Myths and Legends

I would say that one of my faults is that I focus too much on facts and evidence. I guess it's just force of habit (being that I am a scientist). What I have to remind myself of all the time is that I should make the best out of and enjoy this one life I have been blessed with to the fullest, and not get too bogged down in the science of life. I may live to 100, with the medical knowledge we hold these days, and still not witness a slow glimpse of what our planet will (and has) endure(d).

I think we can all agree on the point that the Earth is, at least, hundreds of millions (if not a billion or more) of years old, with the dating of dinosaur bones and other animals that lived so long ago. Millions (plural) of years!! If I did live to 100 (furthering my relationships with all of you along the way), that's still not 1 hundredth of one percent, of only ONE million years. Now, mulitply that million by a few hundred. That is a mind-boggling figure! Humans (homo habilis, leading to us homo sapiens sapiens) have only been around for about 4 or so million of those years. The shortest chapter written in the Earth's history thus far.

When I start to think about how quick my stint here really will be, I think... I had better get this right! I only have what amounts to the blink of an eye (probably a LOT quicker than that) on this planet.

Whether or not you trust my opinion, I want to provide you with some contrary evidence. This is evidence that will refute many of the lies (yes, lies) that our culture has instilled in us from birth. I'm sure some of you reading this believe that you have been lied to about something all of your life, but you just weren't quite sure what the lie was being told to cover up. I want to show you that there is one huge lie, leading to countless smaller lies to hold up the big one. And no, I'm not out to debunk religion (although, taken regularly, the dosage of my medicine may have that side effect). I don't propose to tell you to forget everything you have learned in your spiritual belief. I just want to provide insight into my, and numerous others' point of view on, what Buddhism would call, Ultimate Reality. So, let's get to a few juicy tidbits already...

First let me define the category for these next entries: mythology. Mythology, in the sense that I mean it, is defined as a set of stories, traditions or beliefs associated with a particular group or the history of an event, arising naturally or deliberately fostered. Lets address a few of the mythologies that "Mother Culture" has cultivated in our society.

1. Our (human) population can and should grow, without limit. O.K. so maybe you haven't heard this explicitly. The evidence of this myth in our culture is clearly evident. There are between 8 and 10 Billion (that's B, billion) people on the planet according to the most recent estimates. That is up from the beginning of the twentieth century, when about 1.5 to 3 billion people inhabited the Earth. Its also expected to top about 12 billion by 2025, which could cause even bigger problems than we have now. Now, that's not to say that no other animal on this planet is as abundant. For instance, ants and many insects number closer to the hundreds of billions! So do coral colonies. However, those organisms don't practice a "food-getting" technique that creates a surplus like totalitarian agriculture. They also don't consume resources like we do (as a fire devours, well, anything). Just think of how badly Somalia is being depleted of the mineral (I forget the name) that they put in the plastic of new cell phones, that makes it so much harder than previous plastics, for example. That mineral is not being replaced. I highly doubt that the phones will be recycled, and even if they were, there is no way that we could replenish the Earth's stores, like the Earth naturally would in a normal carbon cycle (if you need clarification on the carbon cycle, comment and ask). So, other members of the huge food web we play a part in have more sustainable lifestyles and therefore the Earth can sustain them better. However, sometimes when a new member joins the food web, others will become extinct. They can get out competed and "easy prey" can be hunted to extinction because their biology doesn't allow them to produce enough new individuals to keep pace with those that are eaten as prey. That is just how "evolution" moves things forward. But none of this is decided by the new member, these things were decided before that new member came around because of the limitations of species. No species is perfect (remember that for later). However, no species causes the extinction of another, purely for the intentional purpose of eradicating a competitor, except ours.

2. The Earth belongs to us (humans). If you have ever gone to church, or attend church regularly these days, you will have heard this myth. The book of Genesis even says explicitly that God gave man dominion over the "beasts of the land and sea" and the birds of the air. How can this be, if we are just as much a part of the biological community as any other member of the food web? You might argue that we are at the top of the food web. Well, you're right. That's because there are no natural predators of humans, and we can eat such a variety of other food web members because of our omnivore ancestrally-evolved diet. However, if we weren't here someone else would take our place. Accordingly, there was another occupant of that status before us. There will be another occupant when we are gone. Its kind of like when people thought that the sun revolved around the Earth and this planet was the center of the universe. When we found out it wasn't true, it was extremely hard to accept. When we found a library of evidence leading to the heliocentric conclusion, i.e. the theory of general relativity, space satellite photos, etc, it was a lot easier to grasp as a truth.

3. God made the Earth for man. Some of you might ask, how is this different from #2? Let's chop this up a bit. First, we are assuming that there was one being that created the entire universe to put one planet in one small quadrant of this vast minutiae of inflamed gas (stars), rock and energy flow for the purpose of creating one being (of millions!) that could only survive in the atmosphere of that one planet, and make that one species the ruler of all that was created otherwise. How much sense does that make? To date, no other intelligent life has been discovered. There are even planets, like Earth, that are mostly water and have land masses that protrude from those bodies of water. Those planets usually flood the land masses to an extent, but should, technically, have the same atmosphere that we enjoy. Yet, there are no humans there. At least there is no evidence of people, since we haven't been able to visit those planets (we only have satellite probe camera footage). So this means that we are all alone, right? Wrong (I believe). We haven't even begun to encounter all of the types of life that could exist in the universe. We only recently discovered that Saturn has over 200 moons (crazy, right?), so don't assume that we are the only ones in this universe, and that it was ALL "created" for us.

Finally, I want to address quite possibly the biggest myth of all. This is the one that led to the three I just discussed. That is the myth that food shortages cause famine and our style of agriculture is the only way to stop widespread hunger. The truth is rather opposite to this myth. Actually, the more food we produce, the more that production results in human famine. It works like this:

There are mice in a cage. As long as you keep the food distribution constant, the population of mice never changes. It may fluctuate between sizes, as in standard deviation. For instance, fluctuation between 110 and 90, for an average population size of 100. Since there is not enough food to support significant growth, the population stays relatively stable. If you added any more food, the population would soon grow. Since there is more food, the mice are less conservative (in the true sense of conservation) in their reproduction, and their consumption of food. If you double the food, you will get double the mice. If you then return the food distribution to its original amount, the mice will return to there original population size. This is simple biology. We are all food for something. Since we have no natural predators as humans, we only become food when we die. We are food for numerous bacteria and detritus eaters of this planet.

Now, consider the phenomenon with the mice. Since, totalitarian agriculture naturally produces a large surplus, what do you think happened to people soon after they adopted this style of food production. That's right. Our population exploded exponentially. We have come from tens of millions during ancient Rome (and still smaller before the Roman period) to about 10 billion today. That period of time is only about 2000-3000 years, which is still a blink of the Earthly eye. Consider the fact that humans existed and only remained in the tens of thousands for millions of years before the Roman empire even developed the wilderness that was Europe, not to mention the rest of the Western world. That is a staggering change, and we continue to do the same thing today. Our culture is at war with the planet. You might say that that is a harsh tone. But, say a king is going to conquer or rule something he does not already possess. What would that king have to do in order to acquire that thing. He must subdue it, usually through war. That is exactly what totalitarian agriculture does. It will cause us to destroy an entire population to produce human food, or deny other animals access to their food by building cities that destroy or restrict the habitats of the animals that were there before we came. Those are tactics of war. You can find them in the strategies of any general that has existed. They even appear, in part, in the Art of War by Sun Tzu. Check it out... Let's end here for now.

Next time I will give you some positive evidence, things that are not myths, but are also encouraging to know as beings that inhabit this planet we call home.

Peace.