Fundamental to my world view and something I consider the starting point in discussing human activity on earth (as opposed to elsewhere?) is sex. The very fact that a reader’s reaction might be to prick (itself a loaded word here) up his or her ears or to sense some alarm even uncovers the problem: we want to ignore the fact that we are animals and animals just reproduce and then die. That’s what we do. If we don’t, we don’t exist anymore. It all comes down to that.
Now with all the objections I am sure I’ll get from my many readers 🙂 there has to be a brief explanation for why this is the starting point rather than man’s existential or theological basis for being here. And here it is: whatever we discuss goes back eventually to the battle to reproduce. I look forward to expanding on this.
Aug. 20, 2020
Searching all my posts under the category Basics, I found nothing laying out the basics but I did find this promising start: yes, it all goes back to the battle to reproduce.
To start with, let’s zoom (as of this date, due to COVID, we are all zooming) in on the fact that the last four years of Donald Trump accompanied by a pandemic taking 170,000 lives in the U.S. (so far – should reach 200,000 by election day) have altered our level of concern to a high level of alarm. That has to affect what I write here. However, I will try to keep my world view out of the discussion and truly focus on the basics. Further, the last four years since I started this entry have revealed more and more the existential threat of climate change. And since 2010 or so, the threat to democracy around the world of the rise of right-wing, populist, authoritarian governments around the world but most notably in previously democratic countries of Europe. Since 2016 when I started this, we have had Brexit, Orban, the Law & Justice Party in Poland, deep inroads into our politics by Putin’s Russia, the rise to near dominance on the world stage of autocrats like Erdogan and the 800 pound gorilla in the room, China’s Xi Jinping declaring himself president for life.