The Supremacy Sci-Fi of Human Civilisation: From Caves to Spaceships and Back to Caves

In its futile quest for the ultimate delusion of immortality, humanity always sought to convince itself of the most vivid supremacy fantasy: that humans are not from Earth.  The industrial revolution, the look and feel of our modern cities, our cars, our houses, were all shaped to subconsciously convince us that we are not even remotely related to everything else that lives and breathes on this planet.  We are simply “better”, “higher” beings.  We are made of glass and steel; not flesh, bones, feelings, fears, vulnerabilities and sensitivities. 

Humans are deeply ashamed of their beginnings.  They do not like to be reminded that they are just as fragile, imperfect and mortal as the 10 million other species they have decimated on this planet.  This denial of our mortality was narrated through a Hollywood movie set full of futuristic gadgets and props that were usually ideated on film decades before their actual invention.  This is how frantic the rush was, to firmly put behind us the long-haired, unshowered, “uncultured” ape-human as soon as this was “inhumanly” possible.

This undoubtedly led to a deeply seated resentment towards nature itself, for having made us mortal.  Throwing the baby out with the bath water, we constructed civilizations which nurtured contempt for nature and for the natural cycles of death and rebirth which are part of all existence on Earth.  We desperately tried to deny our mortality.  We even invented gods and new worlds we ascended to when we temporarily “malfunctioned” as humans: various versions of Paradise which verged on the comical and the absurd, and where all our Earthly sins were suddenly, to our delight, unashamedly allowed: we could eat as much cake as we wanted in the most greedy, unsustainable and destructive way.  This was our greed-fuelled vision of Paradise perfection, which we tried to replicate on an actual real planet which places severe limits on fantasy “bullshit” based on impossible physics.  We embraced growth, on a planet which neither grows or contracts. The mismatch between visions of Paradise and down-to-Earth realities would end up being disastrous, even for such a “supreme” being.

Our “modern” civilizations look to shield us and distract us from anything which might remind us that we are in fact, from Earth: that at some point fairly recently, we came from the “wild”, out of the jungles and savannahs, just like all the other beings – and that this is where all of our molecules return to when we die, decompose and disappear like all good living things do.

The image of nature as an “unruly wilderness” is of course a fraudulent human narrative.  Nature is a product of careful, conscious, natural evolution over billions of years, which followed a precise set of physical laws respecting the stability, sustainability, and circularity of energy, water, and life itself.  Nature is not an accident.  Nature is a product of the laws of physics, and it is precisely because of these laws that it has an incredible ability to regain its balance if only it was left alone to recover.

Nature’s economy is self-made, self-sufficient, self-propelling and collectively and democratically operated.  It doesn’t need electricity, jobs, money or supermarket food.  It doesn’t fret constantly about its GDP.  It already has its own grassroots-powered political system, and the perfect resource-based economy.  It even has its own social media and communication systems: through the Earthnet of Things, this planet is 100% connected, conscious, and aware of any imbalances around the clock, which it actions immediately.  The natural ecosystem which we consider “wild”, is in fact the only truly intelligent, sustainable and self-aware civilization that has ever existed on this planet.

In this idiotic quest to shield ourselves from any reminders of our mortality, we created polluted cities which are toxic to all biological life, including our own. Our psychonomy traumatizes us with meaningless soul-sucking “bullshit jobs” which only push paper and CO2 around the globe and end up pushing us towards burnout for the reward of a salary that enslaves us to the consumatronic farm. 

Are these the “Spaceship Humans” we envisioned we were going to be?  As this self-harming civilization becomes increasingly toxic to itself, it can only keep devising more narratives, religions, delusions, consumer rewards programs and entertainment sedatives to put itself to sleep; hoping that one day it will wake up in an empty spaceship in Paradise, surrounded by nothing.

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

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