Question #10

I believe ignorance is the biggest threat to prolonged human survival. Much of humanity seems ignorant of even the simplest ecological principles. It’s no surprise to me in America as we are not at any point educated in ecological principles in our public schools. Biology is still being taught with an emphasis on medical science and plant and animal cellular biology. It seems that processes of the biosphere like food webs, the energy cycle, and basic biogeochemistry are lost on us. It is not understood that if the human race is to persist, we must learn to live sustainably and in harmony with the natural cycles of our planet. Our relatively recent technological advances have resulted in prolonged life spans and increased population growth. But they have also resulted in the immediate and imminent threats of exhaustion of natural resources and exceedance of the carrying capacity of the biosphere. These threats are again tied to the hyper-consuming nature of our society.

We are also socially and politically ignorant. The scientific community has been warning of the imminent threats of our excesses for some time. Yet the plunder of resources continues and will continue until the people make a concerted movement toward change. Such a change is particularly difficult here in America given the pervasive grip corporations have on the will of the people through their financial control of our representatives and the media. We are so easily swayed by our own shallowness and selfishness. The corporation, a collective of employees, faceless as a whole, is essentially blameless for the collective’s actions. They exist to pursue only one interest: profit; which it will maximize at any cost to society. And we applaud them as the champions of capitalism as we ride on the back of a collective corporate juggernaut towards imminent doom.