288
Spontaneous catastrophe, or that occurring over millions of years, is value free,
judgment free, a neutral and recurring fact, the normal rate in the range of one per
one million to ten million years, based upon a vague background rate lifespan of a
mammal. But some marine invertebrates may live ten million years, terrestrial
invertebrate species even longer. Moreover, six extinction sagas most assuredly
skew the data (some argue seven: again, definitions, when extinction is involved,
remain murky). As a hominin, we have already survived approximately one-third of
our projected duration. As mammals we have survived two previous global extinction events, the first 200 million years ago (End Triassic, 80% of our shew like
ancestors lost), the second some 66 million years ago (End Cretaceous, K/Pg). We
can estimate a 24% survival rate, among mammals, of those two catastrophic events,
largely among burrowing, rodent-like multituberculates, as well as some eutherians
who lived in trees.
Most placental mammals and marsupials, both of which evolved during the
Cretaceous, fared poorly, and this is important to recognize. Biology is not given to
happy endings, not in the literary sense. We exert, by our passion for eavesdropping,
a fourth wall, dramatically speaking. But that also plays into the anthropic sequence
of self-referential bias.
4
Hence, there is some gambling logic, at least, in predictions
pertaining to the current third inflection point. It is a pattern in definitive conflict
with our tenure. Among the 5416 known mammal species still surviving (approximately 130 billion mammalian individuals), there is likely to be a surprising survival rate. It will obtain on the basis of stochastic (random) conditionals conferring
absolutely zero predictability. In other words, a neutral truth-value has no opinion
one way or another on our durability as a species.
31.2 Variables in Evolutionary Theory
This is especially probable given that the survival rate in the past two extinction
anomalies involved outside individuals coming into new territories, as well as preexisting sufficient pressure to induce mutational success rates favoring the rapid
rebirth of populations following the disasters. Humans would be suited to that kind
of behavior, possibly.
But the odds are as much a question of laws of average across taxonomic suites
as they are a moral stressor exerted implosively (psychologically) by our kind.
“What kind of mammal are you?” is the appropriate, Lewis Carroll-like query. The
sort likely to kill itself off, one every 20 seconds (the global projection for human
suicides globally in 2020)? If we embrace the former explanation, namely, a statistical and random game of chance, wherein virtues promulgating resilience and compassionate common sense outmatch a concatenation of ruinous environmental
4 See “Mammalian fauna across the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary in eastern Montana,” by
L. DeBey and G. Wilson, Cretaceous Research, 51: 3610385, 2014, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
cretres.2014.06.001
31 The Temptation of the Catastrophe: Deep Structures of Suicide
Spontaneous catastrophe, or that occurring over millions of years, is value free,
judgment free, a neutral and recurring fact, the normal rate in the range of one per
one million to ten million years, based upon a vague background rate lifespan of a
mammal. But some marine invertebrates may live ten million years, terrestrial
invertebrate species even longer. Moreover, six extinction sagas most assuredly
skew the data (some argue seven: again, definitions, when extinction is involved,
remain murky). As a hominin, we have already survived approximately one-third of
our projected duration. As mammals we have survived two previous global extinction events, the first 200 million years ago (End Triassic, 80% of our shew like
ancestors lost), the second some 66 million years ago (End Cretaceous, K/Pg). We
can estimate a 24% survival rate, among mammals, of those two catastrophic events,
largely among burrowing, rodent-like multituberculates, as well as some eutherians
who lived in trees.
Most placental mammals and marsupials, both of which evolved during the
Cretaceous, fared poorly, and this is important to recognize. Biology is not given to
happy endings, not in the literary sense. We exert, by our passion for eavesdropping,
a fourth wall, dramatically speaking. But that also plays into the anthropic sequence
of self-referential bias.
4
Hence, there is some gambling logic, at least, in predictions
pertaining to the current third inflection point. It is a pattern in definitive conflict
with our tenure. Among the 5416 known mammal species still surviving (approximately 130 billion mammalian individuals), there is likely to be a surprising survival rate. It will obtain on the basis of stochastic (random) conditionals conferring
absolutely zero predictability. In other words, a neutral truth-value has no opinion
one way or another on our durability as a species.
31.2 Variables in Evolutionary Theory
This is especially probable given that the survival rate in the past two extinction
anomalies involved outside individuals coming into new territories, as well as preexisting sufficient pressure to induce mutational success rates favoring the rapid
rebirth of populations following the disasters. Humans would be suited to that kind
of behavior, possibly.
But the odds are as much a question of laws of average across taxonomic suites
as they are a moral stressor exerted implosively (psychologically) by our kind.
“What kind of mammal are you?” is the appropriate, Lewis Carroll-like query. The
sort likely to kill itself off, one every 20 seconds (the global projection for human
suicides globally in 2020)? If we embrace the former explanation, namely, a statistical and random game of chance, wherein virtues promulgating resilience and compassionate common sense outmatch a concatenation of ruinous environmental
4 See “Mammalian fauna across the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary in eastern Montana,” by
L. DeBey and G. Wilson, Cretaceous Research, 51: 3610385, 2014, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
cretres.2014.06.001
31 The Temptation of the Catastrophe: Deep Structures of Suicide