791
A species in exile. What does it mean, and how could consciousness in humans
ever come to reconcile the delusion of Self with all that the Outsider connotes? There
are, for now, no other worlds upon which to test this virgin solitaire, and the lunar
landings have only underscored the pitiful irony of our desire for reckless exclusivity
here on earth. The farmer who trudges through rice paddies; the animal shelter manager working to adopt out charges; the follower of a Humboldt, Gesner, or Wordsworth
exploring the world with all those qualities built up in certain individuals that, while
not in dispute, are exceptions to the species, hold in common a different variety of
empiricism that cannot be divined on any map of most human comings and goings.
This is where science and subjectivity quietly mold the ineffable emotions that render maxims subject to entirely other laws of personality and volatile orientation.
Any map, statistically translated, misses that global indigenous and agronomist
resistance. The global urban population is now roughly 55%, 68% projected by the
UN for the year 2050 (assuming, as in all other matters, that there is a human world
in 2050)
4
.
Such a map, tracking the solitary hominin, its every hostile flash point, collision
threshold, correlating its approximately 1443–1260 cubic centimeter of brain-size
5
with
every trajectory it has fabricated, is a gravid echo of a thinking system that has neared
the finale of a process of disassociation from all others. That metabolic and conceptual continental drift inciting species separation had numerous trigger points: the first
massive assaults resulting in the extirpation 10,000–12,000 years ago of other large
megafaunal assemblages (the Pleistocene Overkill Hypothesis discussed in Chap. 27)
6
;
much earlier data from sites like Chesowanja in Kenya over 1.3 million years ago, and
the Swartkrans caves of South Africa 1 million years ago, where butchers gathered
around one of the first known outdoor barbecue pits
7
. The onset of controlled fire by
early hominins (clearly prevalent by 450,000 BCE) itself altered the acceleration rate
of neural fertility, adding thousands of neurons in the brain every day
8
(Fig. 90.4).
4 See U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, May 16, 2018, New York, https://www.
un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-revision-of-world-urbanization-prospects.
html, Accessed February 4, 2020.
5 See Cosgrove, KP; Mazure CM; Staley JK (2007). “Evolving Knowledge of Sex Differences in
Brain Structure, Function and Chemistry”. Biol Psychiat. 62 (8): 847–55. doi:https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2007.03.001. PMC 2711771. PMID 17544382.
6 See “Overkill Hypothesis 1.” Museum of Natural History. 2014. Web. 31 Jan. 2016, https://www.
amnh.org/science/biodiversity/extinction/Day1/overkill/Bit1.html.
7 “Early archaeological sites, hominid remains and traces of fire from Chesowanja, Kenya,” J. A.
J. Gowlett, J. W. K. Harris, D. Walton and B. A. Wood , Nature volume 294, pages125–129(19),
12 November 1981, https://www.nature.com/articles/294125a0, Accessed February 4, 2020.
8 For counter-arguments pertaining to evolution of early hominins in terms of dietary shifts, body
mass, neurons and fire, see “Human Brain Expansion during Evolution Is Independent of Fire
Control and Cooking,” PMC, National Library of Medicine, Frontiers in Neuroscience, by Alianda
M. Cornélio, Ruben E. de Bittencourt-Navarrete, Ricardo de Bittencourt Brum, Claudio
M. Queiroz, and Marcos R. Costa, Front Neurosci. 2016: 10: 167. Published online 2016 Apr 25.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2016.00167, PCID: PMCD4842772, PMID: 27199631, https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4842772/. Accessed February 8, 2020.
90.2 That Exile Embodied Consciousness
A species in exile. What does it mean, and how could consciousness in humans
ever come to reconcile the delusion of Self with all that the Outsider connotes? There
are, for now, no other worlds upon which to test this virgin solitaire, and the lunar
landings have only underscored the pitiful irony of our desire for reckless exclusivity
here on earth. The farmer who trudges through rice paddies; the animal shelter manager working to adopt out charges; the follower of a Humboldt, Gesner, or Wordsworth
exploring the world with all those qualities built up in certain individuals that, while
not in dispute, are exceptions to the species, hold in common a different variety of
empiricism that cannot be divined on any map of most human comings and goings.
This is where science and subjectivity quietly mold the ineffable emotions that render maxims subject to entirely other laws of personality and volatile orientation.
Any map, statistically translated, misses that global indigenous and agronomist
resistance. The global urban population is now roughly 55%, 68% projected by the
UN for the year 2050 (assuming, as in all other matters, that there is a human world
in 2050)
4
.
Such a map, tracking the solitary hominin, its every hostile flash point, collision
threshold, correlating its approximately 1443–1260 cubic centimeter of brain-size
5
with
every trajectory it has fabricated, is a gravid echo of a thinking system that has neared
the finale of a process of disassociation from all others. That metabolic and conceptual continental drift inciting species separation had numerous trigger points: the first
massive assaults resulting in the extirpation 10,000–12,000 years ago of other large
megafaunal assemblages (the Pleistocene Overkill Hypothesis discussed in Chap. 27)
6
;
much earlier data from sites like Chesowanja in Kenya over 1.3 million years ago, and
the Swartkrans caves of South Africa 1 million years ago, where butchers gathered
around one of the first known outdoor barbecue pits
7
. The onset of controlled fire by
early hominins (clearly prevalent by 450,000 BCE) itself altered the acceleration rate
of neural fertility, adding thousands of neurons in the brain every day
8
(Fig. 90.4).
4 See U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, May 16, 2018, New York, https://www.
un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-revision-of-world-urbanization-prospects.
html, Accessed February 4, 2020.
5 See Cosgrove, KP; Mazure CM; Staley JK (2007). “Evolving Knowledge of Sex Differences in
Brain Structure, Function and Chemistry”. Biol Psychiat. 62 (8): 847–55. doi:https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2007.03.001. PMC 2711771. PMID 17544382.
6 See “Overkill Hypothesis 1.” Museum of Natural History. 2014. Web. 31 Jan. 2016, https://www.
amnh.org/science/biodiversity/extinction/Day1/overkill/Bit1.html.
7 “Early archaeological sites, hominid remains and traces of fire from Chesowanja, Kenya,” J. A.
J. Gowlett, J. W. K. Harris, D. Walton and B. A. Wood , Nature volume 294, pages125–129(19),
12 November 1981, https://www.nature.com/articles/294125a0, Accessed February 4, 2020.
8 For counter-arguments pertaining to evolution of early hominins in terms of dietary shifts, body
mass, neurons and fire, see “Human Brain Expansion during Evolution Is Independent of Fire
Control and Cooking,” PMC, National Library of Medicine, Frontiers in Neuroscience, by Alianda
M. Cornélio, Ruben E. de Bittencourt-Navarrete, Ricardo de Bittencourt Brum, Claudio
M. Queiroz, and Marcos R. Costa, Front Neurosci. 2016: 10: 167. Published online 2016 Apr 25.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2016.00167, PCID: PMCD4842772, PMID: 27199631, https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4842772/. Accessed February 8, 2020.
90.2 That Exile Embodied Consciousness