated into some sort of self centred creature, only looking out for our own.
With the advent of farming brought the ideas of ownership. Now land, animals and crops belonged to someone, and we decided that the best land was worth fighting over. In fact not just the best, any land. Property and material goods became more important than the life. What triggered this new morality, this hunger to have more than anyone else? Was it always part of man’s psyche or was it something new?
Its always been thought that in the days of the hunter gatherer was were all equal, like one great Marxist dream of cooperation and doing things for the greater good not the self, but was this true? Could it rather have been an altruistic move on our ancestor’s part? Instead of trying to look after everyone and the survival of the species, could it have been instead, the knowledge that if you look after the sick and vulnerable now, they might afford you the same luxury at a later date? If you couldn’t go out and get food for whatever reason they might get it for you, by way of returning the favour. Also with the use of objects or tools, if you are living a life constantly on the move, you don’t want to each have to carry a full set of stone tools, but if you each have a set one, and share, the weight is distributed about the group.
However as soon as you live a settled life, you each have your own little area to store tools, store food etc so the compulsion to share is less? Maybe, maybe not. But back to the point in hand. In shaping the world as we have, we are obviously causing problems for later generations. What problems to building large cities on earthquake fault lines cause? Does anyone know? In these fragile areas does adding the stress of the mass of these buildings of today’s cities cause a problem? I don’t know but I would suggest it doesn’t help. Do mines affect the land, or the buildings of giant dams? Its been proven that dams effect the environment, by causing new ecosystems and weather patterns, and destroy natural habitats etc.
Surely it’s about time that people sat down and looked at the bigger picture. We are not the only ones that inhabit this planet, but until we take a look at what we are doing we may soon well be. Obviously we cant stop countries developing as that would just be denying the rights to those that don’t have what we have, and keeping them down is not fair. Instead we in the western world should be helping them, while cutting back ourselves, and stopping the exploitation of the resource in these countries. We should be looking at what impact our actions have on a bigger scale. And not blindly destroying even more of the world.
