Are We Living in a Zoo?

Are We Living in a Zoo?

Are the socially deviant behaviours we see normal for any caged animal?

Part 1: Questions and No Answers

Recently I have been reading about CORs [Club of Rome] favourite topic: overshoot and collapse [O&C]. Although this topic can become a negative “doomer” path to despair I see it in exactly the opposite way. I look at O&C the way Gabor Mate, the CDN Doctor who is an expert in trauma and addiction see ways of behaviour that lead to inevitable death unless changed: we have a choice, we are capable of change, and change for a better life is within our grasp; but, ONLY IF we admit the choice is change & life, or death. With this perspective asking seemingly uncomfortable or ambiguous questions is not a focus on what’s wrong, but rather a probing exploration to find solutions that are currently invisible. This process is thus a making visible of the invisible, the revealing of hidden doorways that we currently blind to.

Let’s start with a conversation I had last Fall with an electrician who happened to be a recent immigrant from China. He was a very happy guy and after we chatted a bit about his work and family and how happy he was to be in Canada. When I asked him what motivated him to come to Canada he gave me a shocking answer: “How would you like to live your life in a jail? China is a giant jail. I didn’t want my children to grow up in a jail so I brought my family to Canada.” Wow. That answer really floored me, and got me thinking and looking at what I see happening around he world in a different light. I started asking myself: “If China is a jail, are other countries, including Canada, including the idea of “civilization” itself, also various kinds of jails? Are we, as a species, as human animals, exhibiting pathological behaviours [eg. Mass shootings], because we are in jail, or put another way, in a zoo? Are we being kept “safe” in our cocoons of “civil” society and technology in a way that is destroying our fundamental humanness, our humanness as part of WILD Nature that allows us to feel in our very being how interconnected we are with other life?

These ideas are not remotely new. In fact, I just found a book from 1982 [Overshoot The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change by William R. Catton, Jr.] which has a similar point of view to what I am proposing today: that we are a species out of control in the ecosystem that is exhibiting unstable behaviours of growth and consumption that is not only destroying the ecosystem but also itself. Since Nature is a self correcting mechanism processes will unfold [more on that in the next paragraph] to bring back balance [in Biological jargon ‘homeostasis’] to the Earth [Gaia] system.

“In a future that is as unavoidable as it will be unwelcome, survival and sanity may depend upon our ability to cherish rather than to disparage the concept of human dignity. My purpose in writing this book has been to enhance that ability by providing a clear understanding of the ecological context of human life. It is axiomatic that we are in no way protected from the consequences of our actions by remaining confused about the ecological meaning of our humanness, ignorant of ecological processes, and unmindful of the ecological aspects of history. I have tried to show the real nature of humanity’s predicament not because understanding its nature will enable us to escape it, but because if we do not understand it we shall continue to act and react in ways that make it worse.”

Here’s a fun fact. In the wild chimpanzees never masturbate, but they do in zoos. What’s with that? Wild animals in zoos are all chronically stressed and thus exhibit behaviours not seen in wild. Are we are the same. Are extreme social measures, such as the recent lock downs we experienced, just a more extreme and obvious ‘cage’ which is our giant human zoo called cities, called “civilization”?

“Many captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) show a variety of serious behavioural abnormalities, some of which have been considered as possible signs of compromised mental health. The provision of environmental enrichments aimed at reducing the performance of abnormal behaviours is increasing the norm, with the housing of individuals in (semi-)natural social groups thought to be the most successful of these. Only a few quantitative studies of abnormal behaviour have been conducted, however, particularly for the captive population held in zoological collections. Consequently, a clear picture of the level of abnormal behaviour in zoo-living chimpanzees is lacking.”

[from How Abnormal Is the Behaviour of Captive, Zoo-Living Chimpanzees?]

Am I proposing that we are in many similar ways similar to chimpanzees. Yes. Is this slightly disturbing? Well, that depends upon you…. Here is another research paper which highlights the fact that chimp and human behaviours have much in common – especially when it come to reactions to chronic stress. [read, civilization, over population, rules, etc.]

“Why do humans and their primate cousins get more stress-related diseases than any other member of the animal kingdom? The answer, says Stanford University neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, is that people, apes and monkeys are highly intelligent, social creatures with far too much spare time on their hands.”

[From Why Do Humans And Primates Get More Stress-related Diseases Than Other Animals?]

Here is my final question. What is limiting our growth? Is it energy? Food? Climate? Good governance? Technological Innovation? Maybe. How about this: chronic stress! This proposal is explained in the book STRESS R US by Gregg Miklashek, a Medical Doctor:

“You may not want to hear it, and when I started medical practice 46 years ago, I certainly did not plan on finding it, but human overpopulation, our dramatically changed physical environment, and our modern life-style choices are causing physiological changes responsible for our top ten killing “diseases of civilization”. I spent 41 years in active medical practice treating 25,000 patients with 1,000,000 prescriptions and talk therapy. My training was in medicine and psychiatry, and the majority of my patients suffered from “anxiety” and “depression”, but I became increasingly aware of the direct association of their psychiatric problems with other general medical conditions. Eventually, I came to realize that nearly all psychiatric conditions, and most general medical problems as well, could be explained as resulting from our overactive stress response. Our chronically overactive stress response was generating abnormally high blood levels of the adrenal stress hormone cortisol, and research dating back over 100 years indicated a direct connection between these elevated cortisol levels and the comparable diseases of civilization in research animals. But, then, I discovered a parallel line of animal crowding research dating back to the 1940s, which also implicated elevated cortisol levels with these diseases, social disruptions, aberrant behaviors, and deaths associated with population density stress. As the supporting evidence accumulated, I applied this population density stress model to my clinical medical practice and achieved remarkable results.”

So, what can you do? Keep asking difficult questions. Keep looking for the invisible doors that can help you see an escape for our current O&C way of life. Never give up. Always hope AND grieve for a way of life which, although it has its beauty, clearly has laid the seeds of its own collapse. [see anotherendoftheworld] And look forward to reading Part 2 of this essay which I hope to write next week.