October 5, 2023 • 35 mins
Is it possible to build a civilization that flies? (metaphorically speaking of course)
How did we eventually learn to fly? It wasn’t by defying gravity and disobeying aerodynamics but by learning how to work with them.
Daniel Quinn, in his novel Ishmael, argues there are laws of nature that we have to learn to live within, rather than resist, if we are to continue as a society. In this episode we explore what this “Law of Life” could be.
This is an episode of short stories, cinematic sound effects, and wacky voices. Strap in for liftoff.
Citations
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn (1992)
Scientific American (2020)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
So a while
back before the invention of the airplane,
there's this guy whose greatest wish,no desire is to fly.
He served his whole lifewalking around on the boring ground.
His feet are sore. His legs are tired.
He's had enough.
He knows he's destinedfor the freedom of the air.
(00:28):
To be honest, he's a bit full of himselfand has too much disposable income.
Ishmael doesn't give him a name.
Let's call him Ian.
Ian Bezos.
It's a terrible name,but that's never stopped him before.
So Ilan assembles what he considersto be a flying contraption.
Picture a bicycle with cardboard wingsduct taped to his arms.
(00:52):
For good measure,
he slaps on some fresh red paintand gives the beauty a daring name.
The ticker thunderbolt and one sunny dayIran Walks is proud.
Flying contraption
to the edge of the highest cliffon the highest hill he could find.
And he starts pedaling the bike downhillwith all his money.
He's going,going and wash zooms off the cliff.
(01:16):
It's hard to
tell whether he's a visionaryor a bit delusional.
But now he's out therein the middle of the air.
Higher up than ever beforein his whole life.
And the view is incredible for a moment,surrounded only by sky pedaling away.
His cardboard wings are flapping.
And at first he thinks to himself,I think I'm doing it.
(01:37):
I'm actually flying
high.
The poor, brave Ilanisn't flying to take a thunderbolt.
He's in freefall.
At first,falling can feel a lot like flying.
So when Ilan looks down to the bottomof this great ravine,
(01:58):
he thinks he's soaring over the jaggedrocks and boulders below.
He can see other failedflying contraptions
strewn across the valley floor.
Crash landed, dismembered.
The discarded remains of contraptionsthat were not successful
in their trial and error flying attempts.
And he admits to himself,some of those wreckage is pretty brutal.
He's sure glad he's not like the moronswho met their fate in the valley below.
(02:23):
But at the same time,
Ilan notices he's starting to descendjust a little.
No worries.
That's what these pedals are for.
So Ilan starts pedaling harder.
Well, a brave hero is a persistent guy.
And the father that taken Thunderboltbegins to fall.
The harder you arm continues to pedal.
(02:45):
Come on
now, my friends.
This is where our storygets a bit gruesome.
Because you and Iand any four year old knows
there is no amount of harder pedalingthat can save this doomed contraption.
And soon, it looks like the groundis starting to rush
towards him in an ever increasing speed.
What once felt like flying is
very obviously solid.
(03:09):
It's hard to know if Ilan ever realizedthis was what was happening
before it was too late.
Because very soon it becomes too late.
The ground gets closer, closer, closer
until each
(03:29):
the take or thunderbolt was never fly
because it was never designed to fly.
In our own way, we too live in a society
that wants to fly to transcend its limits.
But it's not designed to
appear on our take or thunderbolt.
Things can seem pretty promising.
Sometimes it can feel like we're flying.
(03:51):
It can feel like the limits that restrainthe rest of the community of life
don't apply to us.
But as our tinker thunderbolt fallscloser to the ground,
the crash becomes harder to ignore.
It's too late for you on Bezos now.
Eyes broken and defeatedat the bottom of the deep ravine.
But it's not yet too late for us.
(04:13):
Will we
figure out how to safely bailout of our falling bicycle?
Or can we maybe even learnhow to stay in the air?
Welcome to Episodesix of Human Nature Odyssey,
a podcast exploringhow we might avoid complete and utter
(04:38):
Cadastre fee and pass down a livable worldto future generations.
I'm Alex.
The Tinker Thunderbolt story was inspired
(05:00):
by a parable in the novelIshmael by Daniel Quinn.
Today, we continue our series on the book.
If you enjoyed that opening sceneand what it means, some more stories
and characters and sound effects,then this is the episode for you.
It'll be kind oflike a Smaug s Board of Parables.
But first, let's retrace our stepsand see how we got to this point.
(05:26):
So far,
we followed the narratorinto a strange office building
where he met a telepathicgorilla named Ishmael, who explains
The world is being destroyednot because humans are inherently evil,
but because most of the world is heldcaptive by a story called taker
mythology.
(05:49):
Ishmael callsthose who live within this global
culture taker's
taker civilizationbegan with the agricultural revolution
and built itself on what the author DanielQuin, later calls totalitarian
alien agriculture vastfields of single crops where all pests
and weeds are removed, where totalcontrol of the environment is the goal.
(06:12):
In the grand scheme of history,this is a relatively recent development
for hundreds of thousands of yearsof human history.
We lived as huntergatherers in smaller scale communities,
living mostly nomadic, foraging for food.
Ishmael callsthese kinds of societies levers.
One way to think about the differencebetween
(06:34):
takers and leversmight be that takers with our vast cities
and exponential populationgrowth and technological advancement
are the ones metaphorically trying to fly
in the process of our attempted flight.
We seem to be rapidly acceleratingtowards the ground
(06:54):
and bringing down the rest of the worldwith us in a looming mass extinction.
The levers, however, are lessfocused on trying to fly
but have masteredhow to walk on the ground.
Hold on, hold on.
Wait just one frickin minute here.
Is this male about to tell mewe've got to live in the wilderness
and become hunter gatherers again?
Is this going to be some primitivist,noble, savage, romantic, idealist crap?
(07:18):
Because good luck trying to convincemy great Aunt Berkshire to stop watching.
Let's make a dealand go forward for berries instead.
Well, luckily for great amber truth,that's not what Ishmael is suggesting
we do.
When the narrator asksif he's saying that we're supposed
to go back to being hunter gatherers.
Ishmael, who is alwaysjust a little grumpy, responds quote,
(07:39):
That, of course, is an inane idea.
Your problem isn't agriculture,but rather your insane
notion that all the food in the worldbelongs to you.
The lever lifestyle isn't about huntingand gathering.
It's about lettingthe rest of the community live.
And agriculturalists can dothat as well as hunter gatherers.
What I've been at pains to give youis a new paradigm of human history.
(08:02):
The lever life is not an antiquated thingthat is back there somewhere.
Your task is not to reach back,but to reach forward.
Unquote.
What Ishmaelis saying is that we can't start over.
Take your civilizationis not going to go away overnight.
In fact, it would be really catastrophicfor the vast
(08:23):
majority of people alivetoday, myself included.
If it went away overnight.
We have to start from where we are.
And for better or worse, we have inheriteda massively complex civilization.
Where do we go from here?
So let's think about Ewan Bezos
riding his bicyclewith cardboard wings off the cliff.
(08:45):
He was doomed to fail from the very start.
But as we know, it's not impossibleto build something that flies.
You just have to understandthe laws of gravity and aerodynamics.
Is it possible to build a human society,
so to speak, that flies
without destroying the worldand ourselves in the process?
(09:12):
Ishmael finds it very
curious that takers haven'tfigured out this by now.
As he says, quote,You know how to split atoms.
How to send explorers to the moon.
How to splice genes, unquote.
But we haven't figured out how to livewithout destroying the world.
How does one find out such a thing?
How to live on the earthwithout destroying it?
(09:35):
Well,how do we learn to do anything properly?
There seems to be a few wayswe usually go about this.
We can consult prophets and gurus.
You know these guys?
Confucius, the Buddha, Moses, Muhammad,Jesus, Joe Rogan.
Or we can follow the lawswritten by elected officials
and constitutionscrafted by Founding Fathers.
(09:55):
There's a lot of fine writing in therethat'll go into great detail
what to do and not to do.
But Ishmael is proposing to learn howto live in balance with the natural world.
We need to work
in the natural world.
Now, this is where our good old Takea mythology had from a couple episodes
ago, comes in and says, Don'teven bother trying.
(10:15):
You're not going to find anythinguseful out there.
Stay inside. You'll get your cold. Oh,how I missed you.
Take your hat.
Ishmael proposesthat this supposed flaw humanity has,
according to taken mythology, isn'tthat we don't know how to live in balance.
It's that we think we can't know.
Let's give a moment of silenceto our long lost friend, Ilan Bezos,
(10:37):
who tragically thought his rickety bikewith wings stood a chance to lift
off the ground and fly into the air.
He wanted so badly
to fly like the airplanesthat soar over us today.
The problemwas, the only way he thought to try
flying was simply by trial and error.
(10:58):
But what would have helpedmake his process a bit more efficient
is a particular kind of knowledge.
In the case of airplanes, Aeronautsfinally learned
how to fly by, noticingthe patterns of nature around them.
Specifically, the law of aerodynamics.
(11:22):
In 1903,
two brothers slash bicycle salesmenfinally figured it out.
An article from Scientific Americanexplains that the Wright brothers did
so by, quote, reading wind conditions,maintaining speed and equilibrium,
and using the aircraft's controlsto make subtle adjustments
so that it traced graceful linesduring flight and landing.
(11:45):
Essentially,they had to adjust their behavior
to be in accordwith noticeable natural patterns.
A baby discovers these patternswhen they push things off their highchair
to crash to the floor.
They're doing it again and again,not because they're idiots,
but because they're in part testingto see if they can count on this.
And then there was another foot
(12:09):
falls every time.
The law of gravity isn't written assome divine law handed down from the gods.
It's expressed in the world around us.
And just as we can observethe law of gravity by observing matter,
Ishmael proposes, we can findthe laws of nature that will teach us
how to live without destroying the worldby observing
(12:30):
the community of life.
Here's a quick flashback to Episode two.
What's the tiniest living creatureyou can find where you are?
If there's a direct line going back fromus all the way to the first form of life.
That creature you're seeing
and you are cousins, your family.
(12:53):
What was the little creature you found?
The billions of speciesthat share the planet with us are part
of what Ishmael refersto as the community of life.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Sorry, sorry.I was on a lunch break.
What do we talk about now?
What about the life community or whatever?
The community of life?
Yeah, sure. Whatever.The community of life.
Why are we talking about those imbeciles?
(13:15):
Well, because Ishmael suggeststhere might be some kind of law of nature
that the community follows.
That taker culture doesn't.
Okay.
Yeah, well, yeah, you don't followwhatever dumb wall they follow.
You humans,you do whatever the hell you want.
Even if there was some kind of wall.
It wouldn't be relevant for you.
That kind of thingmight apply to ants and elephants.
(13:36):
But come on.
Have you seen your brain?Don't touch my head.
Okay. Okay. Sheesh.
Sensitive.
Today,I'm gonna go back on my lunch break.
You want me knowwhen I'm needed? Well, do.
Can't seem to lose that thing.
I'm not believing to take your hat here.
It's not like we're exemptfrom the other laws of nature.
Gravity still applies to us, just like itdoes everything else.
(13:57):
Just because we did
learn to fly doesn't mean we're exemptfrom the law of aerodynamics.
Exactly the opposite.
It means we had to learn to goalong with it.
Now, as Ishmael pointsout, the law of aerodynamics
wasn't always relevant for humans.
It only became relevantwhen we wanted to learn how to fly.
(14:17):
Ishmael says, quote,
When you're on the brink of extinctionand want to live for a while longer,
the laws governing life might conceivablybecome relevant, unquote.
Ishmael points outthat when Sir Isaac Newton
hypothesizedthe existence of the law of gravity,
what was remarkable about thatwasn't that he pointed out Things
(14:38):
fall to the ground. Everyone knows that.
Here's how Ishmael puts it.
Quote, Newton's achievement was not indiscovering the phenomenon of gravity.
It was in formulating the phenomenonas the law.
Unquote.
So the interesting thing to us
about finding a hypothetical law of lifeisn't going to be the suggestion that,
(15:00):
Oh, yeah,I think nature is actually organized.
The trick is going to be articulating itinto a cohesive theory.
So what would the law of life be about?
Well, the law of aerodynamicsisn't about flight, really,
but as the narratorputs it in his conversation with Ishmael.
The law of aerodynamics is, quote,
(15:22):
certainly relevant to flight, unquote.
It applies to birdsjust as it applies to airplanes.
So the law of lifewouldn't be about civilization,
but it would be relevant to it.
I'd like to share with you my versionof another parable from Ishmael.
The story of the three dirty tricks as told from the perspective of taken mythology
(15:47):
and as every
Taken knows,the gods made the world for us humans.
It has long been understoodby many societies throughout
to take a civilization that the Earth isat the very center of the universe.
Humans, as any good taker could tellyou, were created separately from the rest
(16:07):
of the films and Wild Beasts that the godsmade for us to do with what we please.
And finally, what should be obviousto any civilized devotee of the take
a tradition is that whatever silly rulesthe gods have for the plants and animals
have absolutely nothing to do with us.
These are things take could rest a shodanfor hundreds if not thousands of years.
(16:31):
That is until relatively recently.
You see, we thought thatthe scientific revolution would further
our mastery over the environmentand conquering of the planet.
And in many ways it has.
Science has helped us extractmore oil, created deadly pesticides,
and more precisely, genetically engineerour food.
(16:54):
But, well, it seems
science has also recently uncovered some,shall we say,
disturbing truths about the worldthat truly
are quite uncomfortable.
Actually, it's really quite amusing ifyou're inclined to have a sense of humor.
It appears the gods, for some dastardly
(17:17):
reason, have playedthree dirty tricks on us.
For one, the world is apparently not
at the center of the universewhere we supposed it would be.
In fact, many of us were quite aghastto learn that the earth is a pale
blue dot, one of billions among the stars.
The second trick turned out to bethat humanity
(17:40):
is not the pinnacle of creation
or the finishing touches of evolution.
No, it appears humansevolved from the common slime
like everything else,and are evolving still.
The third and final trick,and this one truly
pains me to even speak out loud.
(18:04):
The third trick is that
humanity is not exemptfrom the law of life.
I know. Horrifying.
If you ask me,this is clearly the meanest trick of all.
After all, if we really were madeto be the rulers of the world,
why would we have to follow its lawslike any other creature?
I can't.
(18:24):
I just can't.
It's one thing that we're notat the center of the universe.
Okay, fine.
Have it your way.
And sure,
perhaps we evolved from a common ancestorwith the rest of the community of life.
We can accept such bitter truths.
But to
the third trick, I say noacceptance is possible.
Take a civilization willnever, can never believe.
(18:46):
We must live within the law of life.
It is the very rejection of this factthat is the foundation of our dear
and beloved Tico mythology itself.
And seeing
as Ishmael says, quote,Every law has effects
(19:08):
or it wouldn'tbe discoverable as a law, unquote.
So what would be its effects?
Well, maybe the six mass extinction
is the very effect of usnot living in accord with the law of life.
Maybe we could describe the lawas species that live in accord with it.
Continue to adapt and evolve.
(19:28):
Species who do not go extinct.
To help us imagine what it would look liketo live within the law of life.
Ishmael shares another parable
The story of the houses of a, B and C.
As always, I will be relaying the storyin my own words
and of course, adding my own little flares
(19:51):
and imagine you're an anthropologist
from an esteemed university,from some very sophisticated place.
You've been given an exciting assignmentto go study the mysterious people
referred to as the House of a.
(20:12):
Aside from being namedfor just one letter, these people have
another fascinating aspect,which you hope to learn more about.
All right.
Pretty soon I'll be there.
Meet the localsand return to the university.
With a paper so academically rigorous,the dean will have no choice
but to beg me to accept that new facultyposition.
(20:33):
You were determined and have traveledvery far to get to the house of a.
It was a long train ride through stunningmountain peaks and mist covered valleys.
And it's been a long, hot, dusty walksince you got off the station.
There wasn't even anyone elseto carry your bags.
But finally, you make it tothe small encampment of the eight people.
(20:54):
A few children are running aroundand giggling.
Elders smile and wave to you.
They are clearly an amicableand peaceful people.
A representative comes out to greet you.
Hi there.
She says, hi. I'm from the house of a.
You are welcome here.
Please feel at homewiping the sweat off your sweaty brow.
You say thank you.
(21:15):
Thank you. Really appreciate it.
Do you guys have something I could drink?
Like a lemonade?
No, no, we don't have lemonade.
You nod and apologize, recognizingit was weird.
You assume they would, right?
How about a snack?
Yes. There's plenty of food.
Here, let me show you.
(21:36):
You walk some more followingclose behind your guide.
Tired from a day's travelsand tired to walk further still.
Soon you come to the edgeof the house of a
and across a meadowyou see another gathering of people.
Those people, she informs.
You, are from the house of BE.
This is where we get our snacks, mealsand feasts.
(21:57):
You decided
not ask about the similarly bland namingof these other people and instead ask.
Oh, perfect. That'd be great.
Where do you think I'd find that snack?
The B people are our snack.
They are our food.
Now, hold on one minute.
Your studies didn't prepare you for this.
(22:18):
The the beep, beep, beep.
People are your are your food.
Yes, of course.
Well, then why aren't they runningand screaming in fear?
They're just casually livingright next to you.
Why run?
There's no need their own food.
The people from the House of C,they live right over there.
(22:40):
And she points to, indeed,another gathering of people
at the edge of the forest.
They, too, seem to benot all that concerned that
those who would devour them are rightnearby.
You are appalled, bewildered and confused.
You say to yourself,Come on, Larry Obelisk.
Oh, yeah.
By the way, your name is very obvious.
Keep yourself together.
(23:02):
Think of the faculty seat.
So you say to your guide,collecting yourself.
The House of A consumesthe House of B and the House of B
consumes the house of C.
You get it?
So is this some kind of hierarchy thing?
(23:23):
Do you control the B peopleand do the B people control the C people?
Your guide from the people looks at youa bit pitifully.
Well, that wouldn't make much sense.
After all, we in the house,they are the food to the house of C.
Oh, God. You realize what's happeninghere?
(23:45):
It's some kind of cannibalistichuman centipede.
You are disgustedand can't take it anymore.
How can you accept this?
You blurt out, throwing awayall those years of anthropologist training
and exorbitant studentloans out the window.
How can you live in such horror and fearand lawlessness?
Lawlessness?
(24:05):
She asks, seemingly not offended,as if talking to an ignorant child.
We have a law and follow it strictly.
The bees follow it and so do the CS.
We all follow it.
Okay, stop the tape.
Interesting.
We're going to say goodbyeto the people from the houses of A, B,
(24:28):
and C, along with our goofy anthropologistand return
to the real world.
I remember being a kid in my back yard
watching this hawkswoop down and eat a mouse.
My older neighborssaw it too and remarked how terrible
the animal world is so cruel.
And I thought to myself, Well,what the hell is the hawk supposed to do?
(24:50):
Are you a vegetarian?
I asked my neighbor. She said No.
Sometimes the natural world's foodweb is described as, as Ishmael
puts it, quote, All this chaos and savage,relentless competition, unquote.
The Christian version
of Take Your Mythology IdolizesWhen The Lion Lays Down with the lamb.
(25:11):
Now, that would be heaven.
Not all this.
I eat you, you eat me. Nonsense.
However, contrary to take your belief,
the natural world is not at war.
Just as the A, B and Cpeople were not at war.
The Lions and the Lambs are only enemies.
And take your mythologies. Imagination.
The lion doesn't massacrea flock of sheep as Ishmael explains,
(25:34):
it kills one to satisfy its hunger,not its hatred.
Because the lion, as well as the lamb,follows the law of life.
But what would it look likeif they broke it?
Ishmael describesa hypothetical scenario out on the East
African savanna,and I'll take you there now.
Nature documentary style.
(26:02):
Imagine
that you were a hyena out on the savanna.
You live in parks,have a small and rather cute fur coat.
Unlike a typical hyena, you possessan absolutely insatiable appetite.
Now there are plenty of gazellesfor you to eat, but as a hyena,
you are not the only specieswho fancies gazelles.
(26:25):
You must contend with the lions.
But you've grown tiredof sharing these tasty gazelles.
And you realize there would beso many more gazelles around
if there weren't all those lionsgobbling them up.
So you decide to eliminate the lions
(26:49):
that's observedthe effect of this decision.
Soon there aren't any more lions eatingwhat could have been yours.
You no longer have to share.
But as your population increasesyour foods,
supply decreases, which eventuallydecreases your population.
(27:10):
Here we can see that the
loss of life trends towards bats.
But you and your hyena friendsno longer want to live by this law.
Why should you?
Sure.
Your food supply has decreased,but there must be a fix to this problem.
You've already killed offyour competitors, the lions.
(27:30):
But now youhyenas have done so well for yourselves.
There's not enough gazelles to go around.
Clearly, there needs to be more gazelles,
though. There's another problem.
The gazelles share their foodwith the zebras and the wildebeests.
You don't eat zebra or wildebeest,so they're worthless to you.
(27:51):
These are your foods competitors.
Therefore,you think they must be eliminated as well
so there can be more gazelles.
Your rule becomes if you don't eat it,
you kill itto make more room for your food.
Goodbye. Zebras could goodbye wildebeests.
The gazellesno longer have to compete with them,
(28:14):
which meansthere are now a lot more gazelles.
But a new problem arises.
There are so many gazelles, there'sno longer enough grass for them to eat.
The law of lifecontinues to trend towards balance.
But you and the other hyenashave exempted yourself
from the law of lifeso you don't have to stop there.
(28:35):
You've already killed offyour competitors.
You've killed off your foods competitors.
Now you just have to kill the foodof your food's food competitors.
Unfortunately for the gazelles,the savanna is covered
with many types of grasses.
They cannot eat, which means any plantthe gazelles do not eat.
Are now your competitors twice removed?
(28:58):
Pretty soon, you and your fellow hyenas
will find themselvesin a sort of constant war with the world.
To maintainthis behavior, you will find it necessary
to labor intensely to constantly increaseyour food production.
Innovate new ways to growwhat you eat and kill what you do.
Not every plantwhich your prey does not eat
(29:20):
will now become a weedyou must eradicate at the first sign.
It will be a tiring affair, attemptingto live outside the law of life.
Ambitioushyenas will insist on this grueling labor,
but sooner or laterthey will find it an impossible task.
The Law of Life Trends towards balance.
(29:43):
Ishmael says, quote,
Once you exempt yourself fromthe law of life, everything in the world
except your food and the food of your foodbecomes an enemy to be exterminated.
Unquote.
To exempt ourselves from the law of life
is to declare war on the world.
So like those hypothetical hyenas,
(30:04):
takers are attemptingto live outside the law of life.
This is the
guiding manifesto of takers civilization.
In fact, as Ishmael puts it, takers
have incorporated, quote,as a fundamental policy.
Every single thing that is prohibitedunder the law.
Unquote.
So remember when we talked about how SirIsaac Newton didn't do anything new
(30:26):
by pointing out there's gravity,but by formulating it as a law.
Here's how we can attemptto put the law of life into words.
There is competition in nature,but it's limited.
Ishmael says, quote,You may compete to the full extent
of your capabilities, butyou may not hunt down your competitors,
destroy their food,or deny them access to food, unquote.
(30:50):
A succinct way of putting it is, quote,
You may compete, but you may not wage war.
Unquote.
This is as Ishmael puts
it, a peacekeeping lawthat promotes biodiversity.
And biodiversity isn't a luxury.
It's a matter of survival itself.
The greater the diversity of an ecosystem,the more resilient
(31:11):
it will be to unexpected changes.
Okay, so there are three fundamental ways
to take a civilized ocean goesagainst this law of limited competition.
One takercivilization eliminates competitors
simply because they are competitors.
We kill wolves, lions and other predatorswhen they aren't
(31:33):
even attacking usjust because they prey on our food.
To take your civilization denies
our competitors like wolvesand lions, access to food.
We pen up livestock, sheep, cows, goats
and fiercely defend themfrom being eaten by anyone but us.
Three And finally,
take your civilization destroysthe competitors of our foods food.
(31:57):
So if there's a plant that sheep don't eatand it takes up
space from the plants and grassthat sheep do eat, we consider that
plant a weed and remove itregardless of who else would eat it.
The benefits of
breaking this law are obvious.
It has given us seeminglyunlimited growth.
(32:18):
But what are the consequences?
We are finding there are limits.
After all,
as Ishmael summarizes,it seems there is a law of nature
that informs how all species, Homo sapiensincluded,
(32:40):
can live in balancewith the rest of the world.
This law won't inform us on every aspectof our culture like traffic
violations, tax brackets, or the logisticsof copyright infringement.
It's not that specific,but it will inform us on
how we ought to liveif we hope to continue to exist.
Unfortunately for the rest of the world,one species
(33:02):
exempting itself from the law of lifeis as destructive as every species.
Doing so. The result is the same.
Biodiversity is devastatedand reduced for the sake of one species.
All the destruction we see around us,
it's the consequencesof trying to live outside
this law.
(33:36):
Now, this doesn't mean we go out and standin the middle of a field
somewhere and shout,okay, hawks in lions, take me now.
I'm ready.
Living to the best of our abilityis a good thing.
The point is,when our lives are set up at the expense
of the rest of life on this planet,we're doing ourselves in the long run.
(33:57):
So if we want to continue existingand not join Iran,
Bezos is wreckageat the bottom of the valley floor.
If we even want to learn how to fly,we have to learn how to live
within the law of life.
Thanks for listening.
On the next episode of Human NatureOdyssey,
(34:17):
it'll be up to us to figure out now what?
What do we do with all this?
How do we help create a livable future?
Until next time.
What can you notice about the law of lifearound you?
Where you seetake your civilization breaking this law.
And what might it meanfor us to end our war with the world
(34:38):
and to live within the law of life?
Talk to you soon.
If you'd like
to support Human Nature Odyssey,please share it with a friend.
Subscribe wherever you enjoy your podcastsand check out our Patreon.
We had our first bonus interviewthis month with author
Jay Snodgrass about his book Genesisand the Rise of Civilization.
(34:59):
You can listen to the full hourconversation at Patria, CNN.com.
Slash Human Nature Odyssey.
There you'll find a bunch of otherwritings, transcripts of episodes,
audio extras and soonmany more interviews of bonus guests.
Thank you to everyonewho has given their support so far.
Our theme music is Celestial SodaPop by Ray Lynch.
You can find the link in our show notesand thank you to Matty and Austin
(35:22):
for their voice.
Acting contributions to the House of AC.
Matty is also a very talented musicianand you can find a link to her music
in the show notes
on.
So a while
back before the invention of the airplane,
there's this guy whose greatest wish,no desire is to fly.
He served his whole lifewalking around on the boring ground.
His feet are sore. His legs are tired.
He's had enough.
He knows he's destinedfor the freedom of the air.
(00:28):
To be honest, he's a bit full of himselfand has too much disposable income.
Ishmael doesn't give him a name.
Let's call him Ian.
Ian Bezos.
It's a terrible name,but that's never stopped him before.
So Ilan assembles what he considersto be a flying contraption.
Picture a bicycle with cardboard wingsduct taped to his arms.
(00:52):
For good measure,
he slaps on some fresh red paintand gives the beauty a daring name.
The ticker thunderbolt and one sunny dayIran Walks is proud.
Flying contraption
to the edge of the highest cliffon the highest hill he could find.
And he starts pedaling the bike downhillwith all his money.
He's going,going and wash zooms off the cliff.
(01:16):
It's hard to
tell whether he's a visionaryor a bit delusional.
But now he's out therein the middle of the air.
Higher up than ever beforein his whole life.
And the view is incredible for a moment,surrounded only by sky pedaling away.
His cardboard wings are flapping.
And at first he thinks to himself,I think I'm doing it.
(01:37):
I'm actually flying
high.
The poor, brave Ilanisn't flying to take a thunderbolt.
He's in freefall.
At first,falling can feel a lot like flying.
So when Ilan looks down to the bottomof this great ravine,
(01:58):
he thinks he's soaring over the jaggedrocks and boulders below.
He can see other failedflying contraptions
strewn across the valley floor.
Crash landed, dismembered.
The discarded remains of contraptionsthat were not successful
in their trial and error flying attempts.
And he admits to himself,some of those wreckage is pretty brutal.
He's sure glad he's not like the moronswho met their fate in the valley below.
(02:23):
But at the same time,
Ilan notices he's starting to descendjust a little.
No worries.
That's what these pedals are for.
So Ilan starts pedaling harder.
Well, a brave hero is a persistent guy.
And the father that taken Thunderboltbegins to fall.
The harder you arm continues to pedal.
(02:45):
Come on
now, my friends.
This is where our storygets a bit gruesome.
Because you and Iand any four year old knows
there is no amount of harder pedalingthat can save this doomed contraption.
And soon, it looks like the groundis starting to rush
towards him in an ever increasing speed.
What once felt like flying is
very obviously solid.
(03:09):
It's hard to know if Ilan ever realizedthis was what was happening
before it was too late.
Because very soon it becomes too late.
The ground gets closer, closer, closer
until each
(03:29):
the take or thunderbolt was never fly
because it was never designed to fly.
In our own way, we too live in a society
that wants to fly to transcend its limits.
But it's not designed to
appear on our take or thunderbolt.
Things can seem pretty promising.
Sometimes it can feel like we're flying.
(03:51):
It can feel like the limits that restrainthe rest of the community of life
don't apply to us.
But as our tinker thunderbolt fallscloser to the ground,
the crash becomes harder to ignore.
It's too late for you on Bezos now.
Eyes broken and defeatedat the bottom of the deep ravine.
But it's not yet too late for us.
(04:13):
Will we
figure out how to safely bailout of our falling bicycle?
Or can we maybe even learnhow to stay in the air?
Welcome to Episodesix of Human Nature Odyssey,
a podcast exploringhow we might avoid complete and utter
(04:38):
Cadastre fee and pass down a livable worldto future generations.
I'm Alex.
The Tinker Thunderbolt story was inspired
(05:00):
by a parable in the novelIshmael by Daniel Quinn.
Today, we continue our series on the book.
If you enjoyed that opening sceneand what it means, some more stories
and characters and sound effects,then this is the episode for you.
It'll be kind oflike a Smaug s Board of Parables.
But first, let's retrace our stepsand see how we got to this point.
(05:26):
So far,
we followed the narratorinto a strange office building
where he met a telepathicgorilla named Ishmael, who explains
The world is being destroyednot because humans are inherently evil,
but because most of the world is heldcaptive by a story called taker
mythology.
(05:49):
Ishmael callsthose who live within this global
culture taker's
taker civilizationbegan with the agricultural revolution
and built itself on what the author DanielQuin, later calls totalitarian
alien agriculture vastfields of single crops where all pests
and weeds are removed, where totalcontrol of the environment is the goal.
(06:12):
In the grand scheme of history,this is a relatively recent development
for hundreds of thousands of yearsof human history.
We lived as huntergatherers in smaller scale communities,
living mostly nomadic, foraging for food.
Ishmael callsthese kinds of societies levers.
One way to think about the differencebetween
(06:34):
takers and leversmight be that takers with our vast cities
and exponential populationgrowth and technological advancement
are the ones metaphorically trying to fly
in the process of our attempted flight.
We seem to be rapidly acceleratingtowards the ground
(06:54):
and bringing down the rest of the worldwith us in a looming mass extinction.
The levers, however, are lessfocused on trying to fly
but have masteredhow to walk on the ground.
Hold on, hold on.
Wait just one frickin minute here.
Is this male about to tell mewe've got to live in the wilderness
and become hunter gatherers again?
Is this going to be some primitivist,noble, savage, romantic, idealist crap?
(07:18):
Because good luck trying to convincemy great Aunt Berkshire to stop watching.
Let's make a dealand go forward for berries instead.
Well, luckily for great amber truth,that's not what Ishmael is suggesting
we do.
When the narrator asksif he's saying that we're supposed
to go back to being hunter gatherers.
Ishmael, who is alwaysjust a little grumpy, responds quote,
(07:39):
That, of course, is an inane idea.
Your problem isn't agriculture,but rather your insane
notion that all the food in the worldbelongs to you.
The lever lifestyle isn't about huntingand gathering.
It's about lettingthe rest of the community live.
And agriculturalists can dothat as well as hunter gatherers.
What I've been at pains to give youis a new paradigm of human history.
(08:02):
The lever life is not an antiquated thingthat is back there somewhere.
Your task is not to reach back,but to reach forward.
Unquote.
What Ishmaelis saying is that we can't start over.
Take your civilizationis not going to go away overnight.
In fact, it would be really catastrophicfor the vast
(08:23):
majority of people alivetoday, myself included.
If it went away overnight.
We have to start from where we are.
And for better or worse, we have inheriteda massively complex civilization.
Where do we go from here?
So let's think about Ewan Bezos
riding his bicyclewith cardboard wings off the cliff.
(08:45):
He was doomed to fail from the very start.
But as we know, it's not impossibleto build something that flies.
You just have to understandthe laws of gravity and aerodynamics.
Is it possible to build a human society,
so to speak, that flies
without destroying the worldand ourselves in the process?
(09:12):
Ishmael finds it very
curious that takers haven'tfigured out this by now.
As he says, quote,You know how to split atoms.
How to send explorers to the moon.
How to splice genes, unquote.
But we haven't figured out how to livewithout destroying the world.
How does one find out such a thing?
How to live on the earthwithout destroying it?
(09:35):
Well,how do we learn to do anything properly?
There seems to be a few wayswe usually go about this.
We can consult prophets and gurus.
You know these guys?
Confucius, the Buddha, Moses, Muhammad,Jesus, Joe Rogan.
Or we can follow the lawswritten by elected officials
and constitutionscrafted by Founding Fathers.
(09:55):
There's a lot of fine writing in therethat'll go into great detail
what to do and not to do.
But Ishmael is proposing to learn howto live in balance with the natural world.
We need to work
in the natural world.
Now, this is where our good old Takea mythology had from a couple episodes
ago, comes in and says, Don'teven bother trying.
(10:15):
You're not going to find anythinguseful out there.
Stay inside. You'll get your cold. Oh,how I missed you.
Take your hat.
Ishmael proposesthat this supposed flaw humanity has,
according to taken mythology, isn'tthat we don't know how to live in balance.
It's that we think we can't know.
Let's give a moment of silenceto our long lost friend, Ilan Bezos,
(10:37):
who tragically thought his rickety bikewith wings stood a chance to lift
off the ground and fly into the air.
He wanted so badly
to fly like the airplanesthat soar over us today.
The problemwas, the only way he thought to try
flying was simply by trial and error.
(10:58):
But what would have helpedmake his process a bit more efficient
is a particular kind of knowledge.
In the case of airplanes, Aeronautsfinally learned
how to fly by, noticingthe patterns of nature around them.
Specifically, the law of aerodynamics.
(11:22):
In 1903,
two brothers slash bicycle salesmenfinally figured it out.
An article from Scientific Americanexplains that the Wright brothers did
so by, quote, reading wind conditions,maintaining speed and equilibrium,
and using the aircraft's controlsto make subtle adjustments
so that it traced graceful linesduring flight and landing.
(11:45):
Essentially,they had to adjust their behavior
to be in accordwith noticeable natural patterns.
A baby discovers these patternswhen they push things off their highchair
to crash to the floor.
They're doing it again and again,not because they're idiots,
but because they're in part testingto see if they can count on this.
And then there was another foot
(12:09):
falls every time.
The law of gravity isn't written assome divine law handed down from the gods.
It's expressed in the world around us.
And just as we can observethe law of gravity by observing matter,
Ishmael proposes, we can findthe laws of nature that will teach us
how to live without destroying the worldby observing
(12:30):
the community of life.
Here's a quick flashback to Episode two.
What's the tiniest living creatureyou can find where you are?
If there's a direct line going back fromus all the way to the first form of life.
That creature you're seeing
and you are cousins, your family.
(12:53):
What was the little creature you found?
The billions of speciesthat share the planet with us are part
of what Ishmael refersto as the community of life.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Sorry, sorry.I was on a lunch break.
What do we talk about now?
What about the life community or whatever?
The community of life?
Yeah, sure. Whatever.The community of life.
Why are we talking about those imbeciles?
(13:15):
Well, because Ishmael suggeststhere might be some kind of law of nature
that the community follows.
That taker culture doesn't.
Okay.
Yeah, well, yeah, you don't followwhatever dumb wall they follow.
You humans,you do whatever the hell you want.
Even if there was some kind of wall.
It wouldn't be relevant for you.
That kind of thingmight apply to ants and elephants.
(13:36):
But come on.
Have you seen your brain?Don't touch my head.
Okay. Okay. Sheesh.
Sensitive.
Today,I'm gonna go back on my lunch break.
You want me knowwhen I'm needed? Well, do.
Can't seem to lose that thing.
I'm not believing to take your hat here.
It's not like we're exemptfrom the other laws of nature.
Gravity still applies to us, just like itdoes everything else.
(13:57):
Just because we did
learn to fly doesn't mean we're exemptfrom the law of aerodynamics.
Exactly the opposite.
It means we had to learn to goalong with it.
Now, as Ishmael pointsout, the law of aerodynamics
wasn't always relevant for humans.
It only became relevantwhen we wanted to learn how to fly.
(14:17):
Ishmael says, quote,
When you're on the brink of extinctionand want to live for a while longer,
the laws governing life might conceivablybecome relevant, unquote.
Ishmael points outthat when Sir Isaac Newton
hypothesizedthe existence of the law of gravity,
what was remarkable about thatwasn't that he pointed out Things
(14:38):
fall to the ground. Everyone knows that.
Here's how Ishmael puts it.
Quote, Newton's achievement was not indiscovering the phenomenon of gravity.
It was in formulating the phenomenonas the law.
Unquote.
So the interesting thing to us
about finding a hypothetical law of lifeisn't going to be the suggestion that,
(15:00):
Oh, yeah,I think nature is actually organized.
The trick is going to be articulating itinto a cohesive theory.
So what would the law of life be about?
Well, the law of aerodynamicsisn't about flight, really,
but as the narratorputs it in his conversation with Ishmael.
The law of aerodynamics is, quote,
(15:22):
certainly relevant to flight, unquote.
It applies to birdsjust as it applies to airplanes.
So the law of lifewouldn't be about civilization,
but it would be relevant to it.
I'd like to share with you my versionof another parable from Ishmael.
The story of the three dirty tricks as told from the perspective of taken mythology
(15:47):
and as every
Taken knows,the gods made the world for us humans.
It has long been understoodby many societies throughout
to take a civilization that the Earth isat the very center of the universe.
Humans, as any good taker could tellyou, were created separately from the rest
(16:07):
of the films and Wild Beasts that the godsmade for us to do with what we please.
And finally, what should be obviousto any civilized devotee of the take
a tradition is that whatever silly rulesthe gods have for the plants and animals
have absolutely nothing to do with us.
These are things take could rest a shodanfor hundreds if not thousands of years.
(16:31):
That is until relatively recently.
You see, we thought thatthe scientific revolution would further
our mastery over the environmentand conquering of the planet.
And in many ways it has.
Science has helped us extractmore oil, created deadly pesticides,
and more precisely, genetically engineerour food.
(16:54):
But, well, it seems
science has also recently uncovered some,shall we say,
disturbing truths about the worldthat truly
are quite uncomfortable.
Actually, it's really quite amusing ifyou're inclined to have a sense of humor.
It appears the gods, for some dastardly
(17:17):
reason, have playedthree dirty tricks on us.
For one, the world is apparently not
at the center of the universewhere we supposed it would be.
In fact, many of us were quite aghastto learn that the earth is a pale
blue dot, one of billions among the stars.
The second trick turned out to bethat humanity
(17:40):
is not the pinnacle of creation
or the finishing touches of evolution.
No, it appears humansevolved from the common slime
like everything else,and are evolving still.
The third and final trick,and this one truly
pains me to even speak out loud.
(18:04):
The third trick is that
humanity is not exemptfrom the law of life.
I know. Horrifying.
If you ask me,this is clearly the meanest trick of all.
After all, if we really were madeto be the rulers of the world,
why would we have to follow its lawslike any other creature?
I can't.
(18:24):
I just can't.
It's one thing that we're notat the center of the universe.
Okay, fine.
Have it your way.
And sure,
perhaps we evolved from a common ancestorwith the rest of the community of life.
We can accept such bitter truths.
But to
the third trick, I say noacceptance is possible.
Take a civilization willnever, can never believe.
(18:46):
We must live within the law of life.
It is the very rejection of this factthat is the foundation of our dear
and beloved Tico mythology itself.
And seeing
as Ishmael says, quote,Every law has effects
(19:08):
or it wouldn'tbe discoverable as a law, unquote.
So what would be its effects?
Well, maybe the six mass extinction
is the very effect of usnot living in accord with the law of life.
Maybe we could describe the lawas species that live in accord with it.
Continue to adapt and evolve.
(19:28):
Species who do not go extinct.
To help us imagine what it would look liketo live within the law of life.
Ishmael shares another parable
The story of the houses of a, B and C.
As always, I will be relaying the storyin my own words
and of course, adding my own little flares
(19:51):
and imagine you're an anthropologist
from an esteemed university,from some very sophisticated place.
You've been given an exciting assignmentto go study the mysterious people
referred to as the House of a.
(20:12):
Aside from being namedfor just one letter, these people have
another fascinating aspect,which you hope to learn more about.
All right.
Pretty soon I'll be there.
Meet the localsand return to the university.
With a paper so academically rigorous,the dean will have no choice
but to beg me to accept that new facultyposition.
(20:33):
You were determined and have traveledvery far to get to the house of a.
It was a long train ride through stunningmountain peaks and mist covered valleys.
And it's been a long, hot, dusty walksince you got off the station.
There wasn't even anyone elseto carry your bags.
But finally, you make it tothe small encampment of the eight people.
(20:54):
A few children are running aroundand giggling.
Elders smile and wave to you.
They are clearly an amicableand peaceful people.
A representative comes out to greet you.
Hi there.
She says, hi. I'm from the house of a.
You are welcome here.
Please feel at homewiping the sweat off your sweaty brow.
You say thank you.
(21:15):
Thank you. Really appreciate it.
Do you guys have something I could drink?
Like a lemonade?
No, no, we don't have lemonade.
You nod and apologize, recognizingit was weird.
You assume they would, right?
How about a snack?
Yes. There's plenty of food.
Here, let me show you.
(21:36):
You walk some more followingclose behind your guide.
Tired from a day's travelsand tired to walk further still.
Soon you come to the edgeof the house of a
and across a meadowyou see another gathering of people.
Those people, she informs.
You, are from the house of BE.
This is where we get our snacks, mealsand feasts.
(21:57):
You decided
not ask about the similarly bland namingof these other people and instead ask.
Oh, perfect. That'd be great.
Where do you think I'd find that snack?
The B people are our snack.
They are our food.
Now, hold on one minute.
Your studies didn't prepare you for this.
(22:18):
The the beep, beep, beep.
People are your are your food.
Yes, of course.
Well, then why aren't they runningand screaming in fear?
They're just casually livingright next to you.
Why run?
There's no need their own food.
The people from the House of C,they live right over there.
(22:40):
And she points to, indeed,another gathering of people
at the edge of the forest.
They, too, seem to benot all that concerned that
those who would devour them are rightnearby.
You are appalled, bewildered and confused.
You say to yourself,Come on, Larry Obelisk.
Oh, yeah.
By the way, your name is very obvious.
Keep yourself together.
(23:02):
Think of the faculty seat.
So you say to your guide,collecting yourself.
The House of A consumesthe House of B and the House of B
consumes the house of C.
You get it?
So is this some kind of hierarchy thing?
(23:23):
Do you control the B peopleand do the B people control the C people?
Your guide from the people looks at youa bit pitifully.
Well, that wouldn't make much sense.
After all, we in the house,they are the food to the house of C.
Oh, God. You realize what's happeninghere?
(23:45):
It's some kind of cannibalistichuman centipede.
You are disgustedand can't take it anymore.
How can you accept this?
You blurt out, throwing awayall those years of anthropologist training
and exorbitant studentloans out the window.
How can you live in such horror and fearand lawlessness?
Lawlessness?
(24:05):
She asks, seemingly not offended,as if talking to an ignorant child.
We have a law and follow it strictly.
The bees follow it and so do the CS.
We all follow it.
Okay, stop the tape.
Interesting.
We're going to say goodbyeto the people from the houses of A, B,
(24:28):
and C, along with our goofy anthropologistand return
to the real world.
I remember being a kid in my back yard
watching this hawkswoop down and eat a mouse.
My older neighborssaw it too and remarked how terrible
the animal world is so cruel.
And I thought to myself, Well,what the hell is the hawk supposed to do?
(24:50):
Are you a vegetarian?
I asked my neighbor. She said No.
Sometimes the natural world's foodweb is described as, as Ishmael
puts it, quote, All this chaos and savage,relentless competition, unquote.
The Christian version
of Take Your Mythology IdolizesWhen The Lion Lays Down with the lamb.
(25:11):
Now, that would be heaven.
Not all this.
I eat you, you eat me. Nonsense.
However, contrary to take your belief,
the natural world is not at war.
Just as the A, B and Cpeople were not at war.
The Lions and the Lambs are only enemies.
And take your mythologies. Imagination.
The lion doesn't massacrea flock of sheep as Ishmael explains,
(25:34):
it kills one to satisfy its hunger,not its hatred.
Because the lion, as well as the lamb,follows the law of life.
But what would it look likeif they broke it?
Ishmael describesa hypothetical scenario out on the East
African savanna,and I'll take you there now.
Nature documentary style.
(26:02):
Imagine
that you were a hyena out on the savanna.
You live in parks,have a small and rather cute fur coat.
Unlike a typical hyena, you possessan absolutely insatiable appetite.
Now there are plenty of gazellesfor you to eat, but as a hyena,
you are not the only specieswho fancies gazelles.
(26:25):
You must contend with the lions.
But you've grown tiredof sharing these tasty gazelles.
And you realize there would beso many more gazelles around
if there weren't all those lionsgobbling them up.
So you decide to eliminate the lions
(26:49):
that's observedthe effect of this decision.
Soon there aren't any more lions eatingwhat could have been yours.
You no longer have to share.
But as your population increasesyour foods,
supply decreases, which eventuallydecreases your population.
(27:10):
Here we can see that the
loss of life trends towards bats.
But you and your hyena friendsno longer want to live by this law.
Why should you?
Sure.
Your food supply has decreased,but there must be a fix to this problem.
You've already killed offyour competitors, the lions.
(27:30):
But now youhyenas have done so well for yourselves.
There's not enough gazelles to go around.
Clearly, there needs to be more gazelles,
though. There's another problem.
The gazelles share their foodwith the zebras and the wildebeests.
You don't eat zebra or wildebeest,so they're worthless to you.
(27:51):
These are your foods competitors.
Therefore,you think they must be eliminated as well
so there can be more gazelles.
Your rule becomes if you don't eat it,
you kill itto make more room for your food.
Goodbye. Zebras could goodbye wildebeests.
The gazellesno longer have to compete with them,
(28:14):
which meansthere are now a lot more gazelles.
But a new problem arises.
There are so many gazelles, there'sno longer enough grass for them to eat.
The law of lifecontinues to trend towards balance.
But you and the other hyenashave exempted yourself
from the law of lifeso you don't have to stop there.
(28:35):
You've already killed offyour competitors.
You've killed off your foods competitors.
Now you just have to kill the foodof your food's food competitors.
Unfortunately for the gazelles,the savanna is covered
with many types of grasses.
They cannot eat, which means any plantthe gazelles do not eat.
Are now your competitors twice removed?
(28:58):
Pretty soon, you and your fellow hyenas
will find themselvesin a sort of constant war with the world.
To maintainthis behavior, you will find it necessary
to labor intensely to constantly increaseyour food production.
Innovate new ways to growwhat you eat and kill what you do.
Not every plantwhich your prey does not eat
(29:20):
will now become a weedyou must eradicate at the first sign.
It will be a tiring affair, attemptingto live outside the law of life.
Ambitioushyenas will insist on this grueling labor,
but sooner or laterthey will find it an impossible task.
The Law of Life Trends towards balance.
(29:43):
Ishmael says, quote,
Once you exempt yourself fromthe law of life, everything in the world
except your food and the food of your foodbecomes an enemy to be exterminated.
Unquote.
To exempt ourselves from the law of life
is to declare war on the world.
So like those hypothetical hyenas,
(30:04):
takers are attemptingto live outside the law of life.
This is the
guiding manifesto of takers civilization.
In fact, as Ishmael puts it, takers
have incorporated, quote,as a fundamental policy.
Every single thing that is prohibitedunder the law.
Unquote.
So remember when we talked about how SirIsaac Newton didn't do anything new
(30:26):
by pointing out there's gravity,but by formulating it as a law.
Here's how we can attemptto put the law of life into words.
There is competition in nature,but it's limited.
Ishmael says, quote,You may compete to the full extent
of your capabilities, butyou may not hunt down your competitors,
destroy their food,or deny them access to food, unquote.
(30:50):
A succinct way of putting it is, quote,
You may compete, but you may not wage war.
Unquote.
This is as Ishmael puts
it, a peacekeeping lawthat promotes biodiversity.
And biodiversity isn't a luxury.
It's a matter of survival itself.
The greater the diversity of an ecosystem,the more resilient
(31:11):
it will be to unexpected changes.
Okay, so there are three fundamental ways
to take a civilized ocean goesagainst this law of limited competition.
One takercivilization eliminates competitors
simply because they are competitors.
We kill wolves, lions and other predatorswhen they aren't
(31:33):
even attacking usjust because they prey on our food.
To take your civilization denies
our competitors like wolvesand lions, access to food.
We pen up livestock, sheep, cows, goats
and fiercely defend themfrom being eaten by anyone but us.
Three And finally,
take your civilization destroysthe competitors of our foods food.
(31:57):
So if there's a plant that sheep don't eatand it takes up
space from the plants and grassthat sheep do eat, we consider that
plant a weed and remove itregardless of who else would eat it.
The benefits of
breaking this law are obvious.
It has given us seeminglyunlimited growth.
(32:18):
But what are the consequences?
We are finding there are limits.
After all,
as Ishmael summarizes,it seems there is a law of nature
that informs how all species, Homo sapiensincluded,
(32:40):
can live in balancewith the rest of the world.
This law won't inform us on every aspectof our culture like traffic
violations, tax brackets, or the logisticsof copyright infringement.
It's not that specific,but it will inform us on
how we ought to liveif we hope to continue to exist.
Unfortunately for the rest of the world,one species
(33:02):
exempting itself from the law of lifeis as destructive as every species.
Doing so. The result is the same.
Biodiversity is devastatedand reduced for the sake of one species.
All the destruction we see around us,
it's the consequencesof trying to live outside
this law.
(33:36):
Now, this doesn't mean we go out and standin the middle of a field
somewhere and shout,okay, hawks in lions, take me now.
I'm ready.
Living to the best of our abilityis a good thing.
The point is,when our lives are set up at the expense
of the rest of life on this planet,we're doing ourselves in the long run.
(33:57):
So if we want to continue existingand not join Iran,
Bezos is wreckageat the bottom of the valley floor.
If we even want to learn how to fly,we have to learn how to live
within the law of life.
Thanks for listening.
On the next episode of Human NatureOdyssey,
(34:17):
it'll be up to us to figure out now what?
What do we do with all this?
How do we help create a livable future?
Until next time.
What can you notice about the law of lifearound you?
Where you seetake your civilization breaking this law.
And what might it meanfor us to end our war with the world
(34:38):
and to live within the law of life?
Talk to you soon.
If you'd like
to support Human Nature Odyssey,please share it with a friend.
Subscribe wherever you enjoy your podcastsand check out our Patreon.
We had our first bonus interviewthis month with author
Jay Snodgrass about his book Genesisand the Rise of Civilization.
(34:59):
You can listen to the full hourconversation at Patria, CNN.com.
Slash Human Nature Odyssey.
There you'll find a bunch of otherwritings, transcripts of episodes,
audio extras and soonmany more interviews of bonus guests.
Thank you to everyonewho has given their support so far.
Our theme music is Celestial SodaPop by Ray Lynch.
You can find the link in our show notesand thank you to Matty and Austin
(35:22):
for their voice.
Acting contributions to the House of AC.
Matty is also a very talented musicianand you can find a link to her music
in the show notes
on.
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