Mankind is a species which has doomed itself because of its own intelligence, yet there are myriad people, in fact the largesse of the population, which fail, or are unwilling, to accept or believe this. Why I bring this up is because of a rather intense discussion between myself and my mother recently. Without going into too much detail, she basically criticised my apparent ‘cynical and fatalistic’ outlook upon life. Anyone who has read my posts will probably reckon with this. My Mom, a Buddhist so staunch Virgin Mary statues weep on instinct when she passes them, is still beholden to the human spirit, i.e she has faith that humans have something profound which elevates them above all other species, giving them control over their lives and ultimately the fate of the entire populace, evidenced by the fact that we have created for ourselves concepts such as religion, technology and wisdom: stuff we perceive makes us superior to all.

It apparently pains my Mom whenever I scoff at notions of the human spirit. To her, it is what brings about the tenacity to pull through times of great trouble, and basically what gives us ‘strength of mind’. This belief in our incomprehensible power is the mainstay of most of the eastern religions, and the overriding idea behind humanity’s drive to become absolutely superior beings. It’s the basis behind the ‘feel-good factor’ one gets from watching plucky-underdog-triumphs-against-incredible-odds movies. What I take issue with however is, why are we so arrogant as to believe we are the only ones capable of perpetuating a ‘spirit beyond our spirit’?

Why do we have the temerity to think that we are so superior? I’ll tell you why, because quite simply, man can make hummus. It’s as simple as that. Man can make hummus. Fuck, man can make pretty bloody well everything, and that’s the point. Humans have a superior comprehension intelligence brought about by the superior size of their brains, okay, fair enough. We have for thousands of years harnessed this intelligence to better our lives by making things. As a species we basically moved a step up beyond the chimpanzee era whereby we stopped sticking sticks into termite mounds and instead began piecing many different components together to create more complex implements. Everything we have created so far is a manipulation of hundreds of complex implements, themselves manipulations of even more simpler implements, to create an endpoint which suits our liking. Now Man has, and likely will, create anything and everything within the bounds of her/is comprehension. Hummus is just one example; doors, bicycles, roof tiles, tissue paper, glass panelling, maths theorems, Humvees, hard disks, fridge magnets, Levi’s jeans, shortwave detection satellites, humanity will make anything it godamn pleases, purely because it can, and it is this capability above anything and everything else that has made us arrogant.

Every thing, before it is made real or otherwise physically apparent, starts off as a concept. We operate on the basis that we can make concepts out of logic, and this ability allows us to create things and intelligence-wise, to be a par above everything else living on this planet thus far. The definition of intelligence then, is basically our ability to conceptualise on a complex level, and more often than not realise those concepts, or at least, as in the case of abstract concepts like political systems and religion, bring them to a near-perfect state of logic ostensibly comprehensible by all, and this is where man’s biggest failing lies. Our intelligence, our stuff, has blinded us to the fact that we are still essentially animals, governed by the same rules, dictates, and systems of nature. You have to be pretty blunt to have not realised this has fallen far out of our reckoning for centuries. Religions have always preached against it, Man has always been too ready to believe it, and all the while H/She has gone on to blur the line between himself and other species by creating ever more things.

We’ve reached the point whereby we’ve stopped fulfilling the things we need and are now [have been for centuries, really] fulfilling desires for things we want, unnecessary products borne out of our supreme level of consumerism. We are the only species that ‘needs’ another atomic bomb, or a handphone with a camera in the flip joint. We have now filled our lives, right down to the level of every individual, with hallmarks of our decadence. We have essentially created a Matrix world, one filled with everything we wish to imagine is real, an emporium of our creativity, a showcase of our industriousness, a world we revel in as we come to terms with our own stupefyingly superior capabilities of thought. The arrogance we have as a result of this false sense of self has degenerated into a cool disregard for the nature we forgot we were a part of, which is why it shocks our sensibilities every time a hundred thousand people die in a hurricane, yet it isn’t beyond our principles to move right back into the disaster zone in the aftermath in order to face the same rigmarole again next week. Why not? We could always rebuild, you know, MAKE MORE THINGS. Who cares that we are essentially missing the point about our own stupidity, or that we are destroying the very environment we live in as a result of our actions?

We are now at the point whereby the candy-pop la-la-land we’ve created is now pushing the real world, the environment, away and aside; we somehow forgot we were supposed to share this planet with everything else. It’s become such that every step we take can’t be taken without causing some harm to the world around us. Sure we can still create everything we want and need, but with what? Artificially-generated materials aside, we claim everything we need first-hand from nature. Under the guise of being ‘environmentally conscious’ (read we’re feeling pretty fucking guilty) we’re now apparently taking steps to put back what we took, replanting trees etc., not realising that no matter what we do now, it’ll always result in a net loss for the rest of the environment. Our consumerism has resulted in a plague of humans which has thrown the entire balance of the planet off. You need only see the average Malaysian at a hotel buffet to see what I mean. We are the only species that takes more than what we need at any one time, gone is the squirrel-reckoning we probably once had, of taking and storing only what is needed and leaving the remainder to whoever else might need or want it.

We’re so out of touch with the concept of natural balance we’ve now reached the stage where we have to fight amongst ourselves for natural resources. That’s always been a hallmark of the modern man; we won’t take what we need, we won’t even take what we want, we’ll take GODAMN EVERYTHING. We’ve already proven we’re not the only species that wilfully goes to war with others of the same kind [another one of those traits we don’t want to realise we share with the animals], but it’s not the fact that we’re fighting, but what we’re fighting for that’s absurd. We fight over oil, we fight over the land that might have the oil, we fight for every scrap of woodland, marshland, island or wasteland available; we’re actually fighting for our insatiable need to consume everything on this planet. Everything we do now at this point is borne out of a battle to consume resources; we don’t even know why we consume the way we do, we just want to do it. Every step we take to mitigate our actions, however sincere, is nothing more than a facetiously lame attempt to stymie the relentless assault we perpetuate upon our environment.

Mom tells me not to be cynical about humans. I proceed to observe: from where are you telling me this? From the inside of a luxury four-seater sedan car, a veritable gas-guzzler which takes fuel at a hundred bob a pop, on a drive home from Singapore, combusting five hours worth of said fuel, on a bitumen road, flanked by plantations, all of which cut through tracts of rainforest disrupting the biodiversity, displacing the wildlife and creating soil erosion, a winding stretching pathway leading to and from two cities the size of countries, where immeasurable sources of pollution converge. The car is padded with artificial leather, the production of which requires the synthesising of numerous plastics and polymers which will never biodegrade and will fill up the landfills and dumps long after we cease to exist. If an intelligent being left Alpha Centauri now for Earth, it can expect to trip on a plastic bag as soon as it gets here. We eat food generated by factories, farms or harvests direct from nature, all with their innumerable impacts upon the environment, cooked by restaurants which flush their waste into drains and tributaries, stay in houses or hotels which consume gigawatts of electricity powered by generators that consume tons of fuel creating even more waste gas to be pumped into the atmosphere; how can I afford not to be cynical?

I will inevitably be derided for being an armchair critic, spouting pointless vitriol without the sensibility to get off my fat arse (my arse is not fat) to do something about it. What these people will not realise is, returning to my original point, humanity has doomed itself and will continue to doom itself with every course of action taken. The progress along this trajectory has passed the point of no return; mankind is doomed simply because H/She exists. My advice to the rest of the world? Go out there, enjoy what there is to enjoy. Screw prevention, the only thing we can do now is minimise our negative effect upon the planet, so enjoy it limitedly, but let’s stop bullshitting ourselves about our so-called responsibilities for the planet. As far as we’re concerned, we’re just another species on this lonely lump of rock in this corner of the universe. We are small, we are insignificant beings. We have about as much responsibility for the state of the planet as all the other things on this planet. The only responsibility we have now, what with our ‘intelligence’, is fucking it up, soon nature will take its course and obliterate our species the same way most everything that’s ever lived on this planet has been. To quote George Carlin, “the planet is fine, the people are fucked”. Let’s stop thinking we’re above all that.