Matt Wuerker for June 22, 2019

Trump’s base is opposed to EVERYTHING, not just thumbs.

(In other words, his base is very.)

It’s the opposable political ideologies that are the root cause of the failure to evolve mentally and civilly.

Oblique twitter reference vis-a-vis Ol’ Punkinhead, the Semi-literate?

Tribalism worked very well on the African Savannah a half million years ago. No longer.

religion

So, now what, agreeable thumbs?

Try using your big brain to stop the collapse of civilization in 2050.

Unfortunately, technology has evolved more quickly than human responsibility. We can only hope that the entire First World doesn’t get the final Darwin Award while taking down the rest of humanity.

It is thought that on average a species lasts about 1 million years. We don’t seem to be on course to make it that long, which leads one to suspect that technological skills may not be that great a trait for longevity.

If it’s species survival you’re looking for, six legs and a carapace seems like a good bet.

Sometimes I wonder if God is miffed at Man, because we may bring about the end of this world before HE (She?) had planned to do so.

Evolution can have odd consequences, and not just in the form of “freakishly” odd animals and plants. The human animals is both social and predatory. This is a recipe for beeg troubles.

Thumbs aren’t the issue. (Il)logic is the issue.

Thumbs alone aren’t the problem. It’s all of those who thumb their noses.

We evolved to be hunter-gathers, and nothing more. Even once we ceased being hunter-gatherers we did maintain a partial relationship with nature. We weren’t as globally destructive for most of human history as we are now.

With the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the Market Economy, our relation to the planet changed drastically.

Before capitalism, wealth was measured by how much land one owned. Money was not that important. With the rise of capitalism, money became important because it could be used to finance various technological developments. At this point, accumulating “green paper” became more important than land.

Since “green paper” was the way to easy street technological advancements were encouraged. The effect on both the planet and human society was ignored. This pattern continues to this day, led by Silicon Valley.

This intertwining of the value of money and technologycreated our monster. Capitalism is more a religious faith than an actual economic system. It is incredibly wasteful. And that is the reason it is, along with overpopulation, destroying our only home.

Altho there are many ways in which a market economy is wasteful, I will only mention one.

When one buys stock in a company what one is doing is actually loaning money to the business. The dividends are your return on what you lent, plus interest. The interest is undefined (i.e. 20% as defined interest) and there is no point at which the loan plus interest is considered to be paid back.

This means that a business has to constantly grow, increase its market share or however one might like to label it. In the words of the economist Lester Thurow; “Capitalism is like a bicycle. If it doesn’t keep moving it falls over.”

This survival need to grow creates waste. It uses far more resources than necessary. Unneeded material used to make money making technology is thrown into various places causing land, water, and air pollution.

Just think how much cleaner our home would be if electricity had never been developed. We would not be living in a world designed by and for the benefit of hoarders.