Afterthoughts _ Heaven & Hell At Galapagos, reflecting perceptions of Charles Darwin, Hermann Melville and a new age tourist to the island.

Population explosion, industrialisation and sprawl are undeniably our ineviteble "karmic", "kismet" or " a priori " givens. _ since mankind doesn't seem to be really interested in self-regulation nor able to do it in an manner and with same strategical thinking and rigor, that is exhibited in making wars, weapons and money! But maybe here too a radical new thinking and technology may help mankind to dampen its repercussions on the biodiversity of the planet. Certainly the subject should not be taboo to discuss.

At the start of this essay, I have talked about benign “predation”, as expressed by avian fauna at Galapagos and the manifestation of very specific and well-nigh divergent (to the rest of the world) behavioural traits of the populations, all because of the abundance of the primary resources and reproductive isolation. Who says mankind does not have abundance of primary resources? As a famous study has revealed, famines can also be created, have been created historically. And quite often famines are also man-made! And where they are fully nature induced, not fully fought against, as modern means of communication and state of technology would warrant.

The British and the Americans managed to transport million tons of water through a desert, in only a matter of days, where nothing like it had been accomplished  in over 10,000 years of the history of the people who have inhabited these areas. The driving force however was not to bring water to peasants, but for soldiers hell bent on removing a dictator. A noble deed but a far nobler would be to accomplish something like that when a famine or lack of water is making great masses of people suffer, when natural resources, far more important for the overall survival of our species amongst others are threatened, when living beings are getting red-listed at an alarming rate or simply becoming extinct. Which brings us to the most important philosophical question of our times.

Why does mankind show more dynamic for fighting physical wars with members of its own species than in collaboration with life in all of its varied benign forms and with members of its own kind? And why is hate so physically dynamic and volatile and brimming with energy  than empathy, reason, respect and  love, except maybe in certain cases when a mother is protecting her young?

According to my opinion, and I will show further ahead some examples, it has quite often absolutely nothing to do with survival nor with  the fight for resources but unfortunately with something still hidden in the recesses of the fertile mind, probably located more in the cortical rather than in the limbical regions of the brain! That is also probably the reason, that civilized and complex organized societies can exhibit a mind-boggling wantom destruction, even far exceeding that of some cannibal tribes, mentioned in some old historical accounts. One such legend exists in Africa of a certian cannibal tribe in Rhodesia, a ferocious one, who had an impulsive drive, like the Mongols for conquest and who morever ate away whole settlements after conquering them,allegedly depopulating complete villages. The tribe however seemed to have disappeared for unknown reasons, which one can presume to have been probably some kind of epidemic! But here again it seems less the need for resources, but a spiritual belief of the people to incorporate the essence of the other being in ones own self, that seem to lie behind such rituals, and therfore paradocically actually not a wanton act, but a deed of the ignorant!



Wanton destruction is the prerogative of mankind, only rarely witnessed in animals. The few exceptions being the Marten when a mother chick tries to defend her eggs too loudly (it  may,  kill all the hens in  the barn without eating them, just for the heck of it, what normally never happens, if the chicks show no resistance against the egg-rob), a berserk-gone elephant (that  may have deeper psycho-sociological reasons), sea-lions holding their harem-members in check, a killer-whale eating almost all it can (which however is still not to be considered as a wanton destruction)  and of course the aggression that is associated with pairing-time, whose reasons are probably the only ones directly indicative of  fight for carrying ones genes ahead, but that too is not for certain, since ritual may become so alienated from the primary survival strategies as any  human being fighting for a stupid idea, the female may even favour a trait that may be detrimental to survival! Likewise you may get Don Quixote fighting the windmills for a lady, who maybe barren, non-existent or a  masquerading trickster having fun with the old man!  There is apparently a non-socratian  Dionysian  element to  wanton destruction, it has irrational roots and may  have  algebraic structural  Yin & Yang  dialectic base, inaccessible to those studying brain anatomy or bio-chemistry  of the neurons!

Furthermore, we have been witness to the possibility of a nation being able to exist without an army! Tibet!  It did exist for a long time, and if  China had been not overrun by communism, which like Islam and Christianity has  MISSION, and although denouncing religion,  possesses a  religious redemptive  character, Tibet  may have been able to exist  well nigh till present. 

All this has to do with elements from the other world, not much about  fight for resources and survival. Prestige and power norms prevalent in the world may be representative of  certain archetypical pattern, present in the cosmos. I always keep wondering how almost all the people of the world, especially the men, and the woman who want to be men, wear suits and ties,  especially the politicians in hot desert countries with humid climates!  The tie, is the only remaining  emblem and the  totem with a universal appeal, all others seem to disappear when it appears!  Now this is something whose answer may be found in neurobiology too, but I doubt it…