380
at a loss to definitively array differing finch beaks with vastly oppositional human
footprints, that of a Digambara, versus the average meat-eater in Uruguay, Argentina,
or Hong Kong, the three largest per capita consumers of meat in the world. In 2016,
humans collectively ate 129.5 billion pounds of beef.
7
Their environmental footprints were huge, violent, and unnecessary. We have no measures for their opposite,
all those quiet footprints that were also laid down. But the evolutionary edifice and
its emphatic behavioral circumlocutions engendering rapine and living plunder converges upon a phenotypic expression that is unambiguous.
In Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) the killing of animals was deemed so horrible that “freemen were not even allowed to witness it lest their human clemency
be eroded.”
8
If meat crowds humanity’s digestion (nine days on average to fully
digest a steak), consider the odious particulars of her settlements. That is the profound conundrum urban architecture and the very bowels of its engineering, water
supplies, and effluents must confront.
Traditionally, a hamlet, for the majority of our history, has defined a steady,
egalitarian- like co-adjacency in terms of immediate shelter. From those clusters dating back a few hundred thousand years, we divine something of a uniform predilection, not unlike observed compulsions in other species regarding their nests, dens,
lairs, roosts, and the like, which have largely remained undeviating in form and
function for millions of years. Indeed, the oldest known stable nesting site thus far
discovered, in South Africa, combines some 190 million years of antiquity.
9
But when we examine a chair, or even more so a door handle, we are into the
realm of something more uncanny than the mere mechanics of comfort, or reengineering of power. We cannot underestimate the inordinate impacts of human
architectonic and mechanical pivots. Any technology is destined to become oppositional to what was before it. Natural selection has kept door handles fairly unchanged
throughout time. But our species, when members are seated on an armchair (as
opposed to what history has shown to be a less socially eminent stool), enlists a
parallel evolution of ecopsychology and the eruption of the idea of power over others. Our manipulations of our living confines begin with floors but quickly move to
the walls, roofs, and all adjacent space.
This is the case whether a mud and thatch house as one would see among the
Dogon of Mali, in tightly knit yurts or tepees from the Rockies to Mongolia, all the
way to the enormous motte-and-bailey fortification, such as the original Windsor
Castle, and onward through diverse styles and size-qualified modern-day duplexes
7 “World Beef Consumption Per Capita (Ranking of Countries), by Rob Cook, Beef2Life, April 18,
2020,
https://beef2live.com/story-world-beef-consumption-per-capita-ranking-countries-0-111634. “All three countries consumed more than 100 pounds of beef per capita.” Americans
come in 4th in this ranking.
8 See Man And The Natural World – A History Of The Modern Sensibility, by Keith Thomas,
Pantheon Books, New York, 1983, pp. 294, citing p. 71 of More.
9 “Oldest Dinosaur Nesting Site Discovered,” by the University of Toronto Mississauga,
SciTechDaily, January 25, 2012, https://scitechdaily.com/oldest-dinosaur-nesting-site-discovered/.
Accessed April 18, 2020.
42 Does Natural Selection Select for Natural Selection?
at a loss to definitively array differing finch beaks with vastly oppositional human
footprints, that of a Digambara, versus the average meat-eater in Uruguay, Argentina,
or Hong Kong, the three largest per capita consumers of meat in the world. In 2016,
humans collectively ate 129.5 billion pounds of beef.
7
Their environmental footprints were huge, violent, and unnecessary. We have no measures for their opposite,
all those quiet footprints that were also laid down. But the evolutionary edifice and
its emphatic behavioral circumlocutions engendering rapine and living plunder converges upon a phenotypic expression that is unambiguous.
In Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) the killing of animals was deemed so horrible that “freemen were not even allowed to witness it lest their human clemency
be eroded.”
8
If meat crowds humanity’s digestion (nine days on average to fully
digest a steak), consider the odious particulars of her settlements. That is the profound conundrum urban architecture and the very bowels of its engineering, water
supplies, and effluents must confront.
Traditionally, a hamlet, for the majority of our history, has defined a steady,
egalitarian- like co-adjacency in terms of immediate shelter. From those clusters dating back a few hundred thousand years, we divine something of a uniform predilection, not unlike observed compulsions in other species regarding their nests, dens,
lairs, roosts, and the like, which have largely remained undeviating in form and
function for millions of years. Indeed, the oldest known stable nesting site thus far
discovered, in South Africa, combines some 190 million years of antiquity.
9
But when we examine a chair, or even more so a door handle, we are into the
realm of something more uncanny than the mere mechanics of comfort, or reengineering of power. We cannot underestimate the inordinate impacts of human
architectonic and mechanical pivots. Any technology is destined to become oppositional to what was before it. Natural selection has kept door handles fairly unchanged
throughout time. But our species, when members are seated on an armchair (as
opposed to what history has shown to be a less socially eminent stool), enlists a
parallel evolution of ecopsychology and the eruption of the idea of power over others. Our manipulations of our living confines begin with floors but quickly move to
the walls, roofs, and all adjacent space.
This is the case whether a mud and thatch house as one would see among the
Dogon of Mali, in tightly knit yurts or tepees from the Rockies to Mongolia, all the
way to the enormous motte-and-bailey fortification, such as the original Windsor
Castle, and onward through diverse styles and size-qualified modern-day duplexes
7 “World Beef Consumption Per Capita (Ranking of Countries), by Rob Cook, Beef2Life, April 18,
2020,
https://beef2live.com/story-world-beef-consumption-per-capita-ranking-countries-0-111634. “All three countries consumed more than 100 pounds of beef per capita.” Americans
come in 4th in this ranking.
8 See Man And The Natural World – A History Of The Modern Sensibility, by Keith Thomas,
Pantheon Books, New York, 1983, pp. 294, citing p. 71 of More.
9 “Oldest Dinosaur Nesting Site Discovered,” by the University of Toronto Mississauga,
SciTechDaily, January 25, 2012, https://scitechdaily.com/oldest-dinosaur-nesting-site-discovered/.
Accessed April 18, 2020.
42 Does Natural Selection Select for Natural Selection?