We are all animals living in an alien zoo, where they run social experiments for fun. Like installing the biggest idiot as the leader of the most powerful country in the world. And then they watch us like some reality TV show. It’s really surreal what is happening in the world that it must be true.
You might enjoy Dan Carlin’s book The End Is Always Near. It puts everything in perspective for me - we are not experiencing a weird amount of disaster and failure, this is basically what we’re like. Get used to it.
IMO this is generally true, but not always. You look at the States, roughly mid-30’s to mid-70’s, and it really was a period of greatness for most folks, from top to bottom. (altho not so much for various minorities, which is a real mark of shame for the first modern democracy)
Anyway yeah, the “aliens” in question are simply us, doing all this to ourselves and the very home that birthed us dangerous, naked apes.
Just because I’m currently reading “Sapiens,” consider that we sprang up out of E. Africa ~70K yrs ago, and ~20K yrs later shared the planet with FIVE other human species. A mere ~20K yrs later, we and whatever other natural forces had eradicated all the others (including our closest relatives, Neanderthals). In terms of a ‘murder mystery,’ it doesn’t look all that great of a case for our innocence, haha. 😑
We’re a nightmare for hominids and most species in general. Living on a knifes edge since primeval times. Now we’re cooking our planet and the worst people ever have nukes, so yeah.
We’re closer to a self inflicted doom than ever, but it’s hardly a new direction. Always on the brink of self destruction, but the only thing we can’t kill so far is ourselves. We’re everything Gwar laughed about being, but less honest.
I’m not really sure about that part. No doubt we’ve been self-warring for ages, but as long as there was new territory to expand in to, with new resources to be plundered and used, I doubt there was any real risk of a species self-destruction.
Really, I think it’s more like a problem of: 1) spreading across almost any place inhabitable across the planet, 2) laying claim to and using up all available resources in such demesne, polluting willy-nilly, and most especially 3) thinking that “the industrial age” (combined with capitalism) was some kind of genius formula for making sapiens ‘better than ever.’ Creating a global, vastly-overpopulated sapiens powder keg, if you will.
OTOH, when you look at a continent like N. America-- if the natives hadn’t been fucked with over & over again by Euro colonists, I would guess they could have gone on for many tens of thousands of years just like they did, living perfectly authentic, interesting, meaningful lives without all the ‘advancement of technology’ shizzle.
Cue Jon Belushi exclamation…
I didn’t read Sapiens, but if this book claim that homo sapiens is responsible for the disappearing of Neanderthals, you can close it. This idea was disproven by research long ago: when sapiens arrived in Europe, Neanderthals were already on the verge of disappearing.
Eh, I’m not sure it was DECISIVELY DISPROVEN. Because in science, we start with the idea that “we just don’t know,” then proceed carefully from there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_extinction
Of course science evolves, but that shouldn’t be a reason for a vulgarization book to teach something else than the scientific consensus of the time.