Collective Truama: The Fallout 23

We are, physically, a very weak animal for our size, one of the weakest. Our vision and hearing are below that of many other mammals, our sense of smell even worse. We are physically not very strong. We cannot run very fast and our endurance isn't what it could be if we want to survive in the wild. Our teeth are weak and best suited for fruits and tender vegetables, only for meat that is cooked (the discovery of fire was the great game-changer of our hominid ancestors!) Physically, we are adapted only to living in warm or subtropical, or warm-temperate climates, which is to say that our species should never have strayed north of southern Spain, Italy or Greece, or on the North American Continent, north of Florida or California, nor south of Uruguay. We cannot endure any kind of winter that involves frost unless we are adequately clothed, and to be a mammal in the strictest sense should not require acquired clothing outside of whatever coat of fur or blubber that nature has already bestowed on us. Which is to say that most of the North American and the Eurasian continents would never have known human habitation, were it not for our very superior human intelligence that gave us fire, weapons and the ability to make clothing for ourselves. And we cannot live in anything colder without artificial heating, usually from wood or fossil fuels. Also our young, they are born helpless and are only able to walk upright after their first year, and for another twenty years, more or less, remain dependent upon their parents. The female of the human species gets a particularly raw deal. Since are big brains necessitate big heads to fit them in, childbirth is particularly painful. The prolonged dependence and vulnerability of the human infant makes it even more difficult for their mothers who have traditionally had the primary care of their offspring's wellbeing and survival. Adding insult to injury the human female has her menstrual cycles to have to contend with, increasing her vulnerability. And men have seldom been much help here, or anywhere else, either. We are, in a word, pathetic. But for one thing: our enormous, overdeveloped brains. We are also vastly the most intelligent species, at least that's what our own very human conceit would have us believe. This intelligence has given us a considerable edge over other species, enabling us to carve out not only a niche that is uniquely human, but to claim and exploit the entire planet as our own, at cost of other species, and at cost of our own very existence as we continue to despoil Mother Earth. So, we have superior intelligence and overweening hubris, along with physical weakness and fragility. This makes us rather an interesting and irritating paradox. And what an insult this must be to other species, that such a frail piece of work as humans should get the edge on the biosphere. I sometimes try to think of adults as what they might have been like as babies: tiny, vulnerable, helpless, sweet, not able to do much outside of cry, poop and eat. How sad it often is the way we develop into adults: selfish, conceited, violent, ambitious and arrogant little liars, some of us. Others, perhaps kinder, more compassionate. Some gifted intellectually, spiritually and artistically. Some with extreme physical prowess for athletics and combat. But in each one, regardless of how far we've gone in our adult ways, there always remains that shadow of the cradle, that helpless little baby who can only cry when she needs something, and quietly coo when all his needs have been met. What is it going to take to make us less destructive, less selfish and less violent? What is going to transform us into beings that love one another, care for the planet and respect other life forms? We are so far away from what we need to become if we want to save ourselves from the coming destruction. And we don't need to be.