Guns, Germs, and Steel is an incredible book and I highly recommend it. It provides an evidence-based unfolding of events ‘as they really happened’. It’s history, but it’s more analysis than story, and it’s logical. Racial, economic, and power inequities of the modern day are for the most part the end products of very long chains of super arbitrary causes like how large a landmass was East vs. West instead of North vs. South and how many starter species of plants and animals were concentrated in one part of the world vs. another. It’s not that white people are intrinsically better than everyone else. From a development of civilization perspective, everything had an initial state and things just played out from there (with the obvious starting assumption that humans evolved to a point of being about as capable as we are today). It’s no different than if all of world history had unfolded in a totally different way and that’s what we would then call ‘normal’.
As a history noob, it was news to me that there were actually so many more species of plants and animals on the planet before humans spread all over. One crazy example is pre-human Australia and America – to read about animals like giant sloths 20 ft tall (height of 2 story apartment building) weighing over 2 tons and marsupial lions doesn’t feel real. This is all after dinosaurs, so nearer to our time, more ‘real’ if that’s possible. The fact that dinosaurs were real is also crazy. I recently started Sapiens, and it’s similar to Guns, Germs, and Steel – so far I think inferior because it’s less data-based and more anecdotal but it’s still thought-provoking. One point I found interesting is that of domesticated animals. Humans drove over half of large land species extinct. Human and domesticated animal ancestor populations were initially trivial on a global scale, but now occupy all the top ranks as the most present animals.
In creating the world we live in today, we took over, and we brought along some other species as prisoners, too. I’ll leave out the point about how in a way we effectively enslaved ourselves (better to read Sapiens chapter 5 yourself). I thought it was neat (only because it’s counterintuitive, it’s definitely unfortunate) how species like cows and chickens won from an evolutionary perspective by being most populous, but in another sense lost because instead of being ‘free’ and dying from natural causes in the wild they mostly live miserable lives as part of our food production system that sustains perpetual human population growth. Dairy cows kept pregnant as often as possible, but their calves taken away so that the milk can be harvested. Killed once past their most productive age. Female calves kept to become the new milk machines. Male calves shipped off to grow up to become steaks. Standing up in a small space for their whole life (numbered in months now instead of years) to minimize cost and maximize tenderness (movement would build muscle and lead to tougher meat). No reason to pay to keep an animal alive once it has reached its max size. Not that this is news, I think most people by now know more or less the conditions in which our food grows.
For sure the present reality as it continues for these food animals is sad. What else? I mean I know the animals aren’t human, but I question if they are even animals anymore. That’s sad. Can’t even die naturally. Can’t enjoy the presence of one’s parents or siblings. Whatever experience the gift of life endows, it feels like we took most of that gift away. They had no say in us bringing them along for this ride. We didn’t choose this life either, really, but still we are the cause. Not you and I, but humans in general. It’s hard to be human these days – how do we take accountability? We really can’t, we’re in too deep. It might only be a few thousand years of civilization, but I firmly believe we will not regress and give back ‘progress’ for righteousness. We will find mass alternatives only when we can no longer do as we do today, not because we ‘care’. Some individuals do really care, but I don’t think collective society does.
Anyways, after this thought I seriously considered (for about 20 minutes) not eating meat anymore. In solidarity with the chickens, and the cows! I came to the conclusion that my actions wouldn’t matter here and would cause me more friction than it’s worth, so I will keep eating meat. If my actions moved the needle I would change, but I am not saving a single chicken by not eating chicken. I acknowledge this is circular logic, because unless people do change nothing will change. That’s precisely the point though, everyone on average needs to change, and I don’t see that happening. The best I can do is be empathetic for the misery of chickens and cows and send a prayer up for them. Even though I don’t believe in God I hope they appreciate it. It would be sincere.
Separately, as a matter of priority, I personally think it’s misplaced to try to fix animal suffering before human suffering (not that it’s a suffering Olympics, but still). I value human life the most. Why? Because I’m human (yes it’s arbitrary). I also find it arbitrary to care about chickens and cows objectively as species – again, humans drove over half of the world’s species extinct as we spread across the world, why are cows and chickens special? Just because they are next in line? In general, I believe in not using the past to justify the present – so yes normally I’d say let’s save the chickens and cows even though we messed up with all those other species, except at this point it’s not possible. Are they better off extinct? Maybe, but we’ll keep them around. The part that still makes me sad is they are alive and it doesn’t feel to me that that’s what life should feel like, but hey, that’s life, quite unfair. Especially if you are a cow, chicken, or turkey.
Turkey? Little inside joke, but on my Instagram header I have stated ‘not a turkey’. It’s a nod to Taleb’s point that a turkey can become so confident that it will be fed today because it has been fed for hundreds of days in a row, except when today is Thanksgiving. In that case, the turkey is dead wrong, and also just dead. The message is don’t be a turkey. Don’t die or be harmed in a major way because you made too many assumptions about the past persisting. Nothing is guaranteed. So, it’s my little meme way of not being a turkey, staying aware. It’s also a nod to an acknowledgment of futility. That turkey was dead the day it was born. At least we can hope it lived in blissful ignorance, or if it learned its fate early, that it decided to enjoy life anyway within the confines we gave it.
Chickens and cows aside, what’s the real point here? Sometimes I feel like that turkey. Confined. I get so locked on to thinking about the world, its meaning, and its problems that I forget that I’m only thinking about this world that happened to occur. Am I really thinking about reality, real truth, if I don’t consider the most general form? My usual perspective is that of 21st century Western human, and I’m so siloed in pre-assuming that our world as given is sensible. Sure I question institutions and norms, but I question them as norms of today’s world that perhaps could be replaced by different norms, also of today’s world. I don’t question the base world, the structure on which it all stands. Like the turkey. It might question whether it should be in this or that pen or be fed this or that food, but it doesn’t question that it is in captivity. What I’m getting at is I accept the world as history gives it to me (mostly because what other option is there!), and therefore implicitly accept all of what our world represents. I’m born into it, I do not choose it.
Talk about autonomy and free will. From the instant we arrive, we are handed the structure, a cumulative product of all actions that have preceded us. The world structure today is logical in a sense, but is it just? I’m leaning no. This makes me think about how much harm and evil am I accountable for / promoting just by existing? If I think about it in terms of sacrificed life energy (i.e. fuel) required from all humans / animals together to sustain our world as it is now, what is that number? Then I am responsible for 1 divided by the population of all animals, more if we give more blame to industrialized citizens, and that’s before considering whether I do anything good or bad. Given how distributed and specialized our production systems are, even if I do good it averages out over such a large base that it probably has negligible impact. Also, I think most people do net harm unintentionally (see We Cause Our Own Problems: Impatience), so it’s looking bleak. Kinda is what it is tbh. What’s my personal conclusion? I think it’s fine to acknowledge the doom for what it is and move on with life. I can’t fix it. Probably we can’t fix it. I do think we should be gracious in accepting the gifts which world events have given us, even though we may not deserve them. A big smile, a big thank you universe, an acknowledgment of how we got here, but not despair. That’s the kind of despair that drove romantics crazy, and other people like Ted Kacsynski the Unabomber actually crazy. It shouldn’t come to that.
