You may have heard the slogan “America first”. No different from how Europe, China, or Russia defend their turf. Forget the political realm of presidential grandstanding that slogan came from. The mere expression and its widespread appeal reveal a state of humanity little evolved from a battle between two groups of great apes. We have not evolved much intellectually.
Except some of us have.
The study of nature, supported by the evidence of cosmic microwave background radiation, has revealed the Big Bang started our universe 13.72 billion years ago in a moment faster than the speed of light. Our galaxy is one of 100 billion galaxies, each with 400 billion stars like our sun. Those suns are surrounded by many planet varieties like Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, etc. In one of those galaxies, we call the Milky Way, we live on a tiny pale blue dot, to use the words of the late Carl Sagan. A planet insignificant in scope, impact, and size compared to other objects in our magnificent universe. We are clearly not the center of the universe.
Over 4.6 billion years, the existence of rich flora and fauna, way before humans entered the fray, further diminishes the importance of humanity to nature. Ninety percent of the biomass on earth is non-human, with plants, bacteria, viruses, and fungi taking the crown. The human body is a walking petri-dish, a mere vessel, for microorganisms outnumbering human cells ten to one. Those microorganisms eat us alive, at a pace inversely proportionate to the resistance offered by our health. In truth, microorganisms, not humans, are at the top of the food chain.
Human existence resembles the thickness of a fingernail compared to the length of Planet Earth’s arm. Our presence is a minuscule bump in the road of planetary development estimated to last another 3.5 billion years. Ninety-nine percent of the species ever existed on earth have already gone extinct. We are next if we do not use our intelligence, in the words of Jamaican Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) made famous by the Redemption Song of reggae icon Bob Marley, to “emancipate ourselves from mental slavery”, and untie ourselves from ancient beliefs and misguided solipsism.
The misguided beliefs humanity has invented and popularized over two hundred years damage our efficacy. To date, none of the constructs we make ourselves adhere to are compatible with nature’s first-principles. What could possibly go wrong when the efficacy of humanity is determined by nature yet the way we manage ourselves does not?
We have yet to define a human theory, that in the words of Albert Einstein, determines what can be discovered. So much for the smartest animal ever lived.
Currently, humanity deploys laissez-faire freedom without paradoxical rules, spawning a rat race of personal vile-maxims gravely damaging our collective interests. We rely on democracy, falsely pre-supposing human wants equal human needs. We deploy a study of hindsight, economics, expecting it to yield foresight to break the norm. We invent sustainability strategies incompatible with the decline of available energy, called nature’s entropy. We have expectations of outcome from “systems” that are not systems at all. I can go on. Humanity is in love with a gameplan fundamentally incompatible with nature’s gameplan.
We must reorganize ourselves, not to what we have done but to what we need to do to understand and submit to the rule of nature defining human excellence and longevity. Not what we want but what we need should dictate the way we build the best great ape theory, systems, and rules humanity can muster to renew and improve itself. We must begin to play nature’s game that dictates the excellence of human renewal. Gameplay we are prepared to present to you.
Hence the slogan “America first” must not just be upgraded to “Humanity first”, but to “Nature first”, a process that urges humanity to become our best and infinite proxy of an obedient close second.
