Humans
Billions of years have elapsed since the beginnings of the universe. A solar system on the edge of a galaxy contains eight planets including one planet with a single moon. This planet appears to be unique among the other planets, as it is orbiting at a particular distance away from the sun to maintain surface temperatures above the freezing temperature of water. This is important, as the majority of the surface of the planet is covered in water.
The planet’s rotation is prograde with a rotational axis of 23.5 degrees from the plane of its orbit around the sun. The planet rotates once every 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.09053 seconds, called the sidereal period, and its circumference is roughly 40,075 kilometres. Thus, the surface of the planet at the equator moves at a speed of 460 metres per second.1
This planet is unique in another characteristic feature, the presence of biological life forms.
One species in particular has achieved a level of mastery in its ability to coordinate its actions that it has ascended to the position of an apex predator. Over several centuries, this species, which we will call humans, has gained greater awareness of itself and its environment by the creation of tools to enhance its primitive collection of biological senses. One tool of particular interest is an oral-aural communication system that involves the encoding of cognition into vibrations formed by a complex organic system involving the passage of air through vocal chords past an opening in the mandible that is used for mastication of food. The vibrations cause sound waves that travel through the air in the planet’s atmosphere, a mixture of 78.09 percent nitrogen, 20.95 percent oxygen, and 0.93 percent argon. Trace gases account for the other 0.03 percent, including carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone.2 Humans are able to perceive the sound waves through openings on the left and right of the cranium, translating air vibrations into electrical impulses that are decoded by the brain into frequencies that can be separated into noise and signals. If the human has been sufficiently socialized, the signals can be further decoded into a symbol system that correlates to abstract ideas that have been associated, through experience, to concrete objects and processes.
The humans have gathered into groups: families, clans, tribes, religious orders, nations, empires, and corporations.
The human species was once dominated by a group called the English. The nation of England, a former military outpost of the Roman Empire, colonized the original peoples of the collection of islands to the west of a large contiguous land mass that covers the largest habitable area on this planet they call earth, another word for humus, a dark, organic material that forms in soil when plant and animal matter decays.3
Humus is the Latin word for earth (a rich and nutrient-filled soil) and is also the root word for human. Humility is derived from the same word, humilitas, one who is grounded or near to the earth. Fittingly, the second creation story tells us that humans were created from the earth, soil, humus and given God’s breath of life.4
The English formed a seafaring military empire that colonized much of the planet, which explains why the primary language of the planet’s network of nations, the lingua franca of international commerce, is English. While other nearby nations—from the continent the English call Europe—were competing for dominance over the territories of the planet, the seafaring prowess of the English was difficult to surpass.
Another large contiguous land mass is located on the opposite side of the planet. Once inhabited for thousands of years by small groups of humans that had adapted to a symbiotic relationship with the diverse and complex biological ecosystems in the various bioregions of the land mass, the majority of these inhabitants had been exterminated or enslaved by the colonizing nations of Europe. Yet, many of these inhabitants survived attempts at cultural genocide and assimilation through violent rebellions and, more successfully, by usurping the dominance of the colonizers by infiltrating the bureaucratic systems and subverting the language through non-violent resistance and legal strategies to undermine the propaganda of the genocidal apartheid state.
Still, the social, economic, and political systems of governance and bureaucracy that have replaced the violence of imperial colonization are largely dominated by descendants of the criminals, thieves, rapists, and murderers who stole the land from the original inhabitants. The remaining population of humans have been domesticated into servitude to these systems by their willing consent through the proliferation of myths and stories about short-term, but sometimes “eternal”, incentives and punishments that remain largely unverified and unsubstantiated.
In a scheme to avoid the expense and trouble of a violent military invasion, some accountants and lawyers in England instead wrote some symbols on sheets of dried, dead plant matter. This form of communication, they speculated, was all that was necessary to claim the territory for the leader of their group, the human who wears a symbolic circle of purified metal and semi-transparent rocks on its head. Rather than question such an unverified and unsubstantiated claim, the humans who had settled in the colonized territory agreed to the claims of the human with metal and rocks on its head, the one called The Crown—which is a fancy, old word for head. The humans who are descendants of the criminals, thieves, rapists, and murderers call that territory Canada.
The large majority of the human population of Canada are engaged in activities that are clearly undermining the biological diversity and ecological equilibrium of the living systems of their planet. However, their persistent habits, learned from a system of indoctrination to enforce behavioural conformity with the dominant group, have become largely unconscious and automatic through group imitation and routine repetition. The technological systems, infrastructure, and architecture enforce these habits by providing few viable alternative behaviours without threatening the individual’s biological health and social connections, which are essential to human survival.
Rather than initiate communication with this violent species, we recommend that we wait about 100 years, as their numbers will soon diminish and the species will most likely be extinct within that time period.
Zaphod Beeblebrox5
Pan-Galactic Scout