The False Narrative of Conflict

Evolving Into One

3.5 billion years ago, life began to emerge on Earth. A single, lonely cell, the ancestor which we share with every other life form on the planet, began to diverge into unique individual species.  At first, only a handful of fragile life forms existed, barely distinguishable from each other.  Fast forward a few million years, and an incredible diversity of life emerged, enough to provide material for countless hours of David Attenborough documentaries. 

Yet many of the natural world’s wonders remain undiscovered today, at an age when we arrogantly think that we have seen it all, and catalogued it all in our documentaries, encyclopaedias, museums and genetic banks.  We naively think that we have a thorough understanding of Earth’s infinite diversity and complexity, simply by recording, cataloguing and capturing everything in pixels, bytes and megabytes.  But we still have very little understanding of what an ecosystem is, and how it has come into existence.  Examining the individual parts of this system does very little in helping us understand how the sum of it all functions. 

This is because as species diversified further, they began to form incredibly complex relationships with each other, and here is where the beautiful paradox emerged: the more they evolved and diverged, becoming bacteria, birds, fish, fungi, terrestrial mammals or insects, the more they became one superorganism, consisting of intricate yet extremely intimate relationships between the species, vital to each other’s survival.  Ironically, the more all these species evolved, the more they remained as one.  Throughout this long evolutionary journey they had remained functioning as that one, initial organism, even as they split into more and more individual, differentiated species. 

Our traditional textbook representation of a phylogenetic tree of free-standing branches misses out on this important concept of oneness, unity and interdependence.  It fails to capture the interrelationship of species belonging to different branches of the tree, both within the physical environments they co-inhabit, as well as the gene sequences they share.  Evidence has been accumulating about the feasibility of lateral transfer of genes across genera, and even between animal kingdoms – that is, the exchange of genetic information between species located in distant, completely unrelated branches of the tree – usually through various “accidents” and vectors.  The discovery of more and more examples of these direct gene transfers suggests that these are not “freak” events, but part of an evolutionary process which is more dynamic, mysterious, unpredictable and innovative than we had originally thought.  

Yet this is something which, until relatively recently, was thought impossible as it didn’t follow the snail pace of traditional Darwinian evolution through single-point DNA mutations.  What this evidence comes down to is that, the branches of the phylogenetic tree do not always end up nowhere, as they do in a real tree.  They sometimes reconnect to the roots of the genetic tree, and they can also link back into each other, in strange and unexpected ways which we are only just beginning to uncover.  This tree is much more connected than we had assumed.  

It is as if the primordial soup – that thick, murky sludge of chemicals out of which the first living organism on the planet came into existence – is in some ways still in operation: randomly churning, combining proto-molecules into novel, magical, gene sequences.  The planet’s genetic code is perhaps a lot more malleable than we had thought.  There is a certain freedom of information which allows nature to experiment, and sometimes “beta-test” the same exact gene in a different organism so that it can see if it may be useful elsewhere, or even re-purpose it for a new task, with the odd mutation here and there.  It is not uncommon to find almost identical gene sequences in different organisms, serving completely different functions – yet obviously having descended from the same original sequence.  Some of them were even formerly “evil” genes belonging to viruses: viruses tend to often function as the “USB sticks” of the planet’s genetic pool: accidentally integrating their DNA into their host, and super-charging the evolutionary process by means of literally re-writing or disrupting the host’s DNA in one, big, copy and paste job.

Without going too much into the science, the implication of all this is that, aside from sharing distant ancestors, it is possible that we share even more with other species on Earth, species which we traditionally regard as barely related to us.  There is even more unity between organisms in Earth’s family tree than we had initially assumed.  All species are “different and same” at the same time, and undoubtedly connected and dependent upon each other for their survival.  As this genetic pool which everyone has been drawing from becomes increasingly extinct, everyone loses – not just those going extinct.

The Invisible Superorganism

In our obsession to focus on the differences between species as we catalogued them through the ages, we had literally missed the forest for the trees, or more accurately, the tree for the branches: we had failed to pay attention to how these species are connected and related, and we began to study them as independent organisms living in isolation, as opposed to components within a much bigger, much more complex superorganism.  It was like taking apart a car and studying a specific part, e.g. the wheel, without having any concept of where this wheel goes on the car, what its function is, and how it works together with the other car parts.  The wheel by itself means absolutely nothing, has very little worth or significance, if it is not understood within the context of the ecosystem of other car parts it belongs to.  Yet our traditional science has focused on the wheel, all by itself:  how round it is, what its made of, and so on, giving ourselves the false impression that we know this wheel, when in fact we know absolutely nothing about either its past or its present.

The superorganism is therefore not just a sum of the branches on the genetic tree, but also of all the interconnections and cooperations between the species, which include the important context of each life form: the specific role it is expected to play within the superorganism. This complex web of connections is the superorganism itself, a descendant of that one, monocellular life form which started it all.  In a way, our common monocellular ancestor never really split into independent species.  It simply became more complex.  Yet this superorganism, which is by far the most important, the most complex of them all, is invisible to humans.  We have yet to acknowledge and appreciate its existence, even though we, humans, are a part of it.

The Myth of The Predator

Although appearing to be chaotic on the surface, our ecosystem is at the same time incredibly simple and balanced in its operating principles.  When studying either the ecosystem or the climate system, humans tend to focus on chaos and conflict, either between species or between weather elements.  This is because they are again making the mistake of thinking of species as independent and isolated.  They see them as competitors, and overlook the overall harmony which keeps the superorganism alive and functioning.  They try to explain their observations of the ecosystem based on the principle of interspecies competition and conflict, rather than appreciating that these competing species also need each other at the same time. There is an overarching harmony and flat structure which presides over the entire ecosystem, yet humans have always been on a mission to understand nature through narratives of conflict: “who is on top” and “who is at the bottom” of the food chain.  

We seem to only want to understand the ecosystem as a series of power struggles and bitter rivalries, as opposed to balanced relationships between natural competitors who share the various resources of the planet.  It is no wonder then that we have destroyed much of Earth’s ecosystem already, having viewed our role as that of a warrior in a conflict where there are only two options: to kill, or be killed.  We consider ourselves predators, when in fact every species within Earth’s ecosystem is both a predator and prey.  The ultimate predator is Earth:  it decides whether a species still has what it takes to remain on the planet.  If it crosses a line, or has nothing to offer anymore to the other species, it is naturally phased out.

Unity Within the Chaos

This means that although species are indeed often engaged in brutal conflict as they antagonize each other, consume each other, or compete for the same habitat, they are all at the same time still part of the superorganism, which has remained in perfect health for countless millennia.  Resources within this superorganism are finite and fairly distributed so that, despite all of the competition, everyone has enough to eat in the end.  The truth is, there are no winners or losers, predator or prey, sentient or non-sentient life forms in the ecosystem.  There is only balance and unity.  We, the life forms of this planet, are all connected.   All we are is matter which travels from one being to the next.  

Rather than celebrating the chemical and genetic heritage which connects us to other beings, humans have been poisoning the very circle which ultimately links back to them: by viewing our ecosystem through the “human supremacy lens” of conflict and competition, we have predisposed our own very toxic and aggressive relationship with the planet.  Our track record is one of destruction and extinction, because this is the natural role that we see for ourselves.  Yet many humans still like to see themselves as benevolent custodians of this planet, a patronizing, deluded and narcissistic view of who we are.

A Civilisation Built from Violence and Inequality

In the name of these human-centric narratives of conflict, we have committed unfathomable crimes towards the millions of other species who had an equal stake in this planet, ever since its creation.  The complete annihilation of entire ecosystems sheltering millions of species, was not a side effect of civilisation. It was a deliberate crime perpetrated by the greatest minds, leaders and technologies humanity has produced.  

Extinction is not something you can repair or ever apologize for.  The minute we make another organism extinct, we are forever cursed until the end of time.  Extinction is a one-way permanent exile from a genetic pool which took 3.8 billion years to build.  We have chased far too many precious species down this shameful path to oblivion, for far too long.  They have done nothing to us to deserve this.  Yet rather than seeing other life forms as family members we depend upon, we have treated them as either food or obstacles for elimination.  This conflict with the natural world is, and has always been, a manufactured narrative.  It is a figment of our imagination – yet one that has been vital in sustaining the expansion of our ecocidal civilisation through slash and burn colonialism, capitalism and the manipulative lies of religion.  Our focus on conflict, rather than balance, was key to civilizational expansion, which needed narratives of conflict, violence and supremacy over other species in order to justify its destruction-driven growth. 

Establishing and maintaining inequality was key: there is always more profit to be made from the weak, rather than those less desperate.  Our psychonomy is largely based on cannibalism towards the less fortunate humans, as well as life forms who are unable to defend themselves or their territories as humans do.  What we call civilization would collapse without its dark side: the exploitation, monetization, and weaponization of the misfortune of those with less mental and physical capital – whether they are humans or non-humans.

Throughout their history, empires relied on these narratives of conflict, hastily and clumsily woven upon racial or species differences in order to give themselves the licence to destroy, to grow and to sustain their expansion.  Our political, social and religious institutions were founded upon these narratives as well, which they have used for the subjugation of other species and human races ever since.  Our popular culture today still largely relies on narratives of conflict with nature and superiority of humans over all other species, as this is the popular narrative which serves the human supremacy dogma, and maintains humanity’s delusional ambitions about its place, and its future on this planet.

The Corruption of Science

Our psychonomy has tried to normalize this narrative of conflict and superiority as much as possible, and undoubtedly influenced how science works: reducing most scientists to butterfly collectors who study individual species in complete isolation – leaving the study of the most important aspect, the relationships between these species, to outsiders such as humanists, cosmologists, philosophers and off-beat ecologists.  

Our academic obsession with cataloguing and recording other life forms is a very capitalist and objectified view of Earth and its species, aiming ultimately at human ownership and domination, whatever the specific science angle might be.  Because of the commercial and human-centred angle of much of scientific research, the emphasis of our academic system has been not on understanding how we relate to all other beings on Earth, that is, where we actually fit within the superorganism, but how we can study these other species so that we can best exploit them.  Many of our academic institutions have stopped learning, and are profiting instead:  making money for themselves, and for the necrocapitalist investors who back them.  But when knowledge becomes a business, it is not knowledge anymore.  It is the propaganda of those who sponsor it, and who select the “learnings” which best fit their agenda.   

For humans, Earth is nothing but a huge supermarket: we are much more interested in owning nature, than understanding it.  The planet’s beings, now converted into products and placed on supermarket shelves, have no say on how much they are worth, and when they will expire.  They have long ago lost any sovereignty whatsoever, and any rights to their own existence.  This is a narrative which has served well all scientific endeavours, giving them the licence to destroy and disrupt, in the name of “knowledge” and discovery.  As part of this narrative, and in order to do their science most effectively and impartially, scientists must bizarrely and perversely appear completely detached from their subject matter, even as they get closer and closer to it.

In fact, scientists are not allowed to get too close to their subject matter, in case they may become too emotional.  There has to be zero emotion and zero connection.  A climate scientist is not allowed to mourn the disappearance of an ancient glacier, except in their own private time away from publicity.  The same goes for the scientist doing lethal experiments on animals.  They are not allowed to let their emotions “interfere” with their scientific study, because these emotions will very likely interfere with the end application of the research findings, and upset the investors who funded the unethical research in the first place.

This disconnection of the researcher is dressed up as “scientific objectivity”.  We detach ourselves from the subject matter not because we want to be objective, but because we do not want to give “it” any rights of its own within the framework of the scientific study.  The subject matter needs to become a passive, helpless “object”, so that we can do to it whatever we please.  

This pretentious objectivity is of course, a disguised human supremacy narrative: the superior, intelligent human, is the only one who can objectively study the inferior, much less intelligent organism: not as a life form with flesh, blood, emotions and sovereignty over its own body and soul, but as an object for personal use and abuse.  This human supremacy narrative objectifies all organisms and does not even permit them to be “living”, let alone exist as biological entities.  

But they, just like us, are living beings, and they are extremely fragile.  They have equal rights to us for access to the right temperature, food, and water at regular intervals.  They have the same needs and entitlements to comfort and affection, however low in the “pecking order” of intelligence we decide to conveniently, and arbitrarily, place them.  

Those who view nature and its beings as objects lack any palpable sense of who they are, what they are or even where they are. They spend their entire lives in an impenetrable darkness, living through millions of failed attempts to feel, see, and hear.  In the end, they become objects themselves, half-filled vessels depleted of the elements which made them most “alive”.

The More Differences, The More Power Structures

By adhering to these false narratives of conflict and supremacy, we have been focusing on the differences between species rather their similarities, as we desperately tried to create artificial hierarchies.  The butterfly collector pays more attention to how butterfly species differ, as opposed to the attributes they share.  The more sizes and colours of butterflies there are, the more exciting the chase becomes. The butterfly collector however, learns very little about butterflies through this process, even as his collection of victims grows. During this “knowledge chase”, the butterfly collector ends up dumber and dumber, disconnected from the collective intelligence that he shares with his specimens, and which he will never quite grasp.  He doesn’t understand that both he and the butterfly are pieces of the superorgranism.  Every time he is stabbing a butterfly on his clipboard, he is stabbing himself.

Our psychonomy wants us to be blind, mindless butterfly collectors who simply want to own and consume, focusing on what makes us different, than what brings us together.  Only if we start focusing away from differences and observing the commonalities between species and human races, can the violent narratives of conflict upon which today’s civilization was founded begin to dissolve. 

Our psychonomy has needed these artificial narratives from its inception.  It is because highlighting the differences between people and beings helps our system create power structures.  Once these power structures are in place, they can be exploited.  Morphological differences between species and between human races launched slavery, colonialism, extinction and countless wars, enabling empires to grow through an endless cycle of exploitation and destruction.  These differences became the ideological bedrock behind religious and political structures which, were nothing but the marketing departments of the psychonomy.  Racism is a prime example of how supremacy and conflict narratives were created and exploited, for purely economic reasons.

Conflict-Based Definitions of Intelligence

We therefore tend to seek differences, hierarchies and narratives of conflict all the time, so that we can find ways to dominate either over other species, or within our own.  A particularly recurring theme across these narratives has always been the measurement of intelligence, or “sentience”, because as it so happens, for most humans the level of intelligence of a species correlates with “how many rights” to life, to its own existence, it should have.  This correlation between intelligence and the right to exist is completely arbitrary of course, and makes no sense whatsoever.  

It wasn’t randomly chosen though.  Humans chose to “assign” the most rights to smarter species, because they consider themselves at the top of the intelligence ladder.  The problem is that humans again, completely arbitrarily, have cherry-picked the criteria for evaluating and measuring intelligence which favour their own ranking.  The truth however is that intelligence is neither measurable, nor is it comparable.  Intelligence across species should not even be compared.  A strawberry does different things from a seagull, and from a human.  All three species are intelligent within their own niche, and the specific function they are meant to perform in the ecosystem.  Some strawberries may be dumber than others, but comparing a strawberry to a human is much, much, more problematic.  It’s like comparing apples and oranges (pun intended).  Without strawberries, or other food, humans would not even exist, therefore the question of intelligence at the species level makes no sense.  It only makes sense at the collective level.  

The ecosystem functions as one big brain coordinated by the EoT, which is the cumulative intelligence of all lifeforms and processes on Earth.  Evaluating the intelligence of an individual life form within this vast network is highly problematic, and only makes sense within a narrative of conflict and competition i.e. who will kill who, first.  Looking at intelligence within a single species would be like picking apart a human brain and evaluating each neuron cell separately, to find the most and least intelligent neurons.  What makes neuron cells intelligent however, is not who each of them are as an individual entity, but the number and quality of connections with all other cells which they share: their collective intelligence, which belongs not only to them, but to all the other neurons as well.  Humanity is just one neuron cell within Earth’s brain.  This intelligence is shareable, never owned. 

Our human-centric and fragmented definition of intelligence can be seen in how both our folklore and scientific disciplines have approached it.  We have spent thousands of years asking ourselves whether the dolphin is smarter than the octopus, or if white people are smarter than black people.  An intelligent species to us is one that is “problem-solving” in human terms, like a chimp who is able to ask for more bananas by pressing a button, or an octopus able to get itself out of a trap.  It is a definition of intelligence which again, is based on conflict and competition, and judged on purely human criteria important to our species, and our species alone.  These are incredibly narrow and human-centric definitions of intelligence.  We tend to consider a species “intelligent” based on whether it can get itself out of a mess, or how effective it is in killing all the other species in order to dominate, but these are human criteria of intelligence, based on our false narrative of conflict and competition.  For us, if the octopus was able to kill every other life form in the ocean and establish an empire, it would become super-intelligent in our eyes.  We judge intelligence by human colonialist and supremacist standards, although, ironically, we ourselves are clearly failing to tick the box of “getting out of a mess” by the way  in which we have spectacularly failed to address the climate crisis – which we have caused in the first place, because we are of course, incredibly intelligent.

The Fabricated War

Our current existential crisis is nothing but the false narrative of conflict finally coming back to haunt us.  We viewed Earth and its species as our enemy for thousands of years, and we have managed to turn it into one.  We have started a war where there never was one, ultimately a war with ourselves.  What lies at the origin of the climate crisis and ecological overshoot is the false core belief that anything natural outside of the artificial human civilisation is raw, inferior and inherently hostile to us.  Perhaps the most shameful of all of our manufactured narratives was the idea that nature was the one who started the war:  nature was the “unruly” one, who needed to be tamed.  Whether it was a thousand year-old tree cut down or an indigenous tribe exterminated, it was all done under the same principle: they deserved it, because they are “lesser” and “different” life forms. They were not high enough in the intelligence ranking, and therefore in the hierarchy of rights to their existence.  

But the false narrative of “advanced civilization vs wilderness” has collapsed.  Man was all along the wilderness to be tamed, and nature was the only balanced, sustainable and civilized system that ever existed, uniting all species in harmony and allowing none to dominate over others.  Nature was never “out to get us”. 

Biochauvinism, racism, slavery and colonialism may have set the foundations for today’s global economic system, but arguably nothing much has really changed since then.  People of color still struggle more than whites for opportunities and economic prosperity.  Ball and chain have been replaced by debt slavery across the population, regardless of race. We are all slaves, pinned down like butterflies and compared to each other in an increasingly scrutinizing manner based on our digital trace.  The system is constantly creating ever more narratives of conflict, as it tries to open up new sources of revenue.  It desperately needs these narratives, if it is to continue. 

Yet in principle we are all equal, vital components of the superorganism.  All of Earth’s 8 million life forms came into existence in the same exact way: out of the dark murk, the silent mud, the restless, nourishing molecular soup that made us all.  The soup is now being poisoned by the one species who has forgotten what it is, and where it came from.  Only if we demolish the toxic narratives of supremacy, conflict, growth and progress on which we have built this flimsy house of cards, can we develop new narratives upon which a completely new, multi-species social organization can be established.  If we ever manage to accept and live by the principle that we are only a fragment of the living ecosystem, it would be the humblest, yet possibly the greatest discovery of mankind.  And a game changer in turning around the extinctional spiral we are in.

George is an author, researcher, molecular biologist and food scientist. You can follow him on Twitter @99blackbaloons

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