[Of the 18 chapters in Vol I, this 8 minute read is the core message to modern humans.]
Late modern humans (LMH) became fossil fueled beginning in the 18th century (Newcomen coal powered steam engine to pump water from coal mines 1712, Watt steam engine to power industrial production 1769), the proximal beginning of the Industrial Revolution that became increasingly fossil fueled as wood and whale oil was running out, but the distal beginnings of Euro expansionism was in the 9th-11th century reboot after the socioeconomic-political dissolution of the Western Greco-Roman Empire.
By the 20th century, the Euro center of modern techno-industrial (MTI) society had shifted to the U.S. of Americans and in the early 21st century to the Sino region before the climax of the Euro-Sino (MTI) Empire or form of LMH civilization.
The LMH period was empowered by a planetary larder of fossil fuels, providing 10 times more people with about twice as much energy per capita than the prior 12k (12 thousand) years of MMH (Mid Modern Human) agro-empowered empire building, which had increased human population 100 fold, 20% serving the complex, adaptive, dissipative structures as elite slaves, and 80% serving over complex societies as peasants, serfs, workers, soldiers and slaves.
Low-intensity MMH agriculture provides 2–3 times more energy per person with no dependence on animal slaves and human slaves/serfs/peasants). High-intensity MMH agriculture provides 25-100 heq (human worker equivalents)/person with heavy dependence on animal slaves and human chattel/serfs/peasants/wage slaves) which empire building societies depend on.
Before using fire, homininans needed to consume 4–5 times more food energy than energy needed to maintain homeostasis and do needed work (e.g. hunting and gathering) by one fit human (1 heq) due to only a 20% to 25% efficiency in converting food to work. So pre-Homo erectus Hominina were dependent on 4–5 heq or 4–5 energy-slave equivalents of energy intake in the form of food.
Like H. erectus, early modern humans (EMH) depended on exosomatic energy (e.g. wood to heat/cook), and depended on 12–20 heq/person.
Before fire, early humans consumed/needed about 4.5 heq/person.
EMHs as fire-apes consumed about 12–20 heq/person, or 16 heq/person (more wood in temperate regions, a 3.5x increase/person).
Low-intensity MMHs consumed 20–40 heq/person or 30 heq average (2x increase).
High-intensity MMHs consumed 40–100 heq/person or 70 heq average (4.4x increase from EMH average).
LMHs consume 140 heq/person average today (8.75x increase from EMH average).
Industrialized/monetized LMH consume about 350 heq/person average (22x increase from EMH average) from bushmeat hunters to billionaires (U.S. 589 heq/person average from homeless to billionaires, down from a peak of 700 heq/person in 1979).
Consider/envision a low population density and low-intensity MMH or EMH future (if animal/human slavery and empire building is avoided) for renormalizing as non-metastatic humans. Imagine not repeating the pattern of regional overshoot/empire building of the last 12k years — or chiefdom after chiefdom after chiefdom… before that.
On a degraded planet, imagine 5 million prosperous enough humans, the epipaleolithic human population before agriculture, which within a degraded biosphere may be equaled with low-intensity agropastoralism that yet leaves room for nature restorancy/recovery.
Pre-metastatic Humans
All modern humans (EHM, MMH, LMH) descend from a small population, likely on the southern tip of Africa, that arose about 75k years ago. Included are all out of Africa populations, and most within Africa except for the San, Hadza, Pygmy, and Sandawe having less than 50% admixture with EHM, MMH, LMH expansionists. Of the four groups, less than 10k San (<10%) and 400 Hadza may still have their traditional pre-expansionist culture intact.
Stick this in your hookah pipe and smoke it: 99.99987% of humans today are modern humans whose culture and genome originated/arose about 75k years ago, whose culture and genome are as have been selected for during the 75k year Great Human Expansion within and out of Africa, and today normal (viable, evolvable long term) non-metastatic humans are almost extinct.
In the last 75k years, all Hominina (i.e. populations of Homo erectus and subspecies, e.g. Homo erectus floresiensis, all Homo sapiens and subspecies (Neanderthal, Denisovan, Juluensis, and one unnamed subspecies), and all Homo sapiens sapiens (apart from San, Hadza, Pygmy, Sandawe) have been replaced (driven to extinction/near extinction) by a metastatic variety of Homo sapiens sapiens, proposed name Homo sapiens sapiens var. narrator, the animal that tells stories and believes them.
I recall from the 1970s a study in which college males were asked hypothetically if they would rape a desired woman if they knew they could not be punished/associated with their behavior — half indicated they would. The recent mass rape case in France involving at least 83 men (51 identified and prosecuted per video taped evidence — 32 not identified and an unknown number not video taped) may not have been possible within a San/Hadza population for both cultural and genetic reasons. European males of today, 64%, descend from 3 Bronze Age paternal male ancestors who knew great reproductive success (each bred hundreds of women and their sons/grandsons/etc. similarly bred more than one woman as a reward of conquest (kill males, breed the women).
EMH/MMH/LMH males and females have been 3,000 generations on the upslope from a population of <100 to >8 billion and counting. Gene frequencies have been altered in both genders, but males more so (for 3 Bronze Age women to have been the maternal ancestors of 64% of European women there would have had to have been one or more near extinction events (which history fails to record).
To renormalize, modern metastatic humans will require a memetic paradigm shift (from r-selected culture to K-selected culture) and perhaps 3,000 generations of selecting for less reproductive success of some genotypes (especially male).
The foreseeable “Great Simplification” will also be a “Great Selection” whether managed or not. On an unmanaged downslope there is no reason or evidence from prior collapse events (e.g. Late Bronze Age collapse, Indus Valley Civilization, and other collapse to extinction events) that genes or memes for long term success will be selected for (i.e. evidence indicates the exact opposite — selection is towards loss of function, against what works long term, for the condition of a behavioral sink, which selects for extinction, hence even if remnant populations persist, they will be more, not less, denormalized than those who were products of upslope selection). Consider the possibility that modern humans cannot possibly overestimate the difficulty of renormalizing from a metastatic form of human back to a viable/evolvable form of human.
Lock yourself in a room for three days and think about the implications of just what is offered above (with two links) while following the breadcrumbs of data whithersoever they lead. Take a few days off and then realize you know nothing, that everything you think you know needs to be reevaluated. Spend the next three months endeavoring to rethink the presuppositions you took in with your mother’s or bovine’s milk.
Rearranging neural pathways takes time, but neuroplasticity is your friend (and may also be posterity’s friend if you persist). Three years of endeavor may not be time enough, but modern humans may not have three decades or even three years, so send not to ask for whom the bell tolls.
Consider Tom Murphy’s words about metastatic modernity. Note, however, that he pulls his punches.
“Humans are not the cancer. Humans were afflicted by the cancer.”
[Humans (the EMH, MMH, LMH form), the 99.99987%, are the cancer. You are not a normal human. All humans (homininans) were “displaced” (driven to extinction apart from some admixture of their genes) by the cancer (metastatic form of Hominina, Homo sapiens sapiens var. narrator).]
“… try not to take the cancer comparison personally, which only eclipses the message. Attach the negative qualities to modernity, not to humanity. It is a faulty program — or operating system — that happened [to] get installed in (some) humans, and then spread. Let’s not blame the victim. As before, we don’t hate the pancreas because it had the misfortune to contract cancer. We appreciate that a healthy pancreas has a role in a healthy body. Similarly, humans have an ecological context: a generative role in a healthy community of life. That’s the only way we could have evolved into being: by occupying a role in the whole.”
[Metastatic cancer begins when one cell has the misfortune of loosing its evolved mandate to live (function as subsystem) within limits. An oncologist needs to understand the pathology, not hate the metastatic cell(s). If the first cell was pancreatic, then that changes the name and the pathology (aggressive) of the type of metastatic cancer. The originating organ is otherwise irrelevant. The cancer is systemic. There are two relevant forms of cell: normal and metastatic. One is non-viable.]
“I have compared modernity to a technological boat on a raging river headed for a waterfall. Once gripped by the currents, the boat of modernity has essentially no choice but to go over the waterfall, because that’s what unsustainable fabrications must do…. But humans need not go down with the boat. Abandoning ship is an option — albeit an understandably scary one.”
[Modernity = metastatic. All modern humans are going over the falls. The condition of a few getting off their log, by memetically mutating, may be a scary condition, but it is not one that can be bravely chosen as the chooser — the individual as sovereign agent is the metastatic condition.]
“Modernity has no choice but to end, although it seems very likely to me that humans will survive the trauma and come out the other side experimenting with new (and/or old) ways of living, necessarily in closer connection with local ecological realities.”
[We modern humans have no choice. Our 3k generations on the upslope selected for our denormalization and climax (likely this century). Per past lives of humans, the downslope will be 8 to 24 generations post climax on the downslope (visions of recovery in 50 to 75 years are as imagined, e.g. The Postman). There is no evidence nor reason to think that the downslope dynamic will select for a more viable form of human (apart from one possible exception, phase 3 Tairona). Beyond a few generations (more than 3–8 generations as within 3 generations of Sea Peoples, there was likely no literate humans among them), the downslope dynamic becomes a race to the bottom (i.e. selects for increasing dysfunction, e.g. all of Calhoun’s experiments with domesticate rats and mice ended in population extinction) and all prior human collapse events have too with noted possible exception.]
Humanity is not a metastatic cancer, but modern humans are. A pancreas is not a metastatic organ, but if one pancreas cell is, has gone rogue, or is a descendent of a metastatic pancreas cell, then it is a metastatic form of pancreas cell wherever it may be in the body unless it has mutated back to being a normal pancreas cell.
Modern humans are rogue primates. A population of 400 is a viable founding population. If 0.000005% of modern humans could renormalize as evolvable animals (and persist), extinction could be side stepped.
Zero San or Hadza with culture intact can read what you are reading, i.e. you are a modern human. To understand your condition is the only way out of it — of selecting for a potentially viable future for posterity.
If not delivered from your condition of being an Anthropocene enthusiast (modern human), then realize you have not yet understood your condition and cannot do more than keep trying to understand. Your Anthropocene enthusiasm may gradually diminish, but that is not enough.
Idea/discovery from Spinoza: To understand something is to be delivered from it. This claim cannot be verified by believing in it. It must be tested. If correct, the condition of “understanding” (not believing) will be deliverance (a memetic mutation) from your memetic (r-acculturated) condition. A functional K-selected culture will alter gene frequencies over the next 3,000 generations and select for behavioral change over a shorter period of time.
Female modern humans need to renormalize. Male modern humans are in greater need of renormalizing (feminist ideology as “curative” not implied). In a group of 20–50 trusted others, the Mothers select for the total fertility rate and limit who reproduces (e.g. some young women do not reproduce, males who would rape do not reproduce). The intuition of the Mothers can be wrong; no selection is more wrong. To live within limits, sovereign agency ends.
“Our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment…Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man… hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.” — Charles Darwin
Modern metastatic humans are denormalized (dependent) domesticants (of technology and ideology) whose recent condition of over density living (in groups >50) has resulted in a Calhounian “behavioral sink” effect, a lethal (long term) loss of functional behaviors needed to persist. The challenge of recovering cannot be overestimated.
We modern humans are not merely presiding over a mass extinction event, we are at high risk of near-term (next 50 to 5k years) extinction or worse (persisting 50k to 500k years while degrading a planetary life-support system before going extinct). The condition of the extinction of modern metastatic humans is to seek out now (as it will come anyway).
What you do as a mutant is unknowable, but may have a viable outcome. Otherwise, enjoy life while you can, with due apologies to posterity. You can only apologize for not understanding the predicament of modern humans. Understanding entails choiceless obedience to the nature of things. Any choice based on short-term self interest (on not mutating) will be wrong.
“Thought makes the whole dignity of man; therefore, endeavor to think well, that is the only morality.” — Blaise Pascal, Pensées 1670
If this chapter, in the context of the prior 13, is not enough to get your serious, determined attention, then don’t bother reading more. Enjoy life while you can.