A God for All Intentions, and A Civilisation for All the Wrong Reasons

The Narratives of Intent that Lurk Behind the Existential Problem of Overshoot

Life on Earth began as a completely random, chemical accident: Initiate. Nucleate. Replicate. Consume. Deplete. Repeat. Die.

It is no less than ironic then that, human civilisations have always claimed that they exist “for a reason”: whether it was religion, race supremacy, ecosystem stewardship or other invented narrative, humans always sought to prove chemistry and biology wrong. This great civilisation surely couldn’t be an accident, because greatness can never be the product of chaos. Accidents are democratic, and egalitarian: they can happen anywhere, anytime, to anyone. Greatness on the other hand, should never be handed out randomly. It should be earned, and it should only happen to those who deserve it: humans, of course.

And this is why so called “great civilisations” could not possibly be accidents: they should always be intentional. Like children unable to process the fact that, in the vast majority of cases, they are conceived by accident in the height of sexual passion, personal pleasure, and under the influence of randomly-created hormone molecules that have much more prerogative over human fate than humans themselves, societies convinced themselves that they had been intentionally, deliberately, and thoughtfully designed by a “Maker”: someone, or something, who sat down one bright day and thought to themselves: “today, I’m going to make a human”.

By virtue of magical transference of course, humans themselves would become intentional beings in their own right. Not only had they been part of a Plan all along, but THEY, even had their own plans.

It was for this lamentably egotistical reason then that, at all times throughout our history, we had to have an “intent” for our rampant expansion on the planet. It wasn’t enough to simply mindlessly, ruthlessly decimate, innovate, procreate and colonize. There had to be a motive, a Plan: a sacred text, a supremacy theory, or, in lieu of any further inspiration, a simple direct order from the Universe itself in the form of an invented God – anything we could attribute all of our actions to, and blame all our mistakes on. While our religions started on the right track by making science and biology our Gods, in the end we created a series of Disney characters to worship – and when it came to choosing which motive fit our fake storyline best, we decided to go for the full buffet: we chose all of the above.

But as much as these narratives, gods and justifications were invented to prove that humanity did have a motive, a reason to exist, and even a purpose, in the end they all proved the exact opposite: that humans not only had close to zero free will or deliberate reason to exist, but would themselves always opt to relinquish, surrender, and outsource their so-called “free will”, their illusion of mental sovereignty and all responsibilities that came with it, to these outside entities, gods, and fake narratives.

“My God made me do it”

But there was another reason for this desperate search for “intent”: all of these hallucinations were key in selling colonialism and environmental destruction to the masses who were to execute it, while normalising authority, hierarchy and oppression within the societies who were to expected to accept, endure, and submit to it. We were all told to accept that “this is just how the world works” as a handful of psychopaths amassed a level of wealth inversely proportional to both their moral intelligence and mental capacity.

And across all of these narratives of intention, the most dangerous one was the one of growth, and proliferation of the human species: we are the best thing that ever happened on Earth, so surely, having an infinite number of Homo sapiens is the best thing that could ever happen to this planet.

Humans and other creatures do not need “reasons” to exist. Their very existence is what gives them the reason, and the right to exist. Those who seek motives, reasons, and purposes, eventually become the victims of these hallucinations. This hallucinating civilisation is finished.

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