The real cause of human destruction- the lesson we have missed from our ancestors

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The world is staring at its impending destruction. Global warming, climate change, and uncontrollable forest fires, rampant pandemics, which if not contained could compromise entire continents. Cloud bursts, annual floods, incurable diseases, droughts; the list goes on.

On a micro level, people are suffering from lifestyle disorders that cost them their lives, rampant cancer diagnoses, obesity epidemic, depression, anxiety and so on.

But these are all human-made disasters. Human consumption and intervention have accelerated, if not caused, these fatal malaises. Though the majority of people know we’re going in the wrong direction, we do not have a solution to these problems. Why is that? Where did we go wrong?

The roots of the human-made disasters

If we were to list the roots and causes of environmental degradation and how it affects nature and humans alike, it’d be a very long one. Here, I am going to talk about three major factors, more ideological than practical, which underlies all our problems. Feel free to add in the comments if you think I missed something out.

• Self-interest:

Yes, the most evil of all! Self-interest, as opposed to selfishness, is when we act on our own interests or advantage, without regard for others. Selfishness is the aggressive pursuit of self-interest, with no concern for others.

Many political and economic thinkers believe that self-interest is the sole motive of human action. Self-interest motivated us to grow and innovate. Self-interest made businesses successful, and it made competitive markets.

But self-interest also entails the aggressive accumulation of money by promoting and selling anything single-mindedly. Or building lavish infrastructure for human consumption, without any regard for other species or the environment.

Conflict is born out of opposing self-interests. When nations wage war on one another, or they grow economically stronger through any means, it’s their self-interest. When corruption hits, tyrants take over power, people cut down forests to build, feed or propagate, that’s also their self-interest.

Oftentimes, we are inclined to both embrace and reject self-interest. Or, we are asked to take the positive side of self-interest and self-seeking behavior, and learn to stop when we cross the line.

• Pleasure seeking:

It’s related to self-interest, but it takes a step further into indulging in our desires. The desires that are informed by our self-seeking goals.

After industrial advancements and revolutions in agriculture, we came to a position where we can indulge endlessly (or so we thought). It’s not to say that humans were simplistic or self-sacrificing before modern times, but modern science and open-minded thinking made it possible to come up with easy-fix solutions for every problem we faced.

This made humans indulge in the idea that the pursuit of pleasure and happiness were the sole motives in life. It was told that as long as we were happy and satisfied with living, and we had no limitations whatsoever, we were living a fulfilled life.

Utilitarians base their arguments on human pleasure-seeking tendencies. They think that pleasure is the ultimate goal in life.

But we found that our desires never ended. The more we had, the more we indulged in. The paradox of choice began to hit us. We learned that having more, wanting more just made us miserable!

• Consumerism/ Convenience

Another fallout of pleasure-seeking, consumerism is one of the most dangerous trends of modern life.

By the post-modern era itself, people understood that rapid industrial growth and pleasure-seeking tendencies were very dangerous and they caused environmental, health-related and social issues.

But people in power didn’t care. They wanted to make money and mindlessly pursue their self-interests. As a result, consumerism and convenient living were pushed to the maximum, despite knowing their repercussions.

While at least 80% of the population starved in the world, first world countries witnessed a boom in industrial and agriculture production after World War II. They tackled it by producing cheap food that lacked nutrition. So did corporations push everything that was assumed to increase people’s comfort or convenience. From the factory-made food to the growth of supermarkets to the popularity of plastic, the two pillars of ultra-modern life: consumerism and convenience are now destroying the world.

Are these the real causes?

Though it is clear as day how these three aspects of our lives degrade the environment and bring us more misery than good, there is an underlying factor most of us overlook. Before coming to that, I want to elaborate on why self-interest or pleasure-seeking behaviors are not problems on their own.

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.” — Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations [1776]

Individuals are viable to be selfish. Take any organism, it survives for its own and on its own. Herds of wildebeests survive because each individual takes care of itself. So does a school of sardines. Each of the fish is trying to get to the middle of the school where it’s safe, which in turn makes this huge mass of fish, impenetrable by predators.

Even mammals, like elephants or gorillas, who have strong family ties, only safeguard their own, and acts for their self-interest.

I’m a strong believer in “virtue of selfishness”, and the idea that the “ultimate moral value, for each human individual, is his or her own well-being.” Because as a conscious living being I cannot change anyone but for myself. My self-development is the only gift I can offer to this world, and nothing more.

Pleasure seeking is also an instinct of most, if not all, animals on this planet. Life thrives in joy, plentitude, and lavish spending. I’m not saying excessive consumption or blind pursuit of pleasure is harmless. But we have a system of balance that naturally checks unwont ways of desires and attachments.

Most animals live by it. Though they indulge in their base instincts, nature makes sure that they don’t wreak havoc. Humans are the only ones to consciously analyze their psyche. Only we ( at least in some cultures) have formulated ways to detach from pleasure and ephemeral desires for something “greater”.

There is no other animal consciously dig a diversion in a river or plant a tree because it needs to save the world (except for humans, of course)! No other animal that is willing to sacrifice their self-interest, their pleasure for the supposed greater cause.

Yet, in nature, everything is in balance. Amidst all the destruction it embodies due to conflicting self-interests, killing and violence it’s peaceful and there’s enough for everyone to flourish!

When the push and pull of each individual’s interests balance each other, there is harmony in nature. That way, balance is in itself not forced. That’s how life survived on this planet.

So where did we go wrong?

Divorcing from Nature

Around the same time positivists and utilitarians were saying that humans lived to fulfill their self-interests, another idea was also thrown about. That humans are not part of nature, the natural order of the food web or the delicate balance that kept this planet alive.

Men were thought to be superior to other men, women, and nature. Due to our superior intelligence and language skills, we were thought to be beyond the raw ‘uncultured’ world which also included the very environment we lived in.

There is an undeniable religious influence on this belief. Abrahamic religions, that are the most dominant in the world now believes that this world is made for man’s use and that we’re superior to everything else on Earth. This is in contrast with Eastern philosophies like Hinduism or Buddhism which gives a lot of emphasis on Self as a part of the Universe. They’re ideologies that stress on self-development without turning away from Nature ad detaching from material possessions unnecessary for our ‘original’ state of existence. They rever, worship and thrive in Nature, because they understand how intrinsically connected everything is.

Contrary to that, the idea of separateness from nature has given us a lot of leverage to do anything we wanted. To restructure and change our surroundings any way we seemed fit, to exploit the resources in the deep of this planet, and way further until Space.

To kill people, animals and destroy entire ecosystems. To devastate entire civilizations and establish a narrow-minded selfish status quo in the world that made everyone suffer.

To uproot old cultures and belief systems that revered Nature as God or Mother, that nourished the environment, depended on Her blessing and that alone! For food, sustenance, pleasure, knowledge, and peace.

To find one-fix-all temporary solutions to every problem that came our way throughout history, rather than identifying the root cause of unsustainability and destruction of natural habitats. Air conditioning, plastic, concrete buildings, fast food, machines, robots. The list goes on.

Where has it led us to?

This belief that we are separate from nature or the natural order is the root of all diseases, deprivation, and malaises.

To illustrate how it all came about, I’m going to use an example: our eating habits.

Well, humans have been eating from prehistoric times, we know that. Our food contained, almost unequivocally among civilizations, grains, cereals, plant parts, and animals. Even after the advent of agriculture in the Neolithic era, animals were reared for skin, meat, milk, bones and therapeutic purposes.

In some parts of the world like India, vegetarianism was promoted as a better way of life. As much politically motivated that was, animals were still used extensively for milk, medicines and other purposes.

But today, animal rearing and consumption is seen as a direct cause of climate change, huge rates of health issues, and a sign of moral degradation. That is a gross misjudgment because the underlying problem here is not eating or using animal products, but the unnatural way we do it.

Before industrial production (and I mean even before colonialization started, when meat was transported in ships in 1700s), people used to have locally produced meat in the most natural and sustainable ways. Humans knew how to harness animal products without hurting the environment, how to process it without spoiling it and how to cook it without making everyone sick.

But once we turned away from our natural ways (the crude uncivilized and primitive ways), and we started getting mass-produced meat and animal products, everything went berserk.

When people advocate veganism against this, they are unknowingly making the same mistake. Make artificial meat, artificial burgers, vegan stuff that tastes like meat and factory-made food, otherwise beat the hell out of people who consume real animal products. This is yet again a departure from nature that harms us more.

The same goes for any modern thing we use. Air conditioning as against natural air, machines as opposed to manual labor, concentrated strains of one chemical from a plant or animal (factory-made and mass-produced) masquerading as medicines, plastic (oh plastic!) as opposed to nothingness.

Even advances in electronic media and communication have harmed us more. In the wake of TV, computers, and so on, we broke away from our fundamental need for family and human attachment, which caused depression, insomnia, anxiety, loneliness, and other deadly disorders.

What is the way out?

I’d say going back to nature. But I know how hard that is. Today, even the ones who embrace natural organic ways also get it wrong sometimes because we’re fast losing the connection we once shared with the environment.

The journey back is almost impossible.

What we need is an ideological or a philosophical change, unlearning of a few centuries old social engineering that humans are superior to Nature. The truth is that humans are part of Nature. We’re born out of the five elements that constitute Earth, we survive with them, we fall ill if the elements in our bodies get misaligned from that of nature, and when we die we become part of nature once again.

Without nature, we wouldn’t exist. Anything that dysregulates the natural environment dysregulates us too, anything that enriches the natural environment enriches us too. If the intricate balance is lost, through science, fiction or superstition, humans will only fall prey to it. Because, no matter how much we hide or pretend, we’re ultimately soluble in Earth.