Earth as Host

Humans are a complex organism, made more so by the fact that each is part of a great, pulsing, performing super-organism that has become too successful. The islands of cultures have been absorbed, one by one, into what is finally a global leviathan. This monster's life blood is finance/money; units of power the source of which is extracted from our Earth and cultures. Once our species was able to create, store and build information, we became a parasitoid, that is a parasite that kills its host.

Humans inherited a fecund planet that not only provided for a stable existence, but in the accessible surface had millions of years of materials that could, through our ever growing technologies, be exploited. So much stored power, and accelerating productivity left, humans, who evolved in scarcity, with huge surpluses. Capitalism became the dominant engine of exploitation through the ability to indenture and enforce. Capitalism, however, is pernicious because it predigests pieces of the planet. It is based on lending money, which is backed by social frameworks and the potential of force, but not by existing collateral (that would be sustainable, but our information could not advance). So, in a global system of owed money, extraction, development and consumption must continue, or our existing superorganism will come to a hard stop, instead of a slower collapse - gradually, then suddenly.

Finally, no transformational change in human history happened without a wildfire, making room for the new. Unfortunately, we are for the first time in the history of our species, interdependent and all subject to the loss of our single habitat. What comes out of this bottleneck will not be human.