The convergence of crises of which are becoming aware seems to me to stem from a more fundamental problem than the acts of individuals. There seem to be too many cats loose to herd, and a herd of cats can be a challenging thing to manage.
If we go after the problems of the times "cat by cat", we end up chasing cats. A lot of effort is involved.
I see the situation differently -- not as a problem of a lot of cats loose, but as a problem of species intelligence.
Putting it bluntly, too many stupid things are going on at once. The problem, it seems to me, can be reduced to this: stupidity.
What can you expect when you chase after a stupid man?
That's what we are facing.
So, once again, I say the problem is one of intelligence.
A look at developing culture reveals that the mainstream have sunk in their intelligence over the past fifty years, or so. Consider popular music, the type played in grocery stores and restaurants.
The mainstream look upon such efforts at music with favor, music which commonly can be described as caterwallering accompanied by a loud, monotonous drum beat and either a spectacular orchestra or a group of players who make sounds that resemble a garbage disposal unit or a buzzsaw, to which the singer either cries out emotionally or yells.
Consider the output of TV Land and Hollywood, the proportion of tales involving sinister power plots, crime, murder, or widespread destruction. Stupidity at its best.
And, again, a large proportion of the general population eat it up.
And advertising, which, admittedly can be an artform, commonly portrays immaturity, stupid behavior, lying, deception, absurd distortions of judgment and disproportionate emphasis of the trivial, is done the way it is done ostensibly because it works! "This drug may cause death, blindness or paralysis. Ask your doctor if it's right for you!"
What does that say about the intelligence of the consumer population? Do the advertisers believe (or hope) we are stupid? or is it the advertisers who are stupid?
Too many cats. Impossible for us, or for our government, to regulate them.
No, the only solution is for them to regulate themselves. Intelligently.
And that's where the matter of species-intelligence comes in. The human species exists within a range of intelligence that seems inadequate either to herd all of those cats or, more frankly speaking, inadequate for people to regulate themselves intelligently.
Hence, we also have a largely preventable and resolvable "health care crisis", which isn't really "a health-care crisis"; it's "a self-care crisis." With the staunch cooperation of various business vested interests, people do it to themselves with bad diet, bad living, and bad entertainment. It's stupidity perpetuating stupidity, or even making it more so.
It's enough to turn one into a Republican, except for one thing -- Republicans are at least as stupid as the rest of us, only they think they are smart and that we, non-Republicans, are stupid. And from their behavior, it would seem that's exactly what they think. They may be wrong.
The germane question is, What would provoke a species-wide rise of intelligence, a species-wide improvement in people's ability to regulate themselves intelligently?
Historically, cataclysm has been the thing that has provoked evolutionary breakthroughs. Starvation begat agriculture. Wars begat new technologies that could help humankind. Geophysical events immediately preceded the emergence of more intelligent lifeforms and, it can be argued, begat them.
Let me pose an example:
This planet has been beset by ice ages throughout its long, geophysical history. The last one was about 100,000 years ago, and the one before it, about 120,000 years before that.
Ice ages rather radically change the climate and the wildlife present at any location.
Animals either adapt, leave or die, when climate conditions change.
Humans facing the situation faced the same demand: adapt, leave, or die. But humans had another potential: innovate.
For humans, the word, adapt, shows up as learning. Innovate shows up as developing new ways.
In ice age conditions, learning without innovation is an inadequate response because all that can be learned are the old ways, which are now inadequate.
Innovation, followed by learning of the innovation, had and has survival value.
Those who could learn an innovation had the advantage, and those who could innovate had a special advantage, over those who could not, who died out.
The last ice age "filtered" the human species for ability to innovate and to learn.
Cataclysm led to higher evolution.
Cataclysms can take many forms.
So can innovation.
We're seeing technological innovation, now, but that's the continuation of a primitive imperative -- to shape our environment for ourselves and our benefit. And as we have seen, the technology developed by the few who have "technological intelligence" can be turned to the uses of the less evolved or less intelligent. Too many cats.
A new intelligence is needed -- an intelligence not of controlling what is outside us, but of ourselves, of self-regulation toward a healthier life.
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