Certainty

It's weird, isn't it?

Humankind has made itself so certain, that when it has to live with uncertainty, it gets paranoid.

Let me explain.

Time was when we lived in caves, and found edible berries or went out with clubs to hunt. We could come back with dinner, or we could be someone else's dinner. In the game of predator and prey, there was no sentiment. Just the balance of nature. The survival of the fittest. The herbivorous animals ate plants, the carnivorous animals kept other animals' populations in check.

Except humankind's.

Because the human had the biggest brain, and the human had a thumb.

So the human tried to tame nature, and turn every uncertainty into a certainty. The balance was lost. Sentiment prevailed. Technology prevailed. There was a pill for every chill. Human population grew beyond the space available, so people began to live on top of each other, in layers. Many, many layers, with many, many little holes in them for the growing population to live. Huge structures belching poison created the things that these humans needed every day. The humans used these things and tired of them quickly, so they chucked them into the oceans for the fish to choke on. Oh, not just into the oceans. Into landfills, too, for birds to find and die with. The balance has been so badly lost, humans don't aim any more when they chuck stuff. They just chuck.

Not that man isn't aware of other creatures. Oh yes, he is. He wants to see other creatures, he wants to know them. But he has to be certain they won't harm him. So he makes cages and enclosures and tanks and leashes and harnesses and captures these creatures so that he can goggle at them. This went on for a long time. Family visits to the zoo were normal, with the children getting packets of chips and chucking plastic on the ground while staring at the tiger or the sea-lion. The human, with his bigger brain and his thumb, was ruling all the other creatures on the planet.

Not only that, human beings killed other creatures. Oh, not just when they were hungry. Not just in self defence, but for sport. So that they could take photographs with their 'trophies'. So that they could sell skins and hooves and tusks and hair and other things that belonged, rightfully, to the animal that owned it at birth. These became fashion accessories, or aphrodisiacs, so that human beings could further increase their population and occupy more holes in the layers.

Then nature decided enough was enough, and nature threw some uncertainty back into the mix.

And human beings got so scared, they shut themselves up. Humankind had been certain for so long, in control for so many generations, it had lost the ability to be vulnerable, to be uncertain, to be part of a bigger natural balance.

This story is ongoing, I hope we'll learn!