Wonderfully successful, yes, but let's think again

A few days ago I wrote what I thought might make a column for the Shepparton News (it still might), but then thought it had some relevance to the ideas behind Beneath the Wisteria.

-       Robert McLean.  

Man has misinterpreted its purpose. Or has it?

Professor Mark Pagel.

We are, despite our grandiose imaginings, simple another of earth’s many species (we have identified about two million, but there could be many more), and our prime task is to do nothing more than pro-create.

And that is something we have done especially well to become the pre-eminent life form on earth, to the absolute exclusion of many other species.

Measured from that perspective we have been brilliantly successful; so successful in fact that we could be on track for the sixth major extinction of life on earth,

Considered in a geological time sense, man’s time on the planet is miniscule and of no consequence to a planet which had its 13^th billionth birthday “just recently”.

Man, in one form or another, has padded about the planet for maybe 200 000 thousand years and it was not until the emergence of homo-sapiens (“wise man”) about 50 000 years ago that our real journey to today began.

Head of the Evolution Laboratory at the University of Reading in England, Professor Mark Pagel, says that with its understanding of culture, cooperation and community, homo-sapiens had the ability to explore and live in every geographical area on the planet.

Pagel told the Royal Society for the Arts about a duality of our moral nature that gives us the capacity for love, acts of generosity and cooperation as well as acts of extreme violence and cruelty.

Despite that dichotomy of values and morals, man has grown to fulfil its fundamental reason and we now have more than seven billion of us scrabbling for space and resources.

Beyond a true cataclysmic event that will disturb and maybe end all life on earth, some people will live through the next extinction as humans are remarkably resilient.

The arrival at maturity, a seemingly impossible step as we are really little more than babes, is an urgently needed ingredient bringing with it the understanding that our purpose is not to simply pro-create and accumulate, rather it is to build a beautiful life.

Arthur Caldwell.

How? We detach ourselves from the neoliberal paradigm that sees the success of civilization indebted to the dollar; agree consensually to slow the exponential growth in human numbers; reduce our attention to the modern conception of work; invest the free time that allows into building stronger, friendlier and more resilient communities.

Our purpose, obviously, is to pro-create, not only to survive and not from the narrow conception of what is advantageous to our genes, but to build a beautiful life remote from the rigours of what exists.

In the 1940s Arthur Calwell argued Australia needed to populate or perish – it seems the world took his advice; we have populated and now it seems we will perish.