Individuals are smart. People are stupid.
I’ve been chewing on this idea for a while. Think about those authoritarian leaders throughout history. They don’t actually try to build something sustainable. They just grab what they can until everything falls apart, then someone else takes over and does the same thing. Feels like that’s exactly what we’re doing to the planet. We run the show on Earth. We control the resources, we decide what happens to other species. The difference is we actually have the intelligence to see the big picture and plan ahead. But here’s the catch - when stuff’s easy to take, that intelligence doesn’t really kick in. We just keep taking. Look at Anomalocaris. Ruled the oceans for maybe 30 million years. Then three things happened: its prey got better at escaping, the climate shifted into an ice age, and when food got scarce it started eating its own. Boom, gone. We’re basically on the same track. We’re making resources harder to access, we’re changing the climate, and we’re already fighting over what’s left. The weird part is we’ve got all these universities and researchers, but no actual field that looks at Earth as one whole system. We’ve got climate science, ecology, geology - all these separate pieces. Nothing that connects the dots. So the real question is: if we’re just using our brains to take more efficiently, are we actually any different from Anomalocaris or the dinosaurs? Or are we just the next species waiting for a reset?
Individuals are smart. People are stupid.
https://preview.redd.it/we2o3i88lrgh1.png?width=580&format=png&auto=webp&s=608d9457ebb36c9f921569899ca5258296bb24d6
Brilliant!
How dare you disrespect dinosaurs by comparing them to humans. Disgusting.
We are smarter Cyanobacteria. And still we will cause the greatest dying since the Great Oxidation Event.
Hairless apes
We evolved to the exact smarts we needed. Tribes competing for scarce resources in a seemingly infinite world. That was 99.999% of our history. We were never made to deal with abundant resources in a infinitesmal world. Even less for what's coming. Scarce resources in a infinitesmal world. Can humans manage the earth? Brother, we're not even there yet driving cars safely. Around 40,000 people die in America alone in mostly preventable deaths. At the end of the day, no one and everyone is in charge. The politicians are moved by corporate interests. Corporate interests are moved by what people will put up with and pay for. The people are increasingly lazy, ignorant, and subject to their own vices. It's amazing the wheels haven't come off long ago.
Came here to say something similar: There is no "we" in control of anything. The damage is caused by 8 billion people jostling around in their own bubbles, whether it be a family or tribe or corporation. As a species, we have no mechanisms -- psychological or logistical -- for working in tandem for the better good of all.
There is too much information for anybody to really study as a whole. Earth Systems Science might come closest.
There is a field that looks at earth as a whole system… i believe it’s called earth sciences.
All species have their time in the spotlight. We might be smart enough for a fraction of us to prevail against the challenges we have made. No dinosaur did that.
🤣
Here's a serviceable book about it all. Very readable, and free. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m
dinosaurs roamed the earth for over 150 million years and their time was ended by a chance encounter they had no control over whatsoever. we've been around less than half a million years, and in just the last few centuries have seemingly put ourselves on course for a similar fate. for most of that time we didn't know it was what we were doing, but for a significant time now we have, and have shown we are largely incapable or unwilling to course-correct. the question is how do you judge 'smarts' or intelligence? if its by use of technology, sure we are pretty smart ... if its by longevity, dinos looking pretty clever, even if it was by accident. like they say in sports "i'd rather be lucky than good any day"
That "we" you've referenced for knowing what we're doing is misleading. There is no "we" when it comes to a common understanding shared among all individual members of our species. In relative terms, only a small number of individuals have a true understanding of the changes humans are triggering in the world through resource abuse.
We have big ass brains, sweat, and poseable thumbs That's about it