Eighteen
years ago, in September 2007, Victor Gorshkov and I were invited to speak
at the Religion, Science and Environment symposium organized by the Greek
Orthodox Church. It took place aboard a large ship cruising along the
coast of Greenland (this was before the 2008 financial crisis and funding
in Greece was generous).
We
gave two talks on board. The first, naturally, was about the biotic pump.
The second was about human nature and our current predicament. Below is
the unedited text of my speech along with the images that I had shown.
Afterward, a former Canadian MP told me he had never seen a scientist
speak so passionately.
Since
then, I’ve grown much older and have somewhat modified my views, which I
briefly reflect on at the end of this post.
This
is another scheduled post. I am offline till the end of September.
Homo
sapiens — the rightless animal?
1.
Introduction: What determines natural human rights
Something
wrong is in the air with the Humanity. What is this and how this should
be fought with before it is too late is the issue that bothers millions
of people around the globe. Here we will argue that the essence of the
catastrophe is that Humans have lost some major rights implied by their
biological and ecological design.
Apparently,
all living beings, with humans being no exception, are designed to eat
and to drink. Accordingly, the rights for food and water are the primary
rights reflected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If we
look at the Humanity on a global scale, we will see that some biological
rights are largely preserved, although increasingly threatened:
But
here we will give scientific evidence that several more natural human
rights, as inherent as the above, have been globally lost. We termed
them ecological human rights; these are
-
the
right for individual territory,
-
the
right for social significance,
-
the
right for human virtues.
Uniquely,
these human rights have been lost without being explicitly
recognized.
Generally,
rights of living creatures follow directly from, and
are dictated by, their design and natural needs. A
bird is designed to fly, a fish is designed to swim. Accordingly, they
have the right for the sky and for the river, respectively.
What
is the biological design of humans? Answer to this question will
determine natural human rights.
2.
Humans are designed to move and have the right for an individual
territory of four square kilometers
The
power of human body is equal to approximately 100 Watts. This is the
power of two reading bulbs. This power, which is called metabolic power,
is used to support all biochemical processes within the human body. The
energy comes with food. Food is provided by the biosphere.
The
biosphere receives all energy from the Sun. Green plants convert some
part of solar energy into organic matter, which is used as food by
humans and other animals. Mean global productivity of the biosphere is
about half a Watt per square meter. This is a very low power. It cannot
satisfy a human body, which demands thousands times more per the same
area.
From
these two fundamental parameters, the metabolic power of human body and
the productivity of the biosphere, we conclude unambiguously that human
beings must move and collect organic matter that is produced on a very
large territory. Obviously, this territory must be protected against
competitors. In other words, humans are designed to move and possess a
large individually controlled territory.
Humans
are not unique in this design. The right for individual territory is
invariably respected in all natural species of animals. There is a
fundamental dependence between the body size and the size of individual territory in
animals. Home range area grows approximately proportionally to
body mass, Fig. 1. Small animals like mice and shrews are granted with
small territories of several hundred square meters. The largest animals
like elephants or rhinoceros or some large predators defend individiual
territories that can exceed several hundred square
kilometers.
Fig.
1. The dependence of individual territory on body mass in mammals. Green
and black dots denote herbivores and carnivores, respectively. After
Kelt and Van Vuren (2001). Red arrow and
dot denote the natural territory allocated to Homo sapiens (the upper
one) and mean individual territory of modern humans (the lower
one).
And
only in humans this right has been dramatically violated. The
unprecedented explosive growth of human population during the last two
centuries has resulted in the situation when an average human being can
control a territory of no more than a hundred square meters.
Of such a small individual territory even some rodents would
be ashamed.
3.
Major right lost: Consequences
Deprived
of air, human beings perish in a few minutes. Deprived of water, human
beings perish in a few days. Deprived of food, human beings perish in a
few weeks. Deprived of individual territory, human beings are
not human beings.
The
fundamental nature of the right for individual territory can be traced
in all aspects of human existence. What is the main punishment applied
to Homo sapiens? Territory
deprivation.
Vincent
van Gogh "Prisoners exercising"
Vice
versa, the highest peaks of human spirit can be reached in solitude when
the individual commands a very large territory. Not incidentally, many
saints and sacred figures in world religions are known to have reached
their perfection in solitude, like, for example, the famous Russian
Saint Sergius Radonezhskii.
N.K.
Rerikh "St. Sergius the Builder"
Another
sign of the vital importance of territory for the human beings is
manifested in the love of humans for traveling. Whenever free from their
obligatory work, the majority of people choose to travel. They try to
compensate lack of individual territory by the illusion of vast,
although shared, space available to them when they travel.
Given
the vitality of territory for the human design, it can be expected that
the global loss of this inherent right will profoundly affect human
performance and well-being. To realize how many terrible features in the
modern civilization stem from the loss of this right, one can monitor
the consequences of natural animals being deprived of their
territory.
The
fact that one does not have a sufficient individual territory signals to
the individual about his low social status, results in humiliation and
reduced biological performance. A comprehensive study of captive black
rhinoceros that are notorious for their poor reproduction in captivity
revealed the following. Those rhinoceros who were kept in closed cells
with non-transparent walls reproduced worst of all. Both male potency
and female reproductive capacity were the lowest. In contrast, those
animals that could at least see a large free
territory from their enclosures with transparent walls — all reproduced
better. These findings, confirmed in many other species, including, for
example, the tiny jerboas, indicate that the command of individual
territory has a profound physiological significance which can be
communicated by visual signals. Looking at the modern humanity, do not
we notice a very similar pandemic of sexual disorders? People world over
are losing the happiness of sexual life and the ability to leave health
progeny. The parallel with territory-deprived animals is
straightforward.
Another
manifestation of the global loss of the right for territory, and this
manifestation cries out, is the unnatural aggressiveness of our species.
Massive killing of conspecifics is absent in any other species except
Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens is an
unbeaten and unrivaled champion of atrocities in the animal world.
Terrorism, extremism all drink from this source.
V.V.
Vereshagin. "Apotheosis of War"
To
summarize, humans are not mice and cannot normally exist and implement
their design on tiny spots. We are not bad, we are deeply unhappy.
The
natural territory that is prescribed by the human design is of the order
of 4 square kilometers. Four square kilometers of quieteness and
relaxation, of solitude, of communication with nature, four square
kilometers of home. Are there many people among
those reading these lines who have experienced this at least once in
their lives? (=Are there many birds among birds who could fly at least
once?)
4.
The right for significance and the right for human virtue
The
right for territory is tightly connected with other natural human
rights, the information about which can similarly be gained from a study
of the biological design of human beings.
We
notice that per capita individual territory of humans is about four
square kilometers. At the same time our voice is so powerful, that we
can vocally mark a much larger territory. If one screams at full voice,
he can be heard over a territory of a few hundred square kilometers.
Since
normally no alien intruders are tolerated on individual territories,
this means that the normal social group of humans consisted of about 100
individuals, who were closely correlated with each other.
In
such a natural population every human being had an average 1/100th
impact on the life of the society. Individual significance on average
equaled 1/100. In modern overpopulated societies individual significance
has shrunk by millions of times, producing unsatisfaction, humiliation,
and anxiety.
Most
people feel they do not produce any impact on the society, do not decide
anything — and suffer. Those people who are on the top of the society,
naturally, desperately defend their natural right for social
significance against any possible rivals (their co-citizens). As we
know, in each country the number of actual decision-makers can be
counted in no more than a few hundreds, with all of them knowing each
other very well. This exactly corresponds to the size of the natural
social group of human beings. Note that such people cannot be
straightforwardly blamed, as cannot straightforwardly be blamed people
defending their rights for food and water amidst a terrible famine or
drought.
That
the right for significance penetrates all aspects of human existence can
easily be seen from many aspects of modern life. People try to invent
ways of re-gaining significance:
-
Professional
societies organize at sizes close to the size of natural human groups
~ 100-1000 individuals (sportsmen, scientists, musicians etc.)
-
Most
religions try to compensate the lack of significance in their
believers by sending the message of each person being individually
valuable and important for God.
-
Internet
communication competes with religion for this function; people are
able to create web societies close in size to natural human groups and
get a feeling of influencing life of the society.
Ultimately,
people have even lost the right for human virtues. Biological design
prescribes every normal human being to possess a certain set of
behavioral standards (virtues), which ensure stable existence of the
natural population. People have to be clever, kind, honest, capable etc.
and competitive, i.e. socially active. In the normally-sized population
all these qualities in each individual are monitored by the other
individuals with high precision. Those who possess all these qualities,
the most harmonic human beings, get to the top of the society.
In
a small natural social group all individuals are approximately equal in
performance and possess the complete set of behavioral properties
essential for a stable existence of the group. The best among the equal
rule the society.
The
unnaturally high intensity of competitive interaction in huge
populations makes human beings choose among human virtues; nobody can
afford retaining all of them. The individual has to choose to be either
clever or competitive, either kind or competitive, etc. This
choice among virtues can be compared to a forced
choice between eating and drinking, breathing and sleeping etc. In the
result, only those get to the top who spend all their time on
competition. But these are no longer are the most harmonic individuals
in the human society.
To
get to the top of an unnaturally large social group one has to sacrifice
the majority of human virtues spending most time on social
competition.
Although
for different reasons, this situation produces unsatisfaction, moral
sufferings and diseases both in those decent people who cannot
get to the top and in those who ultimately get there. Needless
to say that this critically destabilizes the civilization, because the
best human virtues remain undervalued and gradually lost from the
society.
5.
Conclusions
Thus,
having lost the natural human rights, the overwhelming majority of
people on Earth will never in their life have an opportunity to feel
what it actually means to be a human being. What can
this global humanitarian catastrophe be compared with? For example, if
all human beings lost the ability to hear and, without knowing what
happened, continued to believe that they have everything a human being
must have. Or if all people of Earth became of one and the same sex and
never knew the beauty of sexual relationships between men and women. Or
if people lived under ground and never saw the sunlight, without even
knowing that it exists. In the same manner modern humans have lost their
right for individual territory, for social significance and human
virtues.
Is
our planet inhabited by human beings? Or, rather, by pathetic fragments
of what once could have been conceived as a majestic design? As we have
argued, all problems of modern civilization are the consequence of
global overpopulation. Not only is this problem unresolved, but it has
not even been set up properly. Usually human population growth is
considered as an inevitable law of nature that cannot be modified. It is
assumed that all civilization processes must be adapted to this law.
Free market economy strongly relies on population growth. Mass-media not
only ignore the overpopulation problem, but advertise the need to
mitigate the demographic crisis in some developed countries.
In
natural species, overpopulation is strongly suppressed and is
practically never observed. It destroys the ecological community. But
under some rare conditions overpopulation does exist in nature. What are
these conditions? It is the abundance of some
environmental characteristics used by life. Such abundance arises for
species introduced on new territories, like rats and rabbits in
Australia, or after volcanic eruptions. In all such cases we observe
exponential growth and population expansion.
The
reasons for this expansion are not obvious and must get a scientific
explanation. Life cannot be stable without competitive interaction of
individuals inside each population. Without competition and selection of
defective individuals, the number of the latter increases. The species
loses its organization and goes extinct.
Under
conditions of abundance, defective individuals can occupy free territory
and claim free resources, and thus avoid competition with normal
individuals. In order to switch on competition, it is necessary to
expand the population to occupy all available territory and resources,
in other words, to do away with abundance. Life in continuous abundance
is impossible. Therefore, expansion is a genetically
programmed characteristic of life.
Human
brain and thinking put the humanity under the illusion of a continuous
resource abundance, which arises during the unstoppable intellectual
development of the civilization. This very dangerous situation must be
realized and seriously analyzed by modern humanity, in order that at
least the future generations of people on Earth would live up to the
proud name of the human being.
In
the eighteen years since I gave this speech, the most important lesson
I've learned is the need for greater humility in the face of the complex
social dynamics we are now part of.
I
also learned that speaking about territorial deprivation in humans is not
easy. It’s an uncomfortable realization—that we are all deprived of
something vital, and that reclaiming it can only come at the cost of
depriving others even more. This can trigger a strong emotional pushback.
Yet, as an old lady once told me when I shared my fear of flying,
sometimes looking down from the plane and seeing how far you are from the
ground can actually help you overcome the fear. The more we acknowledge
what we lack, the more we can appreciate what we (still) do have.
Apparently,
it is not possible for the human population to disintegrate back into many
small groups without losing most of the scientific knowledge we have so
painstakingly accumulated (it would be very sad to lose that). The high
degree of specialization in modern, technologically advanced societies,
where everyone depends on everyone else for survival, lessens competition
(liver and kidneys do not compete, either) and leads to greater respect
for all members of society, including women, thus partially offsetting the
stress caused by deprivation of individual territory and broader social
significance. Losing this mutual respect and degrading back to rudimentary
tribal mentality would be sad, too.
That
said, human biology (apart from the accumulating genetic load that
contributes to all of us progressively becoming less healthy) has not
changed much, and understanding our basic ecological needs and rights is a
prerequisite for building a happy ecological future for our species—if we
can indeed meaningfully modify what the future has in store for us.
