My Most Misunderstood Article Is On Your Extinction
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There must be a reason people misinterpret human-centered bias — probably human centered bias, again
Your belief about extinction affects it
Often, I write about the sixth extinction. That is, we are in an age of undeniable extinction. In one hundred years unless something very urgent is done, we will lose fully half of the living organisms that support biodiversity on Earth.
I wrote an article about belief systems about extinction.
However, many comments, private and public, assert that there have been many extinctions, and this one isn’t so serious.
Of course, all literate people already know that. It’s curious to me, a frequent writer about the “SIXTH” extinction, that I am somehow supposed to be unaware of the previous five?
Here, though, is what I was on about:
This is a common phrase. “The Earth is not going extinct, but we (humans) probably are.” Of course, there are many variations, and many ways that many people say it. But the crux of the problem is that people somehow think it is human beings that are an endangered species.
Civilization, maybe. You and your family, maybe. Me. But the whole human race? I have many, many doubts about that, given our ability to adapt, and most of all, our extreme numbers, that people will go extinct.
Yes, many, many, many of us will likely die with our present choices, however, it is other species, right now, that are bearing the brunt of our destructive ways.
Our domination, although it won’t win out in the end, is killing biodiversity.
We are still multiplying like Omicron, at least if you ask the immune system of planet Gaia.
Why bring up extinctions that we didn’t do?
Geologic climate change is not caused by us. Volcanic bursts, ice-ages, and asteroids are not human causes. They are not whodunnits, but what-we-can-learn-from-its. But, that people continually bring them up makes me wonder why. It feels like a case of “It’s natural, not us.” This is decidedly not the case. Not this Anthropocene, not this time.
It’s us.
The Permian Triassic mass biotic crisis is called the “great dying.” I don’t think anyone disputes this was the most enormous tragedy in life history. Like some exoplanet, out there in the vastness (undoubtedly) , that exploded this afternoon.
But, it has nothing do so with human history, our choice to heat the Earth, and truthfully, very little to do with anything other than whataboutery.
My article was about the hubris and human-centered reality that we see ourselves first; and in that blindness are sown the seeds of our heavy losses of biodiversity.
Yet, although many people see my point, a very great many, particularly young men, do not. Is this a mansplain thing? I hope not, I hate that term.
People seem afraid of the power and influence we yield; as if guilt is stronger than the realization what we do, we can undo, (at least mitigate, and plan for, accordingly.)
Do so many guys really, truly, think we ecologists, biologists, and psychologists don’t know about the most common life events on the planet?
No, I think it is at least, in part, something else.
People subconsciously don’t want responsibility. It says so much about ourselves.