In the Middle Ages the universe was perceived as a thing that had come into being as a finished object just a few thousand years ago. It was fixed, finite, and as much known as it needed to be. In the Renaissance, however, the universe began to be perceived in a much different way: as dynamic, infinite, and largely unknown. It was this change in thinking that led not only to the great Age of Exploration but to the great age of scientific investigation that followed and that continues today.
All this seems very obvious to us today. The Middle Ages obviously couldn’t last forever. Things obviously had to change. But this was not at all obvious to the people of the Middle Ages. As far as they were concerned, people would go on thinking and living the medieval way forever.
We think the very same thing. Just like the people of the Middle Ages, we’re absolutely sure that people will go on thinking the way we think forever, and people will go on living the way we live forever.
The people of the Middle Ages thought this way because it seemed impossible to them that people could think a different way. How else could people think except the way they thought? As far as they were concerned, the history of thought had come to an end with them. Of course we smile at that — but in fact we believe exactly the same thing. We, too, believe that the history of thought has come to an end with us.
Well, we’d better hope we’re wrong about that, because if the history of thought has come to an end with us, then we’re doomed. If there are still people here in two hundred years, they won’t be living the way we do. I can make that prediction with confidence, because if people go on living the way we do, there won’t be any people here in two hundred years.
I can make another prediction with confidence. If there are still people here in two hundred years, they won’t be thinking the way we do. I can make that prediction with equal confidence, because if people go on thinking the way we do, then they’ll go on living the way we do — and there won’t be any people here in two hundred years.
But what can we possibly change about the way we think? It seems so obvious that everything we think is just the way it must be thought.
It seemed exactly the same to the people of the Middle Ages.
Although several key ideas of the Middle Ages disappeared during the Renaissance, not every key idea of the Middle Ages disappeared. One of the key ideas that remained in place — and that remains in place today — is the idea that humans are fundamentally and irrevocably flawed. We look at the world around us and find that turtles are not flawed, crows are not flawed, daffodils are not flawed, mosquitoes are not flawed, salmon are not flawed — in fact, not a single species in the world is flawed — except us. It makes no sense, but it does pass the medieval tests for knowledge. It’s reasonable — and it’s certainly supported by authority. It’s reasonable because it provides us with an excuse we badly need. We’re destroying the world — eating it alive — but it’s not our fault. It’s the fault of human nature. We’re just badly made, so what can you expect?
Another key idea that survived the Middle Ages is the idea that the way we live is the way humans are meant to live. Well, goodness, that’s so obvious it hardly needs saying. We’re living the way humans were meant to live from the beginning of time. The fact that we only began living this way very recently has nothing to do with it. So it took us three million years to find it. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s the way we were meant to live from the beginning of time. And the fact that the way we live is making the world uninhabitable to our own species also has nothing to do with it. Even if we destroy the world and ourselves with it, the way we live is still the way we were meant to live from the beginning of time.
But these two medieval survivors are relatively benign. Stupid but harmless. One other key idea survived, however, that is definitely neither benign nor harmless. Far from being benign or harmless, it’s the most dangerous idea in existence. And even more than being the most dangerous idea in existence, it’s the most dangerous thing in existence — more dangerous than all our nuclear armaments, more dangerous than biological warfare, more dangerous than all the pollutants we pump into the air, the water, and the land.
All the same, it sounds pretty harmless. You can hear it and say, “Uh-huh, yeah, so?” It’s pretty simple, too. Here it is: Humans belong to an order of being that is separate from the rest of the living community. There’s us and then there’s Nature. There’s humans and then there’s the human environment.
I’m sure it’s hard to believe that something as innocent sounding as this could be even a little bit dangerous, much less as dangerous as I’ve claimed.
As I’ve said, it’s conservatively estimated that as many as two hundred species are becoming extinct every day as a result of our impact on the world. People take in this piece of horrendous information very calmly. They don’t scream. They don’t faint. They don’t see any reason to get excited about it because they firmly believe that humans belong to an order of being that is separate from the rest of the living community. They believe it as firmly in the twenty-first century as they did in the tenth century.
So as many as two hundred species are becoming extinct every day. That’s no problem, because those species are out there somewhere. Those two hundred species aren’t in here. They aren’t us. They don’t have anything to do with us, because humans belong to an order of being that is separate from the rest of the living community.
Those two hundred species are out there in the environment. Of course it’s bad for the environment if they become extinct, but it has nothing to do with us. The environment is out there, suffering, while we’re in here, safe and sound. Of course we should try to take care of the environment, and it’s a shame about those two hundred extinctions — but it has nothing to do with us.
Ladies and gentlemen, if people go on thinking this way, humanity is going to become extinct. That’s how dangerous this idea is. Here’s why.
Those two hundred species … why exactly are they becoming extinct? Are they just running out of air or water or space or what? No, those two hundred species are becoming extinct because they have something we need. We need their biomass. We need the living stuff they’re made of. We need their biomass in order to maintain our biomass. Here’s how it works. Go down to Brazil, find yourself a hunk of rain forest, and cut it down or burn it down. Now bring in a herd of cows to pasture there. Or plant potatoes or pineapples or lima beans. All the biomass that was formerly tied up in the birds, insects, and mammals living in that hunk of rain forest is now going into cows, potatoes, pineapples, or lima beans — which is to say into food for us.
We need to make two hundred species extinct every day in order to maintain the biomass of six billion people. It’s not an accident. It’s not an oversight. It’s not a bit of carelessness on our part. In order to maintain our population of six billion, we need the biomass of two hundred species a day. We are literally turning two hundred species a day into human tissue.
But all too many people — most people, I’m afraid — tend to think, “Well, so what? Humans belong to an order of being that is separate from the rest of the living community. Since we’re separate, it doesn’t matter how many species we destroy — and since we’re superior to them anyway, we’re actually improving the world by eliminating them!”
We’re like people living in the penthouse of a tall brick building. Every day we need two hundred bricks to maintain our walls, so we go downstairs, knock two hundred bricks out of the walls below, and bring them back upstairs for our own use. Every day … every day we go downstairs and knock two hundred bricks out of the walls that are holding up the building we live in. Seventy thousand bricks a year, year after year after year.
I hope it’s evident that this is not a sustainable way to maintain a brick building. One day, sooner or later, it’s going to collapse, and the penthouse is going to come down along with all the rest.
Making two hundred species extinct every day is similarly not a sustainable w
ay to maintain a living community. Even if we’re in some sense at the top of that community, one day, sooner or later, it’s going to collapse, and when it does, our being at the top won’t help us. We’ll come down along with all the rest.
It would be different, of course, if two hundred extinctions a day were just a temporary thing. It’s not. And the reason it’s not is that, clever as we are, we can’t increase the amount of biomass that exists on this planet. We can’t increase the amount of land and water that supports life, and we can’t increase the amount of sunlight that falls on that land and water. We can decrease the amount of biomass that exists on this planet — for example, by making the land sterile or by poisoning the water — but we can’t increase it.
All we can do is shift that biomass from one bunch of species to another bunch — and that’s what we’re doing. We’re systematically shifting the biomass of species we don’t care about into the biomass of species we do care about: into cows, chickens, corn, beans, tomatoes, and so on. We’re systematically destroying the biodiversity of the living community to support ourselves, which is to say that we’re systematically destroying the infrastructure that is keeping us alive.
As I’ve said, it’s conservatively estimated that our population will increase to nine billion by the middle of the century — and people take in this hair-raising piece of information very calmly. No one screams. No one faints. People are as untroubled about our mushrooming population as they are about those two hundred daily extinctions. They see no reason to get excited, because they firmly believe that humans belong to an order of being that is separate from the rest of the living community. They don’t see that the extinction rate is going to increase as our population increases — and probably exponentially. This is because when we make species extinct, we don’t gain 100 percent of their biomass. A great deal of it is simply lost, contributing to the desertification of the planet. By the middle of the century, if our population has indeed increased to nine billion, then the number of extinctions will be a thousand a day or ten thousand a day (the number is incalculable at this point).
IF THERE ARE still people living here in two hundred years, they’ll know that humanity doesn’t belong to an order of being that is separate from the rest of the living community. They’ll know this as surely as we know that the earth revolves around the sun. I can make this prediction with confidence, because if people go on thinking we belong to a separate order of being, then there will be no people living here in two hundred years.
What everyone wishes I could do (and what I myself wish I could do) is describe how people will be living here in two hundred years — if there still are people living here. All I can tell you is how they won’t be living: They won’t be living the way we do. But why is that? Why can’t I tell you how they will be living? The answer is: because no one can tell you that.
You can see why this is so if you put the question back into the Middle Ages. You might very well have been able to convince Roger Bacon that people would be living differently in three hundred years, but how in the world could he have predicted the Age of Exploration, the rebellion against feudal oppression, the Industrial Revolution, the emergence to power of a capitalist bourgeoisie, and so on? To expect such a thing would be absurd.
You could say that if the Middle Ages had been able to predict the Renaissance, then it would have been the Renaissance.
Social evolution is inherently chaotic — which is another way of saying inherently unpredictable. This is true even in relatively stable times. Consider the fact that every intelligence agency in the world was taken by surprise by the collapse of the Soviet Union, which days before had looked as stable as Great Britain or the United States.
And if social evolution is chaotic in even stable times, then it’s going to be even more chaotic in the times ahead, when people are either going to start thinking a new way or become extinct.
Of course I understand why people want to have a description of the sustainable life of the future. They think this would enable them to adopt that sustainable life now, today. But social change doesn’t come about that way, any more than technological change does. It would have been useless to show Charles Babbage a printed circuit or to show Thomas Edison a transistor. They could have done nothing with those things in their day — and we could do nothing today with a picture of life a hundred years from now. The future is not something that can be planned hundreds of years in advance — or even ten years in advance. Adolf Hitler’s Thousand Year Reich didn’t even last a thousand weeks. There has never been a plan for the future — and there never will be.
Nevertheless, I can tell you with complete confidence that something extraordinary is going to happen in the next two or three decades. The people of our culture are going to figure out how to live sustainably — or they’re not. And either way, it’s certainly going to be extraordinary.
The fact that I’m unable to give you a prescription for the future doesn’t mean you’re just helpless bits of cork bobbing in the tide of history. Each of you is about where Galileo was when he was told in no uncertain terms to shut up about the earth moving around the sun. As far as the gentlemen of the Roman Inquisition were concerned, the earth’s movement around the sun was a wicked lie they had to suppress — and could suppress. But as he left his trial, Galileo was heard to mutter, “All the same, it moves!”
Surprisingly little hung on the matter. The future of humanity didn’t depend on destroying the medieval picture of the solar system. But the future of humanity does depend on our destroying the medieval picture of humanity’s relationship to the living community of this planet.
Galileo didn’t know that people would someday take space travel for granted, but he did know that they would someday recognize that the earth revolves around the sun. We don’t know how people will live here in two hundred years, but we do know that if people still are living here in two hundred years, they will recognize that we are as much a part of the living community — and as thoroughly dependent on it — as lizards or butterflies or sharks or earthworms or badgers or banana trees.
People don’t want more of the same. Yet, oddly enough, when they ask me what will save the world, they want to hear more of the same — something familiar, something recognizable. They want to hear about uprisings or anarchy or tougher laws. But none of those things is going to save us — I wish they could. What we must have — and nothing less — is a whole world full of people with changed minds. Scientists with changed minds, industrialists with changed minds, schoolteachers with changed minds, politicians with changed minds — though they’ll be the last, of course. Which is why we can’t wait for them or expect them to lead us into a new era. Their minds won’t change until the minds of their constituents change. Gorbachev didn’t create changed minds; changed minds created Gorbachev.
Changing people’s minds is something each one of us can do, wherever we are, whoever we are, whatever kind of work we’re doing. Changing minds may not seem like a very dramatic or exciting challenge, but it’s the challenge that the human future depends on.
It’s the challenge your future depends on.
Appendix II
Our Religions:
Are They the Religions of Humanity Itself?
Delivered as a Fleming Lecture in Religion,
Southwestern University, Georgetown, Texas, October 18, 2000
CONTRARY TO THE COMMON ASSUMPTION, Charles Darwin did not originate the idea of evolution. By the middle of the nineteenth century the mere fact of evolution had been around for a long time, and most thinkers of the time were perfectly content to leave it at that. The absence of a theory to explain evolutionary change didn’t trouble them, wasn’t experienced as a pressure, as it was by Darwin. He knew there had to be some intelligible mechanism or dynamic that would account for it, and this is what he went looking for — with well-known results. In his Origin of Species he wasn’t announcing the fact of evolution; he was trying to make sense of the fact. br />
In my midtwenties I began to feel a similar sort of pressure. The modern Age of Anxiety was just being born under the shadows of rampant population growth, global environmental destruction, and the ever-present possibility of nuclear holocaust. I was surprised that most people seemed perfectly reconciled to these things, as if to say, “Well, what else would you expect?”
Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, seemed to think he was saying something terribly original in his 1995 diatribe blaming it all on the Industrial Revolution, but this was just the conventional wisdom of 1962. To my mind, blaming all our problems on the Industrial Revolution is like blaming Hamlet’s downfall on his fencing match with Laertes. To understand why Hamlet ended up badly, you can’t just look at the last ten minutes of his story, you have to go right back to the beginning of it, and I felt a pressure to do the same with us.
The beginning of our story isn’t difficult to find. Every school-child learns that our story began about ten thousand years ago with the Agricultural Revolution. This isn’t the beginning of the human story, but it’s certainly the beginning of our story, for it was from this beginning that all the wonders and horrors of our civilization grew.
Everyone is vaguely aware that there have been two ways of looking at the Agricultural Revolution within our culture, two contradictory stories about its significance. According to the standard version — the version taught in our schools — humans had been around for a long time, three or four million years, living a miserable and shiftless sort of life for most of that time, accomplishing nothing and getting nowhere. But then about ten thousand years ago it finally dawned on folks living in the Fertile Crescent that they didn’t have to live like beavers and buzzards, making do with whatever food happened to come along; they could cultivate their own food and thus control their own destiny and well-being. Agriculture made it possible for them to give up the nomadic life for the life of farming villagers. Village life encouraged occupational specialization and the advancement of technology on all fronts. Before long villages became towns, and towns became cities, kingdoms, and empires. Trade connections, elaborate social and economic systems, and literacy soon followed, and there we went. All these advances were based on — and impossible without — agriculture, manifestly humanity’s greatest blessing.