Chris Hedges gave a powerful speech in Santa Monica, California on October 13, 2013. He called it "The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies." It is a speech worth reading.
In his speech, Hedges said "the most prescient portrait of the American character and our ultimate fate as a species is found in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Melville makes our murderous obsessions, our hubris, violent impulses, moral weakness and inevitable self-destruction visible in his chronicle of a whaling voyage. He is our foremost oracle."
We can certainly see how both our hubris and our violent impulses are carrying us towards self-destruction. Pictures remind us daily of our continuing failure to respect the limits of the Natural World, and our continuing disregard of the human world that we have created ourselves.
Does it all add up to inevitable self-destruction? No. Because we retain the gift of freedom. We can change.
But self-destruction? If we don't change, yes.
(1) http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/aug/20/water.food1
(2) http://www.ebc.com.br/noticias/internacional/2013/09/venezuela-e-ira-tentam-negociar-solucao-que-evite-intervencao-militar
Human caused global warming exists but will not cause the extinction of the human race by any stretch of the imagination. Human progress is a fact, not a myth. Technology has and will continue to allow billion of human to live on the Earth.
ReplyDeleteSustainability is a goal that relies on acceptance of science. That acceptance is not mania for hope, nor hubris.
It's common sense.