A current meme making the rounds - especially amongst academics- is that modern day humans have "never had it so good". While they may be getting ground under by the one percenters and corporations, and many can barely make ends meet - never mind- they can still get to Walmart for a new DVD, video game or whatever.
One part of this meme is that humans are too attuned to "look for trouble" rather than be grateful and appreciate what they've got. Why are they bellyaching, for example, about Confederate flags no longer being sold at Walmart when - compared to a Middle Ages serf - they are basically living like Kings with their own home ("castle") and even enough money to buy HDTVs, guns and even swimming pools?
One strong advocate for this put on the happy face and be thankful for what you have is Dr. Steve Mason in his
Integra (June, p. 21) article,
'A Happy Face'. But before we get to Steve let's deal with another powerful meme related to it, promoted by another Steve named Pinker. This is that compared to past eras human violence has decreased qualitatively and quantitatively. Pinker frames it as a "decline of evil".
If indeed the aggregate indices and totality of
human-instigated evil have declined,
it
means nearly all the apocryphal tales of religious books and literature are wrong or at least exaggerated.
It means in addition, that the entire meme of
Eschatological Messianism
is defunct and debunked. The latter, of course, refers to the period of
glorious dominion presumed to follow the last period of world history, after
Armageddon, when the "Antichrist" ( the ultimate Evil-doer) is due to
briefly reign, followed by a Second Coming of Christ. This is all according to
evangelical-fundamentalist Christians in the
U.S.
Countering the Armageddon bafflegab
is the strong evidence that violence
in toto appears to have declined around
the world relative to other eras. If this is valid, and not merely a
statistical quirk, it means at least one element of human evil is in decline. These propositions, or their
derivatives, are implicit in Stephen Pinker's recent book,
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has
Declined. I am deliberately associating violence with manifest
human evil as at least a proxy indicator of its extent. Pinker's arguments are
essentially based on two propositions that he sets out to prove:
1)
The past was far more beastly and vicious than presumed to be, and
2)
The present is vastly more peaceful, contrary to appearances.
In a way these propositions are
fairly sound. For example, in the immediate past rationalism was virtually
non-existent and when rationalists did emerge, they were rapidly
eliminated. Not only their minds, but bodies too, as well as property and often any
offspring. Most of this was done via the Inquisition which lasted for nearly
seven hundred years. Though they’d never admit it in a million years, the
Vatican and Roman Catholic Church actually harbored one of the most malignant
forms of human evil, in that same Inquisition.
In his excellent monograph
The Inquisition of the Middle Ages,
Henry Charles Lea, in his chapter
Subjection of
the State notes how papal
bulls and direct threats were used to subvert and co-opt all state, civil
authorities. This was to render them useless to oppose the will of the
Inquisition. One such bull issued by Pope Innocent IV on May 15, 1252, is
described as
: a
carefully considered and elaborate law...to establish
machinery for systematic persecution as an integral part of the social edifice
in every city and every state
Each ruler or magistrate thereby
became the extension of the Church itself, and could apply bans, imprisonment,
property confiscation or outright punishment to those deemed heretics and do it
in the name of
the Holy Inquisition. In this way, a civil metastasis of
the physical evil embodied in the Inquisition could be spread far and wide.
Ad extirpanda ensured that the
vicious violence perpetrated under the guise of protecting dogmatic or
doctrinal purity was applied to a vastly larger population than it otherwise
might have been. Because of its violent extent, especially in relation to
seizure of property, it's estimated that by the middle -1300s half the
population of then western civilization had been subjected to it, an unheard of
proportion.
By comparison, the most
recent outbreak of mega-magnitude violence was World War II in which some 73 million are
estimated to have been slain, either in direct combat, or in brutal purges and mass
exterminations such as the Nazis perpetrated in their concentration camps,
including at Mauthausen, Treblinka and Auschwitz.
Even so, 73 million dead would not even comprise 10% of then populated western
civilization, say ca. 1944-45. Meanwhile, the proportion butchered or with
property seized by the Vatican’s
Inquisition represented a far greater proportion than 10% of the then human
population.
Thus, although modern era evil and
violence appears more extensive and vile, it really isn't. It's a trick of our
perception and historical selection bias. Pinker himself argues that "murder
rates in England peaked in
1300 and in New England in the late 17th
century. Afterwards, both fell dramatically."
Pinker also accurately notes that in
the modern era (from late 19th century through today) wars rather than tribal -
religious wars or crimes, accounted for the lion's share of violence, and hence
evil. But even given greater numbers killed in such conflicts, this form of mega-violence has been in marked decline for the past two
decades. And while we may see genocides in these conflicts, such as in Rwanda in 1994,
they pale beside the disproportionate genocides conducted by ancient Israelite
Tribalists. These were all.in the name of Yahweh, i.e. against the Canaanites, if
Genesis is to be believed. Indeed, if those accounts are true, it means some
500 -1000 times more humans were wiped out (as a proportion of then
population), never mind the justification for it.
In this sense, Pinker's
excellent graphs tell a lot of the story. For example, as expected. World Wars
I and II show highly peaked points, then there's a bumpy but consistent trailing
off following World War II. In terms of statistical frequency, the twentieth
century naturally stands out for the sheer scale of the destruction of human
life, including via atomic bombs, gas chambers and other devices.
However, when one
normalizes the graphs to the actual populations present in the key eras, one
finds that the past was actually far more vicious as well as the violent deaths -
including being carved open by an Inquisitor with entrails removed and fed to
the fires - much more common than the vile acts in 20th century or even the present (including mass shootings, terror attacks and beheadings). Is dying by
Zyklon B in a Nazi gas chamber worse than an inquisitor using his knife and
pliers to extract your intestines while you're awake and cook them in front of
you? I'm not sure I even want to go there. But the fact is, by proportion of
the respective populations, many more humans were dispatched in the latter mode
than the former.
Pinker also expatiates on the neuro-plasticity
of the human brain and its ability to change in response to experience. He
implies from this that people are less likely to resort to violence in their
daily lives than their forbears, and that other behavioral changes and
strategies work better. Of course, this assumes all factors are equal and they
may not be. For example, verbal violence using computers (say on social network
sites) now often takes the place of physical violence. However, the
consequences can be just as terrible with the victims taking their own lives.
Is this a retrenchment of evil? I would argue, no, only casting the evil in a
different guise.
Then
again, there’s no assurance any current epoch for relatively less evil will
continue. As a case in point there is the catastrophic approach of Peak Oil.
Indeed, one issue of
MONEY magazine
actually warned
that “
global
oil supplies are near or past their peak, while demand for energy product
shows no signs of abating”.
Even before the MONEY article
appeared, warnings have been repeatedly sounded though one wonders how many
have paid attention. For example, Peter Tertzakian
has used a somewhat different term –
the break point- to describe an
analogous phenomenon for which oil prices continue to rise as more efficient
forms of oil (e.g.
light sweet crude) continue to go down, forcing deep
sea drilling, access to tar sands oil and oil shale fracking.
T.
Boone Pickens, one of the most famous oilmen and the ultimate pragmatist, has asserted
that
:
“
We’re now
at the point where demand for oil is 87 billion barrels a day, while only 85
billion can be produced.”
This is acknowledging Peak Oil by any other
name. The Financial Times article further noted that the world’s premier energy
monitor was “
preparing a sharp downward revision of its oil supply forecasts”.
The full formal report pointed to “
global oil supplies plateauing even as
demand continues.”
The article also noted
that a
growing number of
people in the industry “are endorsing a version of the ‘peak oil’ theory: that oil production will plateau in coming years, as
suppliers fail to replace depleted fields with enough fresh ones to boost
overall output.”
The drastic consequences of energy
supply and infrastructure collapse in the face of exponentiating demand have been well described.
The data show a disturbing gap by 2009 of nearly 2.1% between the total energy
actually produced from around the world, and that consumed
.
Much of this can be traced to the inability of fossil fuel production to keep
up with population growth and energy demand
.
Many experts, indeed, are convinced Peak Oil occurred in 2005.
Why the concern? Because we will
face perhaps the most intensive external agent driving masses toward human evil
in our history. Many may not buy this so we perhaps need to delve deeper and one can cite
Richard Heinberg who has laid the case out in crystal
clarity by using the primary quantifier of EROEI or energy return on energy
invested.
Oil in the U.S. used to have an EROEI as high
as 18 fifty years ago. It only took one barrel of oil
to extract eighteen barrels of oil. This was such a fantastic ratio that oil
was practically free
energy. But the latest data show this fallen to around 9 is still falling, a sure sign we are in energy
trouble, since the minimum EROEI required for the basic functions of an
industrial society is in the 5-9 range.
More
critical is the food component of oil that's hardly mentioned except by the
inner circle cognoscenti. To be blunt, oil = food given that it provides the
primary bulk of fertilizer to support the green revolution or what's left of it. Take away the oil
fertilizers, not to mention the petrol to run farm machinery, and famine
follows on a mass, global multi -billions level scale.
In his essay Thoughts on Long-Term Energy Supplies:
Scientists and the Silent Lie, physicist Albert Bartlett pinpoints the
failure to name human population growth as a major cause of our energy and
resource problems.
Bartlett avers that scientists display a
general reticence to speak out on this issue which stems from the fact that it
is politically incorrect to argue for stabilization of population, at least in
the U.S.
To
put the numbers in more stark relief, Bartlett,
in a follow-up extended letter in Physics Today, noted that in the 1970s there
were about 2.2 liters per person per day of oil. Of this, one could
estimate that just over half or nearly 1.3 liters went to food production,
processing, preparation or distribution. This was in a world with nearly 2.7
billion fewer people! Today, we are down to a production level of barely 1.6
liters per person per day while the consumption level approaches 4
liters per person per day. After Peak Oil, the latter will continue to
increase, while the former will diminish by about 2-3 percent per year.
It doesn’t take a math genius to ascertain that this
is a recipe for catastrophic crash of the human population!
Obviously, if the food supply is
inadequate, we can expect violence will become commonplace as each person
fights for whatever energy resources are available. The gist of it is that as the oil to support
our energy-intense civilization ebbs, it will become harder to obtain water,
affordable food as well as other amenities now deemed basic for living a
civilized life. Power availability, say merely to stay cool in a scorching
greenhouse world, will be scarce. Since power is also needed to preserve
foodstuffs, and run furnaces or air conditioning the catastrophe isn’t
difficult to decipher.
When the
old energy order finally breaks down, with power grids kaput because of
excessive demand during global warming heat spells, and food in too short
supply, it will literally be every man for himself. In such a brutish world, it’s
difficult to imagine brain neuroplasticity saving the day or spontaneously
encouraging any better angels of our nature. The available useful energy will
be too low to do such! More than likely, as the final food stores vanish, most
of that brain neuroplasticity will be needed to mount defenses against
marauding gangs, anarchists, cannibals and assorted other two-legged predators.
One must conclude then that
given the cumulative harrowing facts and statistics, Pinker’s concept of
diminishing evil being permanent or sustained is more a pipedream than a credible aspect for modern human affairs. The most generous take for Pinker’s thesis is that he
managed to capture a fraction of a cycle of human history within which violence
did retreat from earlier epochs. However, he didn’t factor in the energy
parameters far enough into the future to see that ultimately human
civilization, predicated on moral order can't be sustained without resources.
Steve Mason (
op. cit.) portrays more modern concerns in the realm of inflated worries. He insists he's "not some Pollyanna nitwit bent on banning the death penalty and passing the chicken soup" but he does then appear to dismiss global warming as any real or abiding concern by naming it explicitly after writing "human beings perceive as threats the silliest things". Well, hate to break it to him, but global warming is not about some tiny little elevation of one's discomfort zone, it's about real, life threatening upheaval, e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/06/separating-real-threats-to-human.html
Hence, people's concerns about this threat are not simply misplaced, or inflated, and one can argue such concern drives activism and practical response.
It is thus well to "ease the minds of the masses" as he proclaims his objective to be, but not to have them blinded to real threats, or dismissing them as idle ones. Mason also jumps a bit too rapidly into the claim that "
famines and plagues are a thing of the past". Not really! They are only in hiatus. When our population exceeds the critical threshold that the narrow margin for resource support provides, we will again see plagues and massive famines. It is as certain as the Sun rising tomorrow morning.
Mason's take on the "pesticide threat" is also dismissive, despite the fact there's now good evidence that the death of one third of all honeybee colonies can plausibly be traced to a form of pesticide from a family called
neonicotinoids—“neonics” for short—developed a decade or so ago to replace organophosphates and carbamates, which are also highly toxic but dissipate far more quickly. In case anyone forgot, the humble honeybee is responsible for the pollination of nearly half our food crops.
Mason writes: "I suppose the American Cancer Society can supply figures to support significant increases in cancer deaths" - but he shouldn't expect that given the ACS is part of the problem! See e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/02/cancer-industial-complex-biggest.html
As noted therein, citing research from Breast Cancer Action:
"
The Cancer industry consists of corporations, organizations, and agencies that diminish or mask the extent of the cancer problem, fail to protect our health or divert attention away from finding the causes of breast cancer...this includes drug companies that, in addition to profiting from cancer treatment drugs, also produce toxic chemicals that may be contributing to the high rates of cancer in this country and increasing rates throughout the world. It also includes the polluting industries that continue to release substances we know or suspect are dangerous to our health, and the public relations firms and public agencies who protect these polluters.
The Cancer industry includes organizations like the ACS that downplay the risk of cancer from pesticides and other environmental factors and which have historically refused to take a stand on environmental regulation".
Mason does aver:
"
I'm not saying that we're out of the woods for good, that a stray comet's not headed our way, but for the time being at least, why not relax and enjoy?"
Well, because too many parameters for species survival criticality don't allow it! Hence, one must resist the temptation to dismiss pessimistic emotions as pathological. This is a point also reinforced by Barbara Ehrenreich in her book: '
Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America', Her book is worth it just to see the skewering of Stephen Covey's "
Who Moved My Cheese?" crap in Chapter 4 and doing pretty much the same with Martin Seligman's "
Authentic Happiness" poppycock in Chapter 6.
Seligman tries to make us believe that pessimism can have only adverse effects on one's thinking - but in fact, as Chris Hedges shows ('Empire of Illusion') pessimism can be a useful ally and antidote to the manifestly unreal and BS culture we inhabit - where most citizens' brains have already been colonized by "smiley face" bunkum and PR piffle. (Explaining why too many no longer know their own history.) This leaves them more likely to be relentlessly exploited by capitalist elites and political predators: purchasing crap goods and services from the first, and buying empty promises from the second. None of which is consequence free.
In my book, 'Atheism: A Beginner's Handbook' I tried to explain in the last chapter why Americans were almost universally distrustful of atheists (ranking them below Islamic terrorists and homosexuals in terms of respect). I wrote that:
"Two factors drive this: 1) a brain architecture that favors an optimism dynamic and “hope” even when reality testifies to the contrary, and 2) a pernicious culture of “positivity” that reinforces this brain defect, recently highlighted by Barbara Ehrenreich."
Ehrenreich noted that American mass culture is saturated by a saccharine “cult of positivity,” with children brainwashed from an early age that they can do anything, and adults brainwashed to believe if they just work hard and long enough they’ll become super millionaires like Donald Trump. That no one has slain the insipid “Horatio Alger” myth up to now is really a testament to America’s individualist hubris and false optimism.
