Celebrating the Things that All Humankind Share
It’s the birthday of anthropologist Louis Leakey. From the Writer’s Almanac:
In 1948, Leakey and his wife found one of the earliest fossil ape skulls ever discovered; it was between 25 and 40 million years old. It is now believed to be the skull of the ancestor of all large primates, including humans. Then, in 1959, they turned up another hominid skull, which was 1.75 million years old. It was the oldest skull of a close human relative ever found at that point, and it helped persuade other anthropologists that Africa was indeed the place where human beings had evolved.
It’s a shame that our daily lives contain only occasional reminders of our common humanity and its many profound implications, e.g., our rights as people and our duties to treat one another justly and kindly. And now the consequences of getting this wrong are irreparable, as suggested by yesterday’s 70th anniversary of the nuclear explosion over Hiroshima. Note: according to Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Nuclear Notebook 2014, the total number of nuclear weapons is estimated at 10,144.
It’s a good thing there are no hateful bullies running for U.S. president in 2016. Oooops, strike that.
There are those who are in favor of applying the Law of the Jungle to human society, forgetting that such savagery is exactly what we long ago left behind in favor of cooperation and sharing (otherwise known as civilization).
Dave Johnson, of Campaign for America’s Future, wrote recently:
“We, the People built our democracy, and the empowerment and protections it bestows. We built the infrastructure, schools and all of the public structures, laws, courts, monetary system, etc. that enable enterprise to prosper.
“That prosperity is the bounty of our democracy and by contract it is supposed to be shared and reinvested. That is the contract. Our system enables some people to become wealthy but all of us are supposed to benefit from this system. Why else would We, the People have set up this system, if not for the benefit of We, the People?”
“We invest in infrastructure and public structures that create the conditions for enterprise to form and prosper. We prepare the ground for business to thrive. When enterprise prospers we share the bounty, with good wages and benefits for the people who work in the businesses and taxes that provide for the general welfare and for reinvestment in the infrastructure and public structures that keep the system going.
“We fought hard to develop this system and it worked for us. We, the People fought and built our government to empower and protect us providing social services for the general welfare. We, through our government built up infrastructure and public structures like courts, laws, schools, roads, bridges. That investment creates the conditions that enable commerce to prosper – the bounty of democracy. In return we ask those who benefit most from the enterprise we enabled to share the return on our investment with all of us – through good wages, benefits and taxes.”
“Since the Reagan Revolution – with its tax cuts for the rich, its anti-government policies, and its deregulation of the big corporations – our democracy is increasingly defunded (and that was the plan), infrastructure is crumbling, our schools are falling behind, factories and supply chains are being dismantled, those still at work are working longer hours for fewer benefits and falling wages, our pensions are gone, wealth and income are increasing concentrating at the very top, our country is declining.
“This is the Reagan Revolution home to roost: the social contract is broken. Instead of providing good wages and benefits and paying taxes to provide for the general welfare and reinvestment in infrastructure and public structures, the bounty of our democracy is being diverted to a wealthy few.”
At the risk of being labeled a “conspiracy theorist,” allow me to point out (as was firmly recognized by Teddy Roosevelt, Adam Smith, and many other notables across human history) that “capital organizes.”
The wealthy interests at the “top” of our society – and who exert massive and undue influence in all areas of human endeavor – have no interest in a critically thinking and imaginative population over which to rule. Instead they encourage ignorance and demand obedience and conformity.
This is why the regular consumers of Fox News are shown not only to be more ignorant and misled on a whole range of issues, but actually grow more ignorant and misled over time with increased exposure. This well-researched and demonstrated fact puts me in mind of a quote by Samuel Foote, a British actor and dramatist of the mid 1700’s, “He is not only dull himself, but the cause of dullness in others.”
Rupert Murdoch and others like him are not interested in providing a public service to circulate crucial and valuable truths. They are instead intent on luring humanity into a snare of illusion and deceit, to preserve and expand their own political power and their own personal financial gain.
American society, in particular, labors under many severe misapprehensions. Chief among these, in practical terms, is that we are and have always been a democratic republic, yet our founders only appealed to the myth that all men are created equal while, at the same time, enshrining slavery and granting suffrage only to white male landowners. Also, that capitalism and democracy are compatible or complementary (they are even mythologized as being one and the same).
In reality, capitalism has – by design – always favored those with great wealth, and it operates according to predatory principles by which cooperation for mutual benefit applies only to trusts and cartels as convenience dictates. Greed must be shackled, harnessed, and directed, before it will work for the greater good of nations.
Another important delusion is that self-interest and competition are the instrumental forces behind human progress. Yet our history shows that humankind emerged from the savagery of an animal existence by sharing and cooperating, not through greed and conflict.
How does this apply to renewables? The controlling interests in our society have not yet decided it is to their private advantage to shift from filthy ancient sunlight to the clean modern stuff. The immensely profitable fossil energy industry is subsidized – according to a recent presidential speech – to the tune of $4 billion annually… that’s pretty rich music.
However beneficial renewables will be to our United States and health and well-being for ourselves and our progeny, there is a substantial transition cost for all those firms that continue to regard these resources as competition. Their formidable lobbying power ensures that the feeble attempts to subsidize renewables will continue to be sporadic, unpredictable and anemic. We may also expect the campaign of misinformation, concealment, and discredit to endure long past the tipping point.
If we want to escape indentured servitude and act with true liberty, we will find instruction in the words of a man who accomplished those feats in great measure, Frederick Douglass:
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to, and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
Exxon-Mobil and its ilk are quite well organized, and not for altruistic public benefit. If we logical, critically thinking and imaginative humans want to see our national security and political sovereignty preserved, and if we want to defend ourselves and our posterity against the lethal ravages that fossil fuels inflict upon the biosphere and the economy, we had best get organized.
For our immediately crucial transition away from prehistoric carbon fuel, nuke tech is not a viable option. Thorium reactors are a pretty concept, but they don’t yet exist in the real world. All the genuinely planned projects and currently operating commercial facilities are nuclear old-style fission energy technology. That old and persisting form of nuclear power is prohibitively expensive when all the costs are accounted for – mining, refining, construction, insuring, waste containment, facility lifespan, decommissioning – and, given natural disasters, human error and sabotage/terrorism potential, it’s clearly proven to be inherently dangerous to the biosphere just to operate.
Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) is safe, clean, proven technology, and modern energy storage systems make it viable. Harvesting modern sunshine is much cleaner and safer (and cheaper in the long run) than sucking and digging up filthy prehistoric sunshine, dragging it dangerously all over the planet, burning it up, and pouring 32 billion metric tons of CO2 yearly into the modern sky. Only bribery keeps that toxic filth marketable.
You write: “Only bribery keeps that toxic filth marketable.” Exactly right. The good news is that this is coming to an end. Not bribery, unfortunately, but fossil fuels generally, as they are effectively priced out of the market.
From the article:
“There are those who are in favor of applying the Law of the Jungle to human society, forgetting that such savagery is exactly what we long ago left behind in favor of cooperation and sharing (otherwise known as civilization).”
Have we actually left savagery behind?
Your point is well-taken, freggersjr, in that much of the worst of human activity utterly lacks even the dignity of beasts.
However – as I’m sure you well realize – I’m referring to rather a higher calling… that of what Lincoln termed, “the better angels of our nature.” We may be our own worst predator, but the majority of us don’t support that predation as a philosophy, political or otherwise.
IT is encouraging that capitalism may finally lead to a more just planet because Solar Energy is free, and therefore more economic.