[Note: This is a new section from the rough draft of Wild, Free, & Happy. This is probably the end of the body text. These samples start with sample 01, and follow the sequence listed HERE (if you happen to have some free time).
Helter
Skelter
Stephen Pyne has spent a lifetime thinking about
fire. Without the ability to use fire as
a powerful tool, humans could have never migrated out of tropical Africa and
colonized the outer world.
When human
pioneers eventually reached the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East, they
discovered plant and animal species that were especially ideal for
domestication. This region became known
as the Cradle of Civilization. Its
development enabled us to accelerate our long and painful march to the
staggering eco-horrors of today.
Pyne is
especially concerned about industrial fire.
Its combustion of fossil fuel results in carbon emission levels that are
turbocharging an angry swarm of catastrophes.
“Our ecological effects have had the impact of a
slow collision with an asteroid… together we have so reworked the planet that
we now have remade biotas, begun melting most of the relic ice, turned the
atmosphere into a crock pot, and the oceans into acid vats.”
Fire made us the unusual creatures we have become. Our colonization of the world was like a
spreading human wildfire that expanded across unspoiled wildernesses in
search of fuel. We enjoyed feasting on
megafauna until they became scarce, at which point we advanced into new
regions. Over time, hungry humans ran
out of unoccupied territory to expand into.
Oh-oh!
Groups had to revise their menus to include different food
sources. Aggressive groups could attempt
to smash their way into territories inhabited by other groups. As the millennia passed, and populations
grew, friction between groups increased and spilled blood became more
common.
Weaker groups were more likely to be swept aside. For example, of all the surviving wild
cultures, the San people have the oldest DNA.
Their time-proven way of life was incredibly sustainable. Their original homeland territory was vast,
but over time, farmers and herders eventually snatched most of it away, forcing
the San to retreat to the harsh Kalahari Desert. By the 1970s, their traditional way of life
had taken a serious beating.
Alfred
Crosby summed up a bedrock lesson of history: “Winning streaks are rarely
permanent.” Like the traditional San
people, most of the countless wild cultures that once existed sooner or later
got blindsided by stuff like disease, colonization, capitalism, genocide,
urbanization, and so on. The wild
cultures that still survive are not safe and secure. Intruders from the outer world rarely enjoy a
warm and fuzzy reputation for being kind and caring ladies and gentlemen.
Meanwhile, in the fast lane, the human wildfire learned
how to paddle down rivers, sail across oceans, roll on railways, drive across
continents, fly through the clouds, zoom to the moon, vaporize cities, produce
enough food to feed billions, blindside a stable climate, exterminate vast
forests, and turn Earth into a loony bin for hordes of lost and confused
primates.
Big History is a million-page catalog of countless bloody
dog-eat-dog conflicts between tribes, nations, religions, and empires. The strongest usually triumphed over the
weakest, because the weak had no right to what they could not defend. But those who remained in the fast lane were
still vulnerable to getting blindsided by brutal surprises.
Sadly, glowing screens and motor vehicles are more
precious than wooly mammoths or healthy planets. The wizards of progress are guiding us toward
a future of unimaginable prosperity, decarbonized energy, and tremendous achievements
in family planning. Everyone will
eagerly cooperate. Really? Well, if you believe it, it’s true!
Animal
in the Mirror
Pyne noted, “Without fire humanity sinks to a status of
near helplessness, a plump chimp with a scraping stone and digging stick,
hiding from the night’s terrors, crowding into minor biotic niches.” In other words, an ordinary wild animal.
Since Neanderthals disappeared from the stage, our closest
living relatives are now the chimps and bonobos, with whom we share up to 99
percent of our genes. They have lived in
the same forests, in the same way, for several million years, without degrading
their ecosystem, starting a fire, or fooling around with tools fancier than
sticks or stones. They luckily benefit
from their isolation, and the fact that their traditional habitat does not
contain valuable resources that are tempting to greed monsters from outer
space.
In his book Grandfather,
Tom Brown shared a beautiful story he heard from his mentor Stalking Wolf, a
traditional Apache from desert country, who traveled widely over the years,
from the Amazon to Alaska, living off the land, and learning from it. One time, while in Alaska as winter
approached, he frantically had to stock up on food and firewood for the coming
months.
A bit later, when the snows arrived, he became fascinated
by the ptarmigans, birds that survived in the frigid climate by their wits
alone, sleeping in cozy snowdrifts. They
belonged in this arctic land, like the lizards belonged in Death Valley. Lizards could not survive in Alaska, and
ptarmigans could not survive on the desert.
With the use of specialized tools, our species could
survive almost anywhere. But Grandfather
felt uncomfortable because humans without fire and tools can only survive in
special ecosystems. He deeply wanted to
genuinely belong somewhere, like the ptarmigans and lizards. Over the passage of time, their way of life had
become fine tuned for surviving in the ecosystems they inhabited.
Dear reader, this is a tremendously important point. Animals that are wild, free, and happy are
perfectly at home in the wild ecosystems they inhabit. Like squirrels in an oak forest, they live
where they belong, and remain intimately attuned to their habitat.
Our hominin ancestors fanned out across the planet, and
eventually generated assorted impacts, including numerous extinctions. Today, most of the mob of eight billion no
longer lives and thinks like healthy wild animals. A number of cultures have developed
worldviews and lifestyles that are self destructively unclever, and ferociously
brutal to the family of life.
Jay Griffiths
wrote that humans evolved as highly alert nomadic hunters and foragers. “We were made to walk through our lives
wildly awake.” Modern lifestyles are
often mind-numbing routines — the opposite of the freedom we so deeply
need. When healthy wildness deteriorates
into passive obedience, we become vulnerable to the burning pain of cage
rage. Very often, the daily news seems
to be a barrage of batshit crazy cage rage stories from a wheezing world.
Timothy
Scott Bennett concluded that we modern consumers
were born and raised in captivity, something like zoo animals, the opposite of free,
wildly awake, and at one with the land.
Robin
Wall Kimmerer is a Potawatomi biologist.
One of the spirits in their tribal traditions is Windigo, a monstrous
demon cursed with a voracious appetite.
The more it eats, the hungrier it becomes. In the old days, Windigo was notorious for
hunting too hard, and not sharing with others, leading to hunger times.
Later, uninvited pale faced invaders from outer space
smashed into tribal lands. Native folks
were stunned by their pathological foolishness.
Around the world, colonists have now created countless Windigo
whirlwinds of mining, deforestation, industrial agriculture, overhunting, and
insatiable shopping.
Today, the hurricane of daily news from around the world
shouts that the Windigo spirit has become a horrific global superpower. Billions of folks everywhere eagerly dream of
having more, more, more. Even the
superrich are maniacally grabbing and hoarding as much status glitter as possible. This is not the path to a balanced and
healthy future.
The
Future?
In the preceding pages, I have explored my core question:
how did things get to be this way? Now
what? Humankind is deep in overshoot,
and zooming down the path to a treacherously exciting future without brakes or
safety nets. My computer has a wonderful
Undo function that can easily vaporize a sequence of mistakes. Nature does not. If you broke it, you bought it.
For folks who have more than a dozen working brain cells,
the growing number of climate change reports and news stories are
overwhelming. It’s not a fake news hoax
(unless you pretend it is). Indeed,
folks who yank off their blinders can discover a nonstop firehose of
heartbreaking stories about floods, furious storms, heat waves, droughts, crop
failures, melting glaciers, massive wildfires, and on and on — week after week
after week.
Our foolishly unclever culture, hobbled by limited
understanding and foresight, has successfully conjured into existence a
colossal whirlwind of bad juju. Eight
billion consumers, with their famously big brains, are stampeding down the fast
lane to a turbulent blind date with the rough justice of overshoot. How embarrassing!
Fare
Thee Well!
Dearest reader, congratulations! One way or another, you’ve arrived at the skanky
rear end of this word dance. Pressure is
visibly rising around the world, rivets are popping on the Titanic, and the
global circus has become a freakshow of wildfires, climate catastrophes,
conspiracy theories, religious fanaticism, cocky neofascism, merciless
dog-eat-dog greed, berserk cage rage, pathological status seeking,
fire-breathing patriarchy, and all-purpose bad craziness. Something seems to be out of balance. Like the old Chinese proverb warns, we are
living in interesting times.
OK! I’ve said what
I needed to say. I hope you’ve had some
kind of meaningful experience with my literary monsterpiece. Good luck!
Do your best!
An
Innocent Booboo?
Finally, a weird idea.
Kindling the first domestic fire by spinning a fire drill stick was not,
in any way, an obvious thing for a wild African primate to do. The uncomfortable possibility is that maybe just
one individual ancestor (a kid?) discovered it purely by accident, and it
consequently unleashed two million years of change and catastrophe, and created
the global horror show outside your window.
Whoops! Undo! Undo! Undo! Shit!
