650
(impact = population x affluence x technology)
10
will likely eschew any reciprocity
potential between the eight primary taxonomic delineations—domain, kingdom,
phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species—when it comes to our own role in
the gigantic mix of Beings. Nonetheless, we would argue there might be some faint
recognition that can be resurrected between individuals and species, with respect to
H. sapiens. To ascribe even a remote mathematical chance of such a possibility is to
acknowledge potential within our continuing evolution for either a mutational
breakthrough, or some consequential shift, prompted through rapid natural selection, that improves upon an otherwise fated wasteland of relations.
11
Byron’s lovely line in “Manfred” regarding one’s “fatality to live,” which was so
extravagantly pinioned in Manfred’s clinging figure to the Jungfrau, just as Shelley’s
own protagonist in “Alastor, or, The Spirit of Solitude” had fixated upon a cliff ledge
high in a Vale of Kashmir, the perfect place to perish, the young poet had dreamt.
Not in Rome.
12
Such connections yield to an evanescent summation. To curl up
peacefully upon that mountainous wall and “die out,” as James Dickey once contemplated the nature of extinctions. Or to go on, altering every fiction and rejecting
the notion that loss is a negative. A rejection of rejection, in other words. As Samuel
Beckett concluded in his novel Molloy: “It is midnight. The rain is beating on the
windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining.”
13
Neither lost nor found. And hence this most peculiar variable: the longing for an
end to longing; for implosion whose self-destructive image can somehow manage
the hat-trick, moving philosophically and painlessly from inaction to the iconic
stamping out of the entire passion play that is human existence, with its order of
magnitudes as concentrated as the instantaneity of an electrical current. In such
remote contemplations, this is where metaphysics and natural history converge, pivoting upon the question of human worth among the animals. Of the whole sequence
of events following upon the Garden of Eden and expulsion of its first two hominins.
14
Aristotle struggles in his Metaphysics, with not only the worth of humanity,
but the definitions, characteristics, and the mathematical translation into numbers of
Species, Individual, Being, and “whatness.” He writes, “Thus, there is an essence
only of those things whole formula is a definition… There are also definitions and
essences of the others in a similar manner, but not in the primary sense.”
15
10 See Ehrlich, Paul R.; Holdren, John P. (1971). “Impact of Population Growth.” Science. American
Association for the Advancement of Science. 171 (3977): 1212–1217. doi: https://doi.org/10.1126/
science.171.3977.1212. JSTOR 1731166
11 For real-time rapid evolutionary data, see The Hypothetical Species, op.cit., Tobias & Morrison,
pp. 111–112, 121, 209, and 255.
12 See Keats, Shelley & Rome – An Illustrated Miscellany, Compiled by Neville Rogers, Postscript
by Field-Marshal Earl Wavell, Johnson Publications Ltd., London, 1970.
13 Samuel Beckett, Molloy, translated from the French by Patrick Bowles in collaboration with the
Author, Grove Press, Inc., New York 1955, p. 241.
14 See The Rise And Fall of Adam and Eve, by Stephen Greenblatt, W. W. Norton & Company,
New York, 2017.
15 See Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Translated with Commentaries and Glossary, by Hippocrates
G. Apostle, The Peripatetic Press, Grinnell, Iowa, 1979, pp. 112–113.
70 Of Malignant Variables
(impact = population x affluence x technology)
10
will likely eschew any reciprocity
potential between the eight primary taxonomic delineations—domain, kingdom,
phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species—when it comes to our own role in
the gigantic mix of Beings. Nonetheless, we would argue there might be some faint
recognition that can be resurrected between individuals and species, with respect to
H. sapiens. To ascribe even a remote mathematical chance of such a possibility is to
acknowledge potential within our continuing evolution for either a mutational
breakthrough, or some consequential shift, prompted through rapid natural selection, that improves upon an otherwise fated wasteland of relations.
11
Byron’s lovely line in “Manfred” regarding one’s “fatality to live,” which was so
extravagantly pinioned in Manfred’s clinging figure to the Jungfrau, just as Shelley’s
own protagonist in “Alastor, or, The Spirit of Solitude” had fixated upon a cliff ledge
high in a Vale of Kashmir, the perfect place to perish, the young poet had dreamt.
Not in Rome.
12
Such connections yield to an evanescent summation. To curl up
peacefully upon that mountainous wall and “die out,” as James Dickey once contemplated the nature of extinctions. Or to go on, altering every fiction and rejecting
the notion that loss is a negative. A rejection of rejection, in other words. As Samuel
Beckett concluded in his novel Molloy: “It is midnight. The rain is beating on the
windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining.”
13
Neither lost nor found. And hence this most peculiar variable: the longing for an
end to longing; for implosion whose self-destructive image can somehow manage
the hat-trick, moving philosophically and painlessly from inaction to the iconic
stamping out of the entire passion play that is human existence, with its order of
magnitudes as concentrated as the instantaneity of an electrical current. In such
remote contemplations, this is where metaphysics and natural history converge, pivoting upon the question of human worth among the animals. Of the whole sequence
of events following upon the Garden of Eden and expulsion of its first two hominins.
14
Aristotle struggles in his Metaphysics, with not only the worth of humanity,
but the definitions, characteristics, and the mathematical translation into numbers of
Species, Individual, Being, and “whatness.” He writes, “Thus, there is an essence
only of those things whole formula is a definition… There are also definitions and
essences of the others in a similar manner, but not in the primary sense.”
15
10 See Ehrlich, Paul R.; Holdren, John P. (1971). “Impact of Population Growth.” Science. American
Association for the Advancement of Science. 171 (3977): 1212–1217. doi: https://doi.org/10.1126/
science.171.3977.1212. JSTOR 1731166
11 For real-time rapid evolutionary data, see The Hypothetical Species, op.cit., Tobias & Morrison,
pp. 111–112, 121, 209, and 255.
12 See Keats, Shelley & Rome – An Illustrated Miscellany, Compiled by Neville Rogers, Postscript
by Field-Marshal Earl Wavell, Johnson Publications Ltd., London, 1970.
13 Samuel Beckett, Molloy, translated from the French by Patrick Bowles in collaboration with the
Author, Grove Press, Inc., New York 1955, p. 241.
14 See The Rise And Fall of Adam and Eve, by Stephen Greenblatt, W. W. Norton & Company,
New York, 2017.
15 See Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Translated with Commentaries and Glossary, by Hippocrates
G. Apostle, The Peripatetic Press, Grinnell, Iowa, 1979, pp. 112–113.
70 Of Malignant Variables