23) The Sacred

Out of Greek mythology, Narcissus was a gorgeous man who felt disdain for everyone else.  One day a nymph showed him his own reflection in a pool of calm water.  He fell so in love with himself that when he eventually realized that his love was only for a reflection, he committed suicide.

A modern day narcissist believes that he is superior to others and is entitled to the special attention he receives.  He justifies his behavior by taking credit for things he did not do, and deflects blame onto others for the things he did do.

But I am not going to focus on a single person.  What I am talking about is a species, our species.  The human species has become narcissistic.  We believe that we are the most beautiful species on the planet, and any problems we may face are not our fault. This happens on all planets where there is a species which is alone in their top IQ level.

I have been informed by a friend that IQ is a human measurement which does not even apply to other species.  So for the purposes of this paper, I am using “high-IQ” to mean capable of building technology.

To continue, because of this love for ourselves, we have declared anyone of this species to be sacred, meaning that we are connected with God and deserve veneration---over all other species.  Come to think of it, there are some other humans we think are profane also, not sacred.

The point is that due to our relatively high IQ on the planet, we consider ourselves god-like, that is, sacred.  That is our basic premise, regardless of religion or even lack of religion.  There are some religions and belief systems which venerate Gaia, but even people of those faiths are living in cultures which are basically narcissistic. 

Basic premise:  we are gods.  Corollary:  we have the right to use anything around us for our own comfort and entertainment:  energy, water, food, animals, resources.  Even religions with the major God proclaim that we should “be fruitful and multiply”. 

Where’s the limit?  When does it end?

It is becoming clear that the end is the destruction of the planet we are born to:  as evidenced by the climate changing, the increased storms, the over-fishing of the oceans.  We don’t know when to stop, we don’t know how.  No “off” switch.

Even if we agreed on the need to stop, which we can’t, we would disagree on how, with endless meetings and votes leading nowhere.  Narcissism wins out.  That’s it.  Doomed.

I have been trying to figure out what the end-game is for a narcissist.  I think it has to do with the repeated denials and justifications.  After awhile it becomes impossible to tell reality from fantasy and, of course, that is a prescription for disaster.  The British call it “around the bend”, we call it “certifiable”.

Yuval Harari says that it will take a major event for us to change.  Maybe this is it, this Covid-19.  A global pandemic which is not only changing cultures, but is also shaking up the global economic systems.

It can be argued that we are the only high IQ beings on the planet and we are doing the best we can with the uncaring nature which has random fluctuations which, fortunately, we are usually adaptable enough to handle.  We are just unlucky with this virus and it will go away and business can get back to normal.

On the opposite pole, there is the metaphysical belief that everything has consciousness, but that the response to stimuli depends on the degrees of freedom which the entity possesses.  Rocks don’t have many options, plants more, animals, humans, and then what?  Gaia of course, the planetary consciousness.  I would say that Gaia has many more degrees of freedom than we humans have.  Let’s see, there is plate tectonics, weather, magnetic-fields, oh, and let’s not forget DNA manipulation, and all with billions of years of experience.

I can say this, if we were created by Gaia, then she must have known what she was doing, I mean making us narcissists and all.  It’s really not our fault.

So what’s a poor girl going to do when her primary species runs amok?  No “off” switch, eternal rationalizations, and, let’s face it, no respect?

What does any of us do when we think we aren’t getting the respect we deserve?  I know the first thing I do is try to decide whether or not I really do deserve the respect.  If not, the solution is simple, just shut up.  But in this particular case, yes, Gaia does deserve the respect---Mother Earth.  Second, I would try reason.  Explain why I deserve respect.  That sometimes works.  Not often.  How about increasing storm intensity, only hurts a few at a time?  Still not listening?  No respect yet?

I’ve got a good one.  How about we just reverse the planet’s magnetic field?  Happens every few hundred thousand years.  No big deal for the living beings, but what about compasses?  GPS?  Satellites?  That would be bad, very bad.  Already the north magnetic pole is drifting more quickly than usual.  Could reverse any time.  The problem with this, from Gaia’s viewpoint is that it would probably undo the scientific progress the humans have made.

Getting their attention, getting their attention...  How to do that?  I guess roll up our sleeves and do what needs to be done.

If we could make a couple small changes to the DNA of some virus that has been hanging around, we could disrupt things around the world, all at the same time.  Wow!!  Even though there would be a lot of permanent changes, technology could continue.  And the people who would die are primarily those living only because some drugs are keeping them alive, pre-existing conditions.  Most of them are old anyway, done with their contributions to the global IQ.

What do they call that?  A measured response?  Could be new respect?  Even if it is short-lived, we get a few days with clean air---haven’t seen that in a long while.

Let’s continue with this:  what does Gaia want?

Let me just say at the outset, that the answer is unknown to me, at least at this time.  What could my cat know about the reason for my bad mood?  Or the steps I am going to take to fix my bad mood?

But we can guess:  polluted rivers and oceans, over-fishing, inhumane subjugation of animals for consumption.  What else?  Destructions of habitats?  Extinctions of species?  It all adds up to a lot of uncaring, no respect for Gaia.

There really is no solution as long as the human population is so large, and still growing.  So that has got to be high on Gaia’s agenda, reducing the number of humans, or at least slowing down the increase.

Oh, oh!  Now we are getting into the area of “taboo”, things of which we may not speak.  Because why?  Because humans believe themselves to be sacred.  Any human death is a reason for sorrow.  Something has been lost that we should revere.  It’s not so bad if we don’t know them, or they are different from us somehow, or we can ascribe their death to a mistake they made.  The real sorrow comes from our own impending death or someone we know.  Nothing wrong with that.  We couldn’t live a normal life if we agonized over every death.

This Covid-19 virus kills about 4% of those who get it, not a huge percentage.  However the new information is that it is possible to still have the virus and transmit it even after we have already been sick, recovered, and have the antibodies.  And that means that eventually everyone is going to get it at some point.  We can slow it down, but not stop this one.  So 4% every few months from now on?

Makes dating a stranger kind of hard.  No kissing.  Ok, you can still have sex, but one or both persons must wear the proverbial bag over their heads, and NO KISSING mouths.  On the other hand, if you decide to have unprotected sex anyway and get the virus, it had better be darn good sex!  But there could definitely be a deterrent effect if the act of having sex could kill you.

This is the Gaia solution, maybe.  What if we got together as a species and came up with a solution.  I mean we are pretty smart.  But our problem is that we can’t agree on things.  No matter which solution is selected, some people come out on the short end and are going to protest.

Actually Dan Brown (“The Da Vinci Code”, “Angels & Demons”) did come up with a solution in his novel “Inferno”.  A rich scientist goes into seclusion for a year and develops a virus which spreads around the world quickly.  It’s purpose was not terrorism, it was to permanently fix human DNA so that only every third person could make a baby.

Unfortunately Ron Howard who made the movies, doing a brilliant job of keeping the meaning of the first 2 books, completely bastardized “Inferno”.  He changed the point of the movie to combatting terrorism instead of population control.  I guess the taboo was too strong.  Imagine that, humanizing the Catholic Church can be talked about, but not population control.  Too close to undoing the “sacred”.

Darwin made evolution about the survival of the fittest.  I read somewhere that a species thrives and multiplies when it is exuberant.  Of course it has to be fit to be excited by life, but the main point is the thrill of living.  I like that.  Now who has the higher IQ?  Living an exciting life while still respecting Gaia?

So is our time up?  Are we bored being humans?  Is there some other entity going to take our place?  Not yet.  A lot of people are currently excited by what they are doing.  There are also a lot who are miserable.  A person tends to give up when there is no hope for a better life, sometimes due to external influences and sometimes due to internal problems.

Native Americans have great respect for Gaia, the Mother.  And Gaia really loved them back, but she needed more technological development, and that can only occur when huge numbers of people, not tribes, communicate and leap-frog over each other with scientific advances.  So Gaia almost eliminated the Native Americans with the Small Pox virus, to make room for the narcissists.

What does Gaia want?  It seems obvious to me that technology is the holy grail for Gaia.  What could be the reason?  One possible explanation, Gaia wants to communicate with other planets like her, and needs technology to do it.  The big problem is that the biological human is not well suited to travel in space.  Once we get outside the Earth’s magnetic field, the radiation is so strong that it is like walking into a nuclear reactor, it is a killer.  A manned mission to Mars will be a suicide mission.  It would take 3’ of lead in every direction around the space ship, or 20’ of water, to be enough of a shield, and that much weight is impossible to get off the Earth at this time.

It will be a decade or 2 until we have almost-sentient robots.  They will be able to go into space just fine.  Time to reduce the biological humans.  Not needed anymore.  Did their job.  Well maybe what’s left of us can go back to living like the Native-Americans, in tribes, and Gaia can regenerate her natural world.

What is “sacred” then?  Well certainly not the quantity of humans, maybe the quality of life.  But I think obviously, Gaia is the “sacred”.

This means that the we should shift our attitude about death.  Death is a natural part of life, actually gives life its edge, better get it done now---only one life to live.  Or the new way, celebrating death as a transition.  Believing in reincarnation makes that shift easy.  The Native-Americans used to say, “It is a good day to die”.

Naturally with an epidemic, it is possible to stop it by testing and tracing.  But this one, where it seems that transmission is possible even with no symptoms and even after recovering, I don’t think there is any stopping it---everyone on the planet is going to get it eventually, unless they can cut themselves off from other people indefinitely, and we are a “hive” species---need the touch of other humans.

So another option:  accept the fact that everyone is going to be infected by Covid-19, accept the 4% deaths, and get on with life.  I see that as happening already.  Of course it is going to take awhile before the economy recovers, but it probably will, but different.  There will be a lot of losers and a lot of winners.  Unfortunately the immediate losers are the in the entertainment field:  restaurants, movies, events.

Look at it this way:  this pandemic is bad for humans and good for Gaia.  How we handle it depends on which viewpoint we take, who we consider the most “sacred”.