Alas, our own model is somewhat different to Huxley's, even
though he was writing over a hundred years ago, and we are here and now,
with our 'knowledge' of how the world is - we think!
We have scientific researchers to do our exploring for us, scientific evidence to inform and advise us and yet we still insist on a model or metaphor, that ignores what we have found and what we know about the world and everything in it, including ourselves.
What we seem clearly not to have, is the ability to control ourselves, the ability to curtail our activities so that the world that supports us, continues healthily to do so.
Why do we lack this ability? If we have the knowledge that what we are doing is harming our world, biting the hand that feeds us, if you like, why are we continuing down the road that is so clearly marked TO RUIN?
Many of us citizens are already doing 'our bit' for the planet; we are trying to recycle wherever we can; trying to cut our carbon footprint; trying to be more aware of the effects of consuming more and more, and yet the Earth is in dire peril from us and what we are doing.
Is it simply that it is too late for anything to really be done? Or is it that although we think we are acting, we are, in fact, only scratching at the surface of what needs to be done.
Just as one man working for himself can make little impact on the financial world, as opposed to one man with an army of workers toiling for him, who is able to amass a vast fortune very quickly, so it is with our efforts to help our planet.
Acting as individuals, we do have an impact, but it is in acting together that our impact would make a significant difference. Our world is being mined for its mineral wealth, not by one man working with pick and shovel, but with the vast machinery corporate wealth brings to any task it undertakes.
Our world is not being mined by men as men, but by men as armies of men, using vast arrays of machinery, the quicker and more completely to empty the world of its wealth - or if not to exactly empty it, then to redistribute it into the hands of the corporations that are doing the damage. Let us be clear though, these corporate giants are doing it in our name - in the names of shareholders - people like us - not us - not us in number, you notice, but far fewer - taking much, much more than one of them can need or handle in any meaningful way.
If we landed from another planet and had to comment upon what we saw on this planet, if we had to give the purpose of these corporate giants mining the Earth for what is down there, and then changing it into a currency only they could use, we would have to say that the real function of such a corporation is to take what it can from this planet before it folds in upon itself and implodes and disappears from the universe.
Perhaps it is time to rethink our metaphor, our model, of our struggle for existence on this Earth, moving from one in which we imagine we are in complete control of the chessboard of Huxley's comprehension, to one in which we are, as he says, merely a sort of blind player, totally at the mercy of a fair and just Nature that will make no allowances for our ignorance.
We have scientific researchers to do our exploring for us, scientific evidence to inform and advise us and yet we still insist on a model or metaphor, that ignores what we have found and what we know about the world and everything in it, including ourselves.
What we seem clearly not to have, is the ability to control ourselves, the ability to curtail our activities so that the world that supports us, continues healthily to do so.
Why do we lack this ability? If we have the knowledge that what we are doing is harming our world, biting the hand that feeds us, if you like, why are we continuing down the road that is so clearly marked TO RUIN?
Many of us citizens are already doing 'our bit' for the planet; we are trying to recycle wherever we can; trying to cut our carbon footprint; trying to be more aware of the effects of consuming more and more, and yet the Earth is in dire peril from us and what we are doing.
Is it simply that it is too late for anything to really be done? Or is it that although we think we are acting, we are, in fact, only scratching at the surface of what needs to be done.
Just as one man working for himself can make little impact on the financial world, as opposed to one man with an army of workers toiling for him, who is able to amass a vast fortune very quickly, so it is with our efforts to help our planet.
Acting as individuals, we do have an impact, but it is in acting together that our impact would make a significant difference. Our world is being mined for its mineral wealth, not by one man working with pick and shovel, but with the vast machinery corporate wealth brings to any task it undertakes.
Our world is not being mined by men as men, but by men as armies of men, using vast arrays of machinery, the quicker and more completely to empty the world of its wealth - or if not to exactly empty it, then to redistribute it into the hands of the corporations that are doing the damage. Let us be clear though, these corporate giants are doing it in our name - in the names of shareholders - people like us - not us - not us in number, you notice, but far fewer - taking much, much more than one of them can need or handle in any meaningful way.
If we landed from another planet and had to comment upon what we saw on this planet, if we had to give the purpose of these corporate giants mining the Earth for what is down there, and then changing it into a currency only they could use, we would have to say that the real function of such a corporation is to take what it can from this planet before it folds in upon itself and implodes and disappears from the universe.
Perhaps it is time to rethink our metaphor, our model, of our struggle for existence on this Earth, moving from one in which we imagine we are in complete control of the chessboard of Huxley's comprehension, to one in which we are, as he says, merely a sort of blind player, totally at the mercy of a fair and just Nature that will make no allowances for our ignorance.
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