The Arrogance of Humans

I was reading my most recent book called Future Man? by Chris Morgan and I came across a sentence that just prompted me to write this whole entry.

"Intelligence. This is the major factor which sets apart man from all other creatures and has enabled him to obtain control over them"

Fucking humans are so arrogant. Do we really think we control some creatures because we can put a fucking monkey behind a cage, tie a dog on a leash, raise cattle for food, or outsmart some fish by catching them? Please. The control we have is so minimal it is almost negligible. How can one think we have control over creatures or nature? That's why we keep fucking ourselves, because we like to think we have control over nature. Example given:

Because I'm an entomologist Ill give the insect story. Everybody hates mosquitoes. How great it would be if we could kill them all. In the early 1900s we did well in that regard. Yeah, we killed off Anopheles quadrimaculatus, for example, the main transmitter of malaria in North America to populations low enough where malaria was 98% eradicated in our continent. Aedes aegypti, the main transmitter of yellow fever, was also eradicated to low levels and yellow fever was almost eradicated, especially with the development of a vaccine. Then everything was perfect. Because now, we had control over the creatures and the environment. We were now mass producing cars which were perfect compared to horses, since their shit never had to be cleaned and didn't spread waterborne diseases. New pesticides allowed us to control pests and almost eradicate yellow fever, malaria and other insect transmitted diseases from most of the North American continent. In the 1920s yellow fever campaign largely targeted the habitat of the larvae of Aedes aegypti, it's main transmitter. We were beginning to give cows hormones and different supplements to increase milk and beef production. Earth was becoming a utopia. And oh fuck, how could I forget the most important invention of the the 1900s, DDT the most perfect chemical ever invented, so cheap and so efficient. Crop production was up, pest numbers down and North America was booming. This was the period from about 1900-1960. Like Mr. Morgan said, we had control on our environment. But nature wasn't about to take our shit. Nature is so much smarter, more patient and so much more destructive when it came down to business. Fast forward to 1999.

A new disease pops up in New York City. Coming in from JFK Airport, a patient was admitted to the hospital after going into a coma. After a brain scan, it was clear that some sort of new virus infected his brain cells. The patient dies a few days later with an unidentified disease. A couple of months later a new virus is identified by the CDC in North America, West Nile Virus. Its not that serious in most cases, mostly affecting immunocompromised individuals and has been moderately controlled but that's not the point. West Nile Virus (WNV) is just one virus and it came from another continent and now its here to stay. Just like that it found a place to settle and the perfect mosquito to spread it.

Just like the non-native Ae. aegypti that we targeted in the early 20th century, since it spread yellow fever and dengue, and almost killed off, two more new species popped up in the late 80s and 90s in North America. One was the Asian Tiger Mosquito (Aedes albopictus), which was first recorded in the 1980s. It survived in tropical climates coming somewhere from southern China. The larvae were brought in by mistake trading tires with China (In the case of Ae aegypti it was brought in water barrels during the slave trade, also by mistake). Inside the tires some rain collected and the lady Asian Tiger mosquitoes found a perfect opportunity to lay some eggs. They entered North America through Houston, Texas. The mosquito since then spread up north to Connecticut and as far west as the Lubbock area of Texas.

Through New Jersey, in about 1998, also in tires, came another mosquito, this time a sub tropical one, Ochlerotatus japonicus (which has no common name but for the sake of making things easier we will call the Japanese Mosquito). Together they teamed up with West Nile virus. The Japanese mosquito from the north and the Asian Tiger mosquito from the south. They made for a pretty good combo and now West Nile Virus (along with other important native vectors) has spread to every state except Hawaii and Alaska. In our perfect world how could we let that happen? Did we suddenly lose control?

We can call ourselves more 'lucky' than 'in control', that although WNV spread so fast, so much it is not a very serious disease and its mortality rate is relatively low. The Japanese mosquito turned out to be an efficient vector of the virus along with a native species in the north. In the south, the Asian Tiger mosquito, turned out to be an efficient vector of the virus too. But we might not be so lucky in the future when a more serious one comes along.

Back in the early 20th century the engine was being improved and sold to the public. Horse carriages in North America and Europe were being replaced with the internal combustion engine. We were in control for a little bit and we thought it was perfect. Too many diseases like cholera, dysentary, giardia and cryptosporidiosis were spread from horse shit draining into sewage and eventually drinking water. Now that the horses were off the streets, it would be easier to control those diseases since there would almost be no shit on the streets. Cars didn''t have to shit. Then in the 70s we began to discover that all the shit coming out of our mode of transportation was harming the air we were breathing. In the late 90s we began to realize that maybe the car wasn't so perfect anymore, and that's not a story I really need to elaborate on.

Also in the early 20th century new 'perfect' chemicals were being developed and they absolutely helped us control our environment, at least temporarily. Products like DDT, Dursban, and Carbaryl were so cheap to produce and so effective in killing anything with a nervous system, farmers couldn't say no. Food production boomed and human population rose. Again we were controlling our environment. Then in the 60s Rachel Carson published Silent Spring. Of course in the beginning we were so shocked; in disbelief at the the idea that our control of our environment was slipping or maybe even non existent was so far fetched, that her book was ignored and her reputation down the drain. Some years later, we began to realize the effects, maybe she wasn't so wrong. The EPA was created, DDT was banned and then Dursban later and most recently Carbaryl. But newer, more improved chemicals are constantly being developed that we don't really know the effect of, but are used anyway to create the illusion of control.

The need to control our environment all arose from our need to expand and our population to grow. Pesticides were developed so that more food could be produced. Diseases were controlled so that manpower wouldn't be wasted. The internal combustion engine helped us spread those foods and ideas over a much greater area at a much greater rate, We were getting so good at controlling the creatures around us, we began to actually inject genes into bacteria. The genes would be incorporated into the genome of the bacteria and whatever the message of the inserted gene was would be made into protein by the bacteria. This technology, called recombinant DNA technology is how we now produce most insulin for diabetics.

But it all came to bite us in the ass. After accidentally bringing in those two new mosquito species, we helped a new virus spread across the nation. And all that shit that was sprayed on Ae. aegypti, to control yellow fever and dengue, well it helped kill it off, but we are now learning that there are rising deaths from yellow fever in the Americas and Florida, because of this new efficient vector, and a newer resistant strain. The cars polluted our air, the pesticides mutated our children, and so the pattern continues.

Humans, as Agent Smith once told Morpheus, are like a virus. We consume to develop ourselves with no consideration for the environment around us and we give nothing back. We focus on nothing but ourselves because we are too worried about control instead of harmony. We must lose our arrogance in thinking we can control nature. Temporarily, yes, its possible, but Nature wont ever let up, ever. And when it hits back, it hits hard. I hear people always complaining about mosquitoes, although every pest species of mosquito was created into the pest it is by us. Most of them are non native species that were brought in by our irresponsible quest for development and growth. Almost every pest is non native or has become so because of us. It follows that pattern and that's the problem, is that its a pattern of slow destruction. That, for some reason, we refuse to respect Nature. We are just taking from it as much as we can for the sake of us, draining every resource. We know what happens to a virus when in runs out of host cells, its spreads to the next and if it cant it dies off. Nature isn't going out without a fight and its either going to win or go down with us.