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    Manifesto for a Species: Our Own
    Manifesto for a Species: Our Own
    Manifesto for a Species: Our Own
    Ebook51 pages33 minutes

    Manifesto for a Species: Our Own

    By Lee Doran

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    About this ebook

    Is humanity on the brink of extinction? Many reputable scientists and some of the best minds on the planet are worried. If the prospect has captured their attention, it behooves the rest of us to listen up, as well.

    In this book we explore why humanity, the human species, could be on the road to extinction. What is it about the species' own behavior that has put it on this path? What features of the human mind and body, as well as our life in groups, define this journey? How might we think and act differently to prevent or slow the descent into the almost unimaginable levels of suffering such a trip implies?

    Manifesto for a Species finds answers to these questions in how human beings live in groups. Our life as social beings is arguably one of our most characteristic features, as well as one of the most pleasurable. Yet, as human groups expanded in size and organized to carry out their goals, hierarchical and often violent behaviors emerged. Since technologies were also evolving, the groups found themselves on a treadmill of escalating violence. The result was the endless series of conflicts that make up human history. Must the future of humanity replay this past?

    Join the discussion on the human future. Read the Manifesto and comment on its contents. Then, consider how you might contribute to preventing humanity's drift towards extinction in your own world and life. Your species' future may depend upon it.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLee Doran
    Release dateMar 10, 2011
    ISBN9781458191007
    Manifesto for a Species: Our Own
    Author

    Lee Doran

    In my working life, I am an environmental consultant. Daily, I learn the mechanics of how everything is connected to everything else in the natural world. About twenty years ago, I began to read and research independently on the science of the human species, Homo sapiens. I read sociologists and historians, biologists and psychologists, even economists and political scientists.The more I read, the more it seemed to me that all these specialists on humanity were dancing to the same tune -- except that they were in different rooms. And the rooms, strangely, weren't connected to one another. Picture it: sociologists dancing with sociologists in the study; biologists dancing with biologists in the den; psychologists dancing with psychologists in the attic. But none of them ever left their own rooms, or even communicated very much with people in other rooms.So who was trying to connect these various reservoirs of human knowledge to one another? Very few people. Yet, isn’t it important for the future of humanity that we have some integrated understanding of who and what we are? How can we manage ourselves as individuals or as a species if we don't even know who we are?In my writings, I try to begin making those connections. Of course, we have much too much information, now, for any one person to complete such a task. But perhaps framing the building for the specialists to populate is an achievable, if immodest, goal. Perhaps introducing the dancers to their colleagues in the other rooms is a start. Getting everyone talking to one another, maybe, if not actually doing anything much together, yet.Why don't you join the effort? Everyone can contribute something to this cause, for in the end many must agree before anything much can happen. I would love to hear how you think we should proceed.

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      Book preview

      Manifesto for a Species - Lee Doran

      Manifesto for a Species: Our Own

      by Lee Doran

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2011 Lee Doran

      Smashwords License Statement

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

      Table of Contents

      Chapter 1 One Human Dilemma

      Chapter 2 Our Success, So Far

      Chapter 3 Human Life in Groups

      Section 3.1 Ins vs Outs

      Section 3.2 Hierarchy

      Section 3.3 Obedience

      Section 3.4 Violence

      Section 3.5 Authoritarianism

      Section 3.6 Hierarchy of Hierarchies

      Chapter 4 Origins and Options

      Section 4.1 Origins

      Section 4.2 Trends

      Section 4.3 News

      Section 4.4 Options

      Chapter 5 Acting for … Life?

      Section 5.1 The No-action Alternative

      Section 5.2 Awareness of…

      Section 5.3 Understanding…

      Section 5.4 Values for Action

      Chapter 6 The Human Prospect

      Section 6.1 Voluntary Human Extinction?

      Section 6.2 And yet…

      Chapter 1. One Human Dilemma

      I'm now fighting for my own species. I finally understood that we ourselves are in danger. Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910-1997), in 1994

      A specter is haunting humanity-on-Earth, now, at the start of a new millennium. It is the prospect of the annihilation of the species, our own species. The potential was first glimpsed in a not-so-distant past, and recurs, morphing into new forms in the foreseeable future, regularly now. Its probable precursors surround us, everywhere, and accumulate daily. For those who would attend, the future of the species is clouded, the prospects mixed, at best. At the very least, we are continuing to foreclose reasonable options for the future well-being of our own offspring.

      Survival of a species, any species, has always been a conundrum, biologically. For extinction of one makes way, ultimately, for another, or even others. The creativity or spontaneity of life processes are engaged, arguably, by the voids left behind, by random environmental change and the extinction of those who went before.

      But our own species? By forces within our control? By our own hand, even? Perhaps we need to reconsider this prospect. Think it through one more time before we find ourselves so far down that slippery slope that…we find ourselves beyond reasonable action, in over our heads, mired in a downward spiral of environmental, social, economic and physical violence from which recovery is either unlikely or so difficult that we despair, give in, give up… Even the contemplation of the accompanying, elemental human suffering is

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