Humans have succumbed to a life-threatening mental disease to believe we are at the center of the universe. A point first conveyed by two-thousand-year-old religions putting humans at the center of the universe. Those beliefs, supported by hundreds of manmade gods, outright discarded the need for a dynamic equilibrium with the flora and fauna we depend on. We did not know much about our world or universe to easily fall into the trap of the prophecy and commandments regurgitated by self-appointed popes, priests, pastors, and reverends out to make a buck.
This is the crazy world we live in: all the advances and understanding are used only to continue the nonsense which has existed for 2,000 years.
RICHARD FEYNMAN (1918-1988)
In more modern times and as arguably the most intelligent species on earth, we continued such mind-numbing solipsism with new manmade religions spreading like wildfire across the globe. We invented economic religions, this time purveyed by another breed of human gods. We bowed down to the newfound priests of economic dogmas who assumed the sum of human wants best served human needs. Another foolish presumption, considering the needs of humanity are subject to the rule of nature, not the rule of man.
Today, as pursued by the arbitrage of our practices of policy, capital, and innovation, human gameplay is fundamentally incompatible with nature’s gameplay, causing the fractal of human ingenuity to expand in a different direction than the adaptability to nature requires. Amidst much applause to economic leaderboard positions detached from nature’s truth, we blissfully devolve into an anthropogenic cascade, compounding opportunity cost while increasing the time and effort needed to course-correct.
The purported excellence of humanity, preached from the pull-pit of capitalism, landed the people of the United States of America as the second-most obese in the world. Seventy percent of Americans chronically depend on prescription drugs to make it through another day. As voiced by an anonymous American, “We’re building a culture of throwaway people – uneducated, apathetic, overmedicated, stuffed with fat and chemicals, and convinced that bad behavior will land them a fortune through reality tv.” Thankfully, we are not all equal. Enamored by our leadership position in the swamp of self-indulgent consumerism, the rest of the world follows in our footsteps.
The only truth to which humans, along with other species, are beholden is nature’s truth. A fact that demotes humanity’s importance to merely one of the players of a collaborative game of coexistence we do not define or govern. The excellence and longevity of humanity are —in reality— determined by how well we understand and adhere to nature’s gameplay. Nature’s gameplay we have yet to implement.
As I discovered, changing human gameplay is remarkably easy. No scorched earth approach is needed to drive an impactful change to the compass of monetary incentives we attach to the arbitrage of ourselves. However, such change requires real leadership, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed enough to recognize human adaptability to nature’s entropy — not laissez-faire conjecture— is the only thing that fundamentally improves the human species’ excellence and longevity.
Fly right or die is nature’s rule. We exist not as a right but at the mercy of nature.
