Kristine Latham
December 9, 2008
English Composition
Dr. Adam Johns
The Human Contradiction
The Human Contradiction is the condition that all humans are faced with that will eventually lead to their demise. The basic premise of the condition is that humans are hierarchical, meaning that they like to hold dominance over others. Alone, this is a flaw that can be overcome. However, humans are also extremely intelligent creatures that have the capabilities to develop vast technology. Among these technological inventions are weapons. Weapons are used to gain dominance, to maintain control, and to extend power. When you combine the hierarchical flaw with a huge capacity to create novel things you find yourself constantly at war among your species. Eventually, this technology will become too great and the desire for power too strong, and the species will go into a world war. Some might say that this has happened already and we, as a species have survived. However, due to the Flynn effect, intellect is increasing as time goes on. With each new generation there is a greater capacity to develop weapons and state dominance. With each new weapon that is created, there is a greater ability to kill. World War II was referred to as the war to end all wars. Octavia Butler believes that eventually, we will enter into a final World War; final because the chances of our planet or species surviving are only as great as the likely hood of aliens coming to rescue us. Humans are hierarchical and intelligent and will lead the species to extinction through war if technology and instinctual contradiction is not brought under control.
World Wars represent the greatest example of intelligence and hierarchical tendencies in history. So far there have been two. Both wars were based on a need to instate power over others. There was this driving desire to have some groups recognized as better than others. Whether this power is defined by religion or land, it always comes back down to dominance. Despite their common cause, both wars were vastly different. With each new day there are more and more catastrophic weapons. If there were to be a third World War, it would be the very last, for it would destroy our species and our planet.
The First World War began in 1914 and ended in 1918 after killing over 20 million people. The war began as a thirst for power. The Great Powers could not settle with the land that they had. The fought for more land, because land equals power. The French held resentment towards the Germans, after losing land to them years and years ago. The Germans wanted to have the same power as all of the other nations on the continent. They went up against the French striving to get this power. Soon other countries began to take sides until it was two huge forces against each other, all for a “place in the sun” for the Germans. The French gained the support of Russia, Japan, the United States, Italy and the United Kingdom. While the Germans gained the alliances of Austria-Hungary, the Netherlands, Spain, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Monaco and the Scandinavian’s. The war began shortly after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. An entire world went to war all because of some countries need to dominate over other countries.
The Second World War began in 1937 and ended in 1941. World War II was ranked deadliest war in history after killing 70 million people; 50 million more lives were taken than in the First World War. This war once again was one side versus the other, in this case the Allies versus the Axis. It started when the Treaty of Versailles was made after the First World War stating that Germany must lose land and have limited armed forces. This made Germany crave power more than ever. Germany’s invasion of Poland had a domino effect on other countries that were not at peace with each other. Event after event caused more and more countries to enter the barbaric fight. The United States was last to enter the battle after their home territory was attacked at Pearl Harbor by the Japanese air force.
History has a tendency to repeat itself. Over and over in history we can look back and see the same mistakes being made. Humans are hierarchical and have the tendency to put other groups down in order to make their own group seem more important or superior. In 1848 women spoke out and fought for their rights as citizens for the first time. In 1920, America took the first step towards ending sexism. Today, woman still fight discrimination in the work force. It took people 72 years to decide that women should be treated as equals to men. Today, in school, children are taught the horrible history of sexism. Our society preaches the positive effects of the women’s rights movement, glorifying the women that stood up against society to say that they are equals and should be treated as such.
A similar historical timeline takes place during the civil rights movement. Another time glorified by the history taught in elementary schools. Every fifth grader in America can tell you about the hero Martin Luther King who stood up against discrimination and Rosa Parks who refused to succumb to the injustice of the law.
Today, homosexual and bisexual individuals do not have the same privileges as all Americans. They are discriminated against by our government, a system formerly designed as a democracy to represent the rights of the people. Yet, in 2008, members of our society cannot marry in most states and do not have equal tax breaks as heterosexual couples in the states that they can be wed. Furthermore, homosexuals do not have the right, as spouses would, to make life altering decisions for their loved one while in a hospital.
In Octavia Butler’s trilogy Lilith’s Brood, she envisions a third world war to be so terrible that the species and planet would have been destroyed completely if it weren’t for an alien species that saved them. There is almost nothing left by the time the Oankali get to the planet. They save the few humans that they can and take them to a ship in space where they will breed humans until they have restored Earth enough to send the humans back to live on. Even after the humans have seen what their hierarchy and intelligence does, they never stop to change their ways. The Oankali keep the people that they rescued in rooms of isolation. They were asleep suspended in a plant that provided their bodies with nutrients. They were not kept asleep or isolated as a punishment or an act of hate, merely because when put together there were too many instances where the humans tried to hurt if not kill each other. When the humans were finally given the option of freedom back on earth, they formed groups called the resisters that fought against other groups. The resisters were so set in their ways and so fearful that they ignored all signs of danger and recklessly continued to live in ways that they were familiar. The resisters spent most of their time trying to recreate the life they had before the war. They tried to go back to making technology and using weapons to kill, even though they all lived through the war. They knew that they were endangering themselves all over again. Yet they refused to give up their guns. Every time they made a gun, it got more powerful and more accurate.
The third world war the Octavia Butler imagined in Lilith’s Brood involved nuclear weaponry, which now is only part of the concern. Scholars like Bill Joy, Bill Mckibben and Lee Silver are in agreement on few things but they can all recognize the possibility for devastation that the technology we are creating may hold. Bill Joy controversially states that, “We have approached the first moment in the history of our planet when any species, by its own voluntary actions, has become a danger to itself - as well as to vast numbers of others” (Joy). Genetics, Nanotechnology and Robotics “release the power to build devices that are genetically distinct and selectively destructive” (Joy).
Bill Mckibben strongly believes that we should forget all technology. Completely turn around the future of the world and stop going down this technological path that will inevitably demolish the species. This would be extremely difficult though.
Silver argues that this is leaving too much up to chance. He believes that nature is random and cruel. Silver enforces the idea that we have no predestination determined by God. It was random that the human species came to be. It was random how the human species has died from natural destruction and disease. Silver presents that perhaps, it does not have to be random how humans become extinct. While technology is extremely dangerous and potentially devastating, we might as well try it because either we will die thanks to moody Mother Nature and an unreliable God or do to our own inadequacies. Technology can make our lives easier, longer and happier. It would be foolish to ignore these advantages simply out of fear of offsetting some sort of balance or plan. There is no plan, we are a genetic mutation. It was an accident that we came to dominate the world. So why should we hold back from experimenting with what else we could become.
Even the most respected and intelligent scholars of our country cannot agree on a final decision to save our lives. Everyone is too wrapped up in being correct and being the leader who helps everyone make what they believe to be the right decision. The idea of a collaborative effort is gone because of hierarchy. This instinctual need to dominate prevents any positive impact from being made.
Frighteningly, Octavia Butler is not that far off when she envisions a third world war. And it is true that it would take an alien rescue for us to survive. Just by looking at the growth of weaponry between the First World War and the second we can see that a third world war would be so devastating that the chances of survival would be slim to none.
Over the years weapons continuously are getting more powerful. This exponential increase in intelligence can be explained through the Flynn Effect which was first noted by J. R Flynn. Studies were done that supported that “average IQ scores have risen over the past 70 years” (Siegler). The basic idea of the effect comes down to humans are getting smarter. With each passing year there is a higher average IQ score. In 1942 the raw score for the 10th percentile on the IQ test was 18. In 1980, it had shot up to 38. The most prevalent demonstration of the improvement of weapons can be seen through the sequence through the World Wars.
In World War I the main weapons used included: “air forces, tanks, poison gas, and effective submarine warfare” (Wagner 328). This was the first time that the Government, Military, Scientists and Industrialists all collaborated in order to make the most deadly force possible.
In World War II we advanced to: amphibious aircraft, balloons, blimps, bombers, gilders, helicopters and autogyros, missiles, artillery, tanks and tank destroyers. The technology of World War II was unlike anything the world had ever seen before. The wealthiest countries were taking the war into the air. Just to give a glimpse into this complicated and in depth topic, amphibious aircraft is a technical term for flying boats and float planes. Not only were there planes that couldn’t sink and boats that could fly, but there were 70 versions of these amphibious aircraft inventions. World War II ending when atomic bombs were dropped for the first time.
The decision to drop atomic bombs is still a controversy today. The effects of dropping the atomic bombs are still realized today. This haphazard decision to drop, at the time, the deadliest weapons known to man resulted in devastation for innocent civilians for decades to come.
Humans are intelligent, hierarchical and doomed. The Human Contradiction is a real condition and has mapped out an inevitable death to the human species. Due to the condition all species on Earth and the planet itself are in danger. With each new war there are millions of more deaths. We clearly have not learned our lesson. Octavia Butler is very accurate when she imagines what a third world war would be like. The inability for scholars to agree is just one more factor that will lead to our demise. Humans cannot coincide peacefully. They must instate dominance and hold power over others. Since they are so intelligent they are more than equipped to do so. In the process of instating dominance we will lose all sight of things with real value and eventually there will be nothing.






Works Cited

Eisenberg, Nancy, Robert Siegler, and Judy Deloache. How Children Develop. New York: Worth, Incorporated, 2005.

Find related articlesEditDelete
Joy, BIll. "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us." Wired: 1-19.

Margaret, Wagner E. The Library of Congress World War II companion. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2007. 328-409.