My Turn: Kindling hope we can yet evolve

David Maitre/via Pixabay

David Maitre/via Pixabay David Maitre/via Pixabay

By MARGOT FLECK

Published: 01-16-2025 6:01 AM

 

On the same day, Jan. 6, 2025, that Americans officially risked the integrity of their 237-year-old Constitution by entrusting it to a convicted criminal, I read in The Guardian how animals and plants are quickly evolving to survive the relentless onslaughts of humanity. It revitalized my trust in life itself. Widened my perspective of reality.

I learned the genes for large tusks are beginning to lose their dominance in the elephant population, helping to counteract ongoing poaching for ivory. That amid the lust for luxury aroused by mahogany, mahogany trees are growing smaller and bushier, therefore becoming less attractive to commercial harvesters.

Some birds are learning to build nests with artificial materials like metal spikes and plastic due to loss of habitats, and one species of snail in the Netherlands is growing lighter-colored shells to keep cool in the growing heat. American cliff swallows have evolved shorter wings that allow them to avoid being hit by cars when they nest under bridges; and one flower, which for generations depended on insect pollination, has become self-pollinating.

Animals and plants respond to what comes their way within the interconnectedness of all life. It is the natural process of evolution. Some survive. Some do not. Stressed humans, driven by our genetic tendency toward aggression combined with the profound influence of our cultural values, strive instead to combat changes by dominating nature, entering into continual fights with nature.

We indulge our various mythologies of superiority. We dream of controlling the weather, we destroy any population we imagine as expendable, or any land we want to further our technical development. We fantasize on ways to escape suffering from floods, fires, and the massive storms we have brought on ourselves by relentlessly warming the atmosphere.

Some contemplate colonizing the moon or Mars. We even harass the innocent starlings we deem thieves for “stealing” our birdseed! And condemn the tenacious knotweed as an “invasive” because its genes provided it with a great tenacity to survive.

Nonetheless we are far from immune to the effects of climate change, though we are not sufficiently aware of the seriousness of the threat. The growing heat, the constant stress of unpredictable weather, the trauma of surviving a cascade of catastrophes, and the disease-causing bacteria being unloosed from warming soil and waters, are but a few examples. No one can predict how our minds, those emanations of brain matter, will eventually react to the consequences of this new environment. Or how, in time, our genes might alter our behavior.

For better or worse, attitudes and mythologies, deeply rooted in us for psychic survival, are extremely difficult to change. Being fragile, fearful animals, unarmed with talons, tusks, wings, or poisons, and without the great physical endurance of giant trees, we depend on our brains to ensure our survival. And we put enormous trust in the technologies and anthropocentric mythologies those brains invent.

We may well go on fighting a losing battle indefinitely. Indeed, the present time is far from auspicious as we hear talk of partitioning Greenland for its natural resources and vastly expanding drilling for fossil fuels.

Our innate and unique curiosity has led us to invent tools to discover genes, the origins of the universe, the strange denizens of the deep sea, and myriad other things, but will we ever become more than exploitive animals consumed by technology and so-called progress? Will we ever acknowledge that evolution, driven by chance, has never produced a species with unlimited and exclusive rights to the resources of this earth?

Might our innately creative minds one day reject the path of destruction that the worst ones among us have led us down? Might we allow our better angels, the empathetic and reasoning aspects of our genetic inheritance, abide and reclaim the earth for future generations? Can we relearn to sense the actual interconnectedness of all life that Indigenous people have intuitively known for untold centuries?

I must believe that the possibility of our reawakening to this reality exists as long as our ever so complicated species survives.

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Margot Fleck lives in Northfield. For further information of the effects of climate change on the brain, see “The Weight of Nature” by neuroscientist Clayton Aldren.