521
pacing desperately (stereotypies).
17
The mental equations linking Thylacine—with
one pound sterling (or ten pence) bounties on the heads of adults and pups—to
humans, reads as a grimly asymptotic extraterrestrial encounter. A quintessential
problem that likens our systemic inhospitality to some global catastrophe, which it
is. Faith in an age of such terror and anxiety has few places to turn.
Perhaps to the comforting nostalgia of 18 volumes of faded Dutch town and
country photographs from the 1920s compiled by Mr. A. Loosjes, and other Arcadian
fallacies, like that antiquity of quiet monasteries across Italy.
18
Robert Thornton’s
exquisitely illustrated, long-gone Temple of Flora (1807), or Joseph Dalton Hooker’s
The Rhododendrons of Sikkim-Himalaya (1849–1851), from another age. George
Perry’s Conchology of 1811 in which one can verily hear the outermost waves on
continents far and strange. And all the great animal, fish and bird books, from Mark
Catesby’s The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands
(1731–1743) to Audubon and Robert Havell’s The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North
America (1845–1849) and John Gould’s remarkable series of bird books from
Europe, Great Britain, Australia, the Himalayas and New Guinea, among others,
between 1832 and 1888.
19
As if eternities had been consulted in a simpler time, of
herbaria and quiet nights in romantic settings, and days spent in early retirement,
planting and caring for gardens. Paying as little attention as possible to the incoming
tsunami, when the soul’s arcadias have so much more to say.
Near the conclusion of his book Human Natures, Paul Ehrlich suggests that it
might be as straightforward as simply channeling “change in ways more beneficial
to the majority of human beings.” He readily volunteers that “the need for a novel
evolutionary approach can be seen in the most critical mismatch between biological
and cultural evolution: the fact that the design of the human perceptual system
makes it especially hard for people to recognize the most serious environmental
problems”.
20
Ehrlich is right. Indeed, he always has been, despite those who criticized him for on occasion equating his (brilliant) science, with courageous predictions (cultural inducements to act).
Émile Cioran skeptically alludes to the fact that “Any man who identifies himself
completely with something behaves as if he were anticipating the advent of ‘the
universal harmony,’” but elsewhere, in a chapter titled “Mechanism of Utopia,”
begins, “Whenever I happen to be in a city of any size, I marvel that riots do not
17 The Thylacine Museum – History, By D. Colbron Pearse, and Michael Sharland, “History:
-Persecution –“ © C. Campbell’s Natural Worlds, http://www.naturalworlds.org/thylacine/history/
persecution/persecution_10.htm
18 Landelijk Nederland In Beeld, Scheltema & Holkema’s Boekhandel In Uitgevers Maatschappij,
N.V. Amsterdam, 1925. See also, the photographs and paintings in Le Vie Del Santo – Spiriti E
Luoghi Del Poema Francescano, by Ettore Janni, Illustrazioni Dal Vero Di Emilio Sommariva,
Tavole A Colori Di Giuseppe Mentessi, Istituto Italiano D’Arti Grafiche, Editore – Bergamo, 1927.
19 See Nature Into Art- A Treasury of Great Natural History Books, by Handasyde Buchanan,
Mayflower Books, New York, 1979.
20 Paul R. Ehrlich, Human Natures – Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect, Island Press/
Shearwater Books, Washington, D.C., 2000, pp. 326–327.
55.3 The Strange Dramas of Human Apperception
pacing desperately (stereotypies).
17
The mental equations linking Thylacine—with
one pound sterling (or ten pence) bounties on the heads of adults and pups—to
humans, reads as a grimly asymptotic extraterrestrial encounter. A quintessential
problem that likens our systemic inhospitality to some global catastrophe, which it
is. Faith in an age of such terror and anxiety has few places to turn.
Perhaps to the comforting nostalgia of 18 volumes of faded Dutch town and
country photographs from the 1920s compiled by Mr. A. Loosjes, and other Arcadian
fallacies, like that antiquity of quiet monasteries across Italy.
18
Robert Thornton’s
exquisitely illustrated, long-gone Temple of Flora (1807), or Joseph Dalton Hooker’s
The Rhododendrons of Sikkim-Himalaya (1849–1851), from another age. George
Perry’s Conchology of 1811 in which one can verily hear the outermost waves on
continents far and strange. And all the great animal, fish and bird books, from Mark
Catesby’s The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands
(1731–1743) to Audubon and Robert Havell’s The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North
America (1845–1849) and John Gould’s remarkable series of bird books from
Europe, Great Britain, Australia, the Himalayas and New Guinea, among others,
between 1832 and 1888.
19
As if eternities had been consulted in a simpler time, of
herbaria and quiet nights in romantic settings, and days spent in early retirement,
planting and caring for gardens. Paying as little attention as possible to the incoming
tsunami, when the soul’s arcadias have so much more to say.
Near the conclusion of his book Human Natures, Paul Ehrlich suggests that it
might be as straightforward as simply channeling “change in ways more beneficial
to the majority of human beings.” He readily volunteers that “the need for a novel
evolutionary approach can be seen in the most critical mismatch between biological
and cultural evolution: the fact that the design of the human perceptual system
makes it especially hard for people to recognize the most serious environmental
problems”.
20
Ehrlich is right. Indeed, he always has been, despite those who criticized him for on occasion equating his (brilliant) science, with courageous predictions (cultural inducements to act).
Émile Cioran skeptically alludes to the fact that “Any man who identifies himself
completely with something behaves as if he were anticipating the advent of ‘the
universal harmony,’” but elsewhere, in a chapter titled “Mechanism of Utopia,”
begins, “Whenever I happen to be in a city of any size, I marvel that riots do not
17 The Thylacine Museum – History, By D. Colbron Pearse, and Michael Sharland, “History:
-Persecution –“ © C. Campbell’s Natural Worlds, http://www.naturalworlds.org/thylacine/history/
persecution/persecution_10.htm
18 Landelijk Nederland In Beeld, Scheltema & Holkema’s Boekhandel In Uitgevers Maatschappij,
N.V. Amsterdam, 1925. See also, the photographs and paintings in Le Vie Del Santo – Spiriti E
Luoghi Del Poema Francescano, by Ettore Janni, Illustrazioni Dal Vero Di Emilio Sommariva,
Tavole A Colori Di Giuseppe Mentessi, Istituto Italiano D’Arti Grafiche, Editore – Bergamo, 1927.
19 See Nature Into Art- A Treasury of Great Natural History Books, by Handasyde Buchanan,
Mayflower Books, New York, 1979.
20 Paul R. Ehrlich, Human Natures – Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect, Island Press/
Shearwater Books, Washington, D.C., 2000, pp. 326–327.
55.3 The Strange Dramas of Human Apperception