Bread and circuses divert us from some very real threats

The recent feverish media spectacle revolving around Representative Oscar Mayer’s hot dog really does confirm for me, finally and for all, that America is Rome, trying its level best to ignore the barbarians at the gate.

We’re all about spectacle now, substantive consideration of sober matters appears to be banned in the corporate media and our so-called political leaders have simply lost their already small minds.

Here’s one of my all-time favorite quotes, by sci-fi master Philip K. Dick: “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

And how about a well-known biological thought experiment: A pond is full of water lilies by month’s end, having started with one at the beginning, and doubling in population each day.

Question: On what day is the pond half full, apparently still plenty of room left? Answer: The second to last day of the month.

I think that we’re well into our 29th day, and although the time remaining before our pond – i.e., the earth – is full, is an open question, it’s still true that things that can’t go on won’t go on.

Overpopulation is the main problem, as it exacerbates everything else: habitat loss, atmospheric carbon dioxide buildup and a host of other potentially lethal little “hiccups.”

Oh, I missed a couple of biggies, like just plain fishing out the oceans, and the soon-to-come melting of the permafrost, courtesy of the aforementioned carbon dioxide hiccup.

No one knows, exactly, how many species are going extinct as a direct result of human intervention in the global ecosystem, and we have no real idea of the total number of species on the planet.

But – and opinions do widely diverge – best guesses range from about 100-300 species dying out each and every day. This is around a thousand times the normal rate, and the greatest die-off since the dinosaur’s last gasp some 65 million years ago.

The biologist E. O. Wilson coined the phrase “Eremozoic Era,” or the “Age of Loneliness,” for the time after the sixth great extinction, which is occurring right now.

As he said, when questioned about the potential consequences of humanity’s impact on the environment: “One planet, one experiment.” In other words, who knows?

But if we screw it up here we have nowhere else to go. And if we do survive, it’s likely to be mighty lonely on this little orb for, oh, the next 15 to 25 million years, even if we do get our act together and stabilize our numbers at maybe a quarter of their current level. That’s the time frame for recovery from a mass die-off, dinosaur style.

It’d be far too easy for me to look to religion as a main factor in humanity’s tendency to breed like bunnies, but that looks like a cheap way out.

I think the problem is more fundamental, perhaps a bit of an evolutionary “mistake” – i.e., our tendency to think in dualistic terms: us and them, heaven ’n’ hell, the earth as a separate entity apart from ourselves, that sort of thing.

As the main character in a novel I just finished writing puts it, “So anyway, if we don’t put it behind us, the old dualistic split will most likely put paid to the human race, I expect, but that’s something none of us need take responsibility for.

“If we just plain old evolved from earlier species, as the catch-all phrase has it, then there’s no blame to be laid, just a series of evolutionary gambles (so to speak) that might have come to a dead end.”

Us, that is.