Hell Bent (with dramatic illustrations): A Jeremiad on Human Nature and the Sixth Extinction

By Roger Strauss

Hell Bent (with dramatic illustrations) reveals how the very biology that led to our common Ancestor coming down from the trees on to the top of the food chain, is the very biology that will send our civilization spiraling toward extinction within the next century or two.

The civilization we know today is the direct descendant of Chimps who were male dominated and used aggression as their default method of control. Their basic instincts centered on self, family and tribe preservation. Later, biologic structures which emphasized our emotional and reasoning capacities were enslaved by our primitive, Hunter/Gatherer instincts. What put those humans at the top of the food chain then became extremely destructive to those living in what we would deem "civilization". "It became necessary to destroy the village to save it" is an iconic statement of our 20/21 century predicament. Hell Bent (with dramatic illustrations) explores this dilemma and the resulting dire predictions, offering solutions and supporting its arguments with dramatic illustrations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667844701

Book preview

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HELL BENT (with dramatic illustrations)

A Jeremiad on Human Nature and the Sixth Extinction

© Roger Strauss

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Print ISBN 978-1-66784-469-5

eBook ISBN 978-1-66784-470-1

Contents

FOREWORD

THE JEREMIAD

THE FIRST PIECE OF REALLY BAD NEWS

THE SECOND PIECE OF REALLY BAD NEWS

THE PROBABILITY OF THE PROBABILITY

OUR TRIBAL MENTALITY AND THE BUW

THE INCONSISTENT SELF AND BUW

THE FIVE EXTINCTIONS

DEATH AND THE METAPHORS

CAN’T OUR DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL

ENTITIES SAVE US?

EPILOGUE: TRUMP, HIS ELECTION SHENANIGANS

AND THE ALLIGATOR BRAIN

WITH DRAMATIC ILLUSTRATIONS

DELICIOUS

SILVER LINING

THE LESSONS OF HISTORY

ANDROIDS ARE LIKE THAT

THE SORDID DREAMS OF ENCHANTED LIBERALS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

REFERENCES

FOREWORD

This Essay was originally written back in 2018 when I was 83 and Covid had not been invented. The new President had barely begun and, looking back on it all, life was simpler and more innocent. To conceive of a world where the themes of this Essay could exist, even in the abstract, seemed to most people naive and simplistic. I sent it out to a number of publishers, but no luck. I was used to rejections, having been an amateur playwright, and sending plays off to various competitions. But these rejections were different. They often took the form of well expressed, very interesting but we are not publishing this kind of material at this time. I wondered if this was the standard rejection for non-fiction versus playwriting, or whether I was getting a different message.

One of the publishers who rejected me promised a critique for a fee and I took them up on the offer. The evaluation explained that the material was too dark, that it was without relief or hope. She loved the plays, but she compared the Narrator of the essay to the guy in the bar who isn’t reading the faces of his audience and continues feeling especially good about his eloquence.

To be honest, I agreed with the critique and at the same time realized this was the real reason for the majority of those rejections which found the Essay well written. My problem was the Essay was not fiction and really reflected my beliefs. It is hard to come up with Hope given our 200,000-year history. True, the messages in the dramatic illustrations are ironic and restrained (except for the final entry), but I had no such license in the non-fiction text.

I do call the Essay a Jeremiad, and I mean that in both senses of the term. The dictionary defines Jeremiad as a tirade, a harangue, a diatribe. But I also mean it in the Biblical sense, as a Lamentation. Jeremiah was known as the Weeping Prophet who mourns for the Children of Israel even as he rants against their ways. There can be no tempering of his censure, no softening of his predictions, all of which, by the way, came true.

Given my predicament, I decided to self-publish. And here we are. Actually, I would love to be disabused of my dire predictions. But prior to this publication, none of my friends or colleagues have come up with anything close to an answer … except, of course, that’s typical, Roger. But then I don’t know any Evolutionary Biologists.

I have gotten push back on some of my secondary arguments, for example: did this or that author really say or mean what I say they do; is Democracy as broken/breakable as I say it is (I certainly get less of that lately); is there or is there not a Triune brain etc. These are certainly important discussions to have, but, even if I am wrong, they don’t seem to undermine my basic and dark premise, however dreadful it may sound.

So, enjoy the dark Essay, without dilution, along with the dramatic illustrations that follow. In writing it I have used the style of 17th and 18th Century Sermons of the likes of Jonathon Edwards and Cotton Mather, and the public Tracts and Pamphlets of a Political and Economic nature. Here I use both eccentric Capitalization and Punctuation, common to the genre, to show the personal emphasis of the slightly mad Narrator and to help render the urgency and cadence of his crazy rant.

I look forward to whatever the discussion may be. This is the one time when even Trolls are encouraged. They prove my point.

Roger Strauss

February 23, 2022

(As I send this off to the Publisher for Edit, Russia has begun its invasion of Ukraine, an unfortunate but predictable act of unprovoked, primitive violence, acting as an exemplary Prologue to this Apocalyptic Rant!)

THE JEREMIAD

Okay. Consider this a Screed; a Broadside; a Pamphlet; Paine’s Common Sense posted in the public square; nailed, Luther-like to the church door. Better yet, an unpleasant conversation with the wild-eyed old guy on the soap box in Columbus Circle, NYC, hollering about the end of the world.

Come closer. Closer yet. Yes, Dear Ones, the Sixth Extinction IS coming. That means us, folks … Poof!!!

I’ve connected the dots. I found the Big Picture. Really!!! Why Me, Oh Lord?!! I’m 83, hurtling toward 84. I just want to be loved … is that so wrong? I don’t look forward to being hounded by Trolls in my email. Shunned by my neighbors. Condescended to by Academicians. Where in the Hell was everybody else?

You’d think the Historians would have seen it coming long ago. It’s their business. Those who cannot understand the Lessons of History are doomed to repeat them (Santayana or thereabouts).

Me, too. I was an Historian once upon a time. We analyzed the bejeezus out of when the Renaissance began and the Middle Ages ended. In fact, there may have been no Renaissance at all, just a misinterpretation or refinement of the Medieval Conceptual structures (Huizinga or thereabouts). Such distinctions were all very erudite and subtle. But somehow, we missed the fact that, whether we called it the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, we humans continued to beat the Hell out of each other.

Whatever the period: Prehistory, Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, Modern, Contemporary, we just keep killing each other, over and over again, often in delightfully new ways. Sure, the rationales change. In the good old days, we’d wipe out the tribe that camped next to us because we … well, because we had to—there just wasn’t enough food for both of us. We’d invade France because the King of England was descended from Norman Dukes, who after a certain period of time, believed they had a claim on France’s throne (The Hundred’s Year War). We know this war is absolutely terrible and everyone is losing, but we keep fighting so, when we do call a truce and start negotiations, we’ll have a better advantage than we do now (The Thirty Years War). Dammit, we need to spread Democracy … by force, if necessary, because it’s good for the whole world (Neo Cons—the Second Iraq War; Liberals—the Arab Spring). No matter what the rationale, it all ends up the same: beating, maiming, looting and killing the identified combatants and the innocent, unidentified civilians. (Ahh, we philosophize, is anyone really innocent?)

Nothing changes. And the more Civilized we become the more destructive we get. In the last 105 years we’ve had two World Wars; numerous examples of Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing; Atomic Weapons, two of which wiped out a couple of cities; and a whole Sub-Saharan culture that kills its own people based on tribal distinctions. Just like the Good Old Days. (Oh, Heavens, was that Politically Incorrect?) This is Civilization? THIS IS APPALLING!!!

You’d think the writers, playwrights et al. would have connected the dots. The Greeks understood the difference between Man’s hubris and the Gods’ Fickleness toward the Humans They created. There was little that We, the People could do to escape a Dark Fate except accept it stoically and not get too cocky when things seemed to be going our way. Poor Old Oedipus!! Did you ever know a Greek hero who didn’t eventually meet a bad end? But…They never made What was Obvious, Obvious.

Shakespeare came close. From A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, where the Gods are benign, if a bit clumsy, to King Lear, where there is little to redeem the ending, he must have gone through a 180 degree turn on the fate of Mankind. We are to the Gods as flies to wanton boys. They kill us for their sport. But neither the Crazy King nor the melancholy Dane ever saw the Really Big Picture!

Conrad was on the right track in Heart of Darkness. His anti-hero Kurtz lives out the Bestial in our nature. Employing all his civilized skills in the service of our primitive desires, he is faced, in the end, with The Horror of his success. In 1984 Orwell sets up the true dystopia, complete with a realistic, impotent protagonist, no Super Hero, to save us. But neither author took his insight to its Logical Conclusion.

In our own time, novels, drama, movies seem endlessly focused on Man’s Inhumanity to Man; the capability of humans to wreak havoc on other humans; physical, sexual, psychological abuse at the personal level. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness at the domestic and communal levels. If the protagonist overcomes the terrible adversities, we call it Comedy. If s/he is destroyed, it’s a Tragedy. If, as often happens, the Protagonists survive, wounded but unbowed, we call it the triumph of the human spirit, and label it Drama. Phooey!!!!!

Orwell’s dystopian worlds abound today, but We are truly in Denial. In our latest fiction, for every Monstrous Evildoer with an army of millions of deadly minions setting out to destroy Earth, we have one to five Superheroes/heroines who will save the day at the very last minute. Our Collective Unconscious is prescient; we see the end coming. Our Frontal Lobes are on steroids, conjuring up fantasy humans (not even armies) as our Saviors. Is this American Individualism gone mad? Come on, Folks. Our Storytellers are saying the Holocaust is coming … again … but this time for all of us … and there ain’t no Superheroes!!!!

So how about the Philosophers? They’re into Truth. If anybody should have seen it coming it’s the Philosophers. The beginning and end of human cosmology should have been right up their alley. Where were they?

Just a few highlights. Plato’s Socrates keeps championing Reason (the Glory of our Frontal Lobes) over the illusion of experience (pre-Homo Sapiens Reptilian Brains). But the handwriting is on the wall in the Republic when Socrates out-reasons Thrasymachus, who argues that Justice is whatever the most powerful person in the room says it is (Justice in the service of the Reptilian Brain). Thrasymachus, the tough guy, defeated by Socratic Logic, doesn’t buy into that reason crap and WALKS OUT in a huff, believing he is absolutely right. Eventually Socrates kills himself rather than go into exile, a choice the Town Fathers gave him. Frankly, proving Thrasymachus correct in practice if not in reason.

In the meantime, with such Philosophers as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle espousing a form of Reasonable life, Athens is destroying itself in the Peloponnesian War and the continuing wars in its aftermath. Aristotle, himself, tutored Alexander the Great as a child. Aristotle touts constitutional government where the common man is granted citizenship and governs with everyone’s interest in mind. His pupil is into Empires. In fact, it seems, so is Aristotle who encourages Alexander to conquer as much as he can. An odd decision. Back in Athens Aristotle is charged with impiety and is forced to flee lest the Athenians sin twice against Philosophy. This, folks, is the Cradle of Western Civilization??? We seem to have a penchant for overlooking the obvious when we label.

So, what can we conclude? Well for one, Great thinkers of every Age seem to have NO IMPACT on day to-day life or the politics of the worlds in which they live. Though their ideas may live on in the minds of intellectuals and academicians throughout the ages, and affect philosophy, the arts and, eventually, science, they are more