Quote of the Month 4

The quote for July:

An organism at war with itself is doomed.

Carl Sagan

Let’s look at this statement from an evolutionary perspective.  Other than the insect world, I really can’t think of any other examples of the same species being at war with itself. (Meaning intent on killing off large populations of the same species – so I’m not talking about male bears killing cubs and that sort of thing.)  We are an extraordinary species not only in our achievements, but in our atrocities – even especially against our own species.  The very fact that we have survived so many centuries of intra-species competitive exclusion is in itself an amazement.  With the weapons available to us now (and for the last 60 years or so) I do believe that we tread a very thin line.

I can clearly see why Dr. Sagan held such a pessimistic view of the human species when he made the Cosmos series.  I grew up in the generation where nuclear war was a constant threat and clearly remember not being able to sleep at night due to an overactive imagination raining nuclear weapons upon my nighttime slumber.  (Of course this is directly related to the anti-nuclear rallies that I went to and the general anti-war sentiment that accompanied the end of the Vietnam war.)  I can only hope that the last 4 decades have given us the courage and the wisdom to stand up against the recklessness of our DNA as it continues to drive us to remove “the weak” from the pack and moderate our discussions such that the rise in the number of internal conflicts around the world do not become another (or a further) cause for self destruction.

END OF RANT