How could you not? (See PT 1 here).
You may also use the term ‘progress trap’ in the manner described in the book A Short History of Progress (author - Ronald Wright), i.e., to mean that we get so good at living a certain way it spells the end of us. (E.g., the first progress trap - the perfection of hunting, which ended the Stone Age).
But you may wonder where “the greedy monkey” fits in when encountering the title to my posts.
Well may you ask, as per the conclusion to PT 3, “Are we nothing but greedy monkeys?”
No, I say. We're worse.
And from an anthropomorphic point of view, I even think any self-respecting monkey would agree with me.
Though monkeys are greedy, they will never be as greedy as humankind. Though easily trapped because of their greed, their weakness is a mere nothing in comparison to our own.
For example, all one requires to catch a monkey in some regions of the world are the following materials:
A wooden stake,
a length of rope,
a hollowed out coconut shell with a 1-inch hole,
a few sweet candies.
Then follow the following instructions:
Drive the stake into the ground,
attach the stake securely to one end of the rope and the coconut to the other,
toss the candies into the coconut,
and wait for a greedy monkey.
What will happen once a monkey smells the sweets?
It will reach inside the hole and grab them. And when approached by the trap-setter, it will make a tight fist around the candies and attempt to flee.
However, can you see the monkey’s problem?
Its fist, full of candy, will now be larger than the 1-inch hole, and it can only escape from being caught by releasing its treasure.
Any greedy monkey will soon find itself inside a cage or soup pot. Many do. They are too greedy to release the prize and are held in place by their own hand.
Greed may cost the monkey its life, but the level of greed demonstrated is a mere nothing to that shown by humankind in many instances, because our collective greed can lead not just to the loss of one life but many, and to the extinction of many plant and animal species at the same time.
We know that modern man can barely restrain himself in the use of earth’s resources. Sustainable use of water, land, trees, minerals, fuels and multiple food sources is not practiced.
Though through the centuries humankind has moved from hunting and hunting-gathering to (predominantly) farming because of progress traps (we hunted so well many types of game were hunted to extinction), we’re inflicting other progress traps upon ourselves as we extensively farm around the world.
I wrote in an earlier post, “Now we’re burning rain forests to plant soy for beef cattle.”
About life on the largest scale, A Short History of Progress presents the following:
“Richard Alley points out what should be obvious: humans have built a civilization adapted to the climate we have. Increasingly, humanity is using everything (e.g., renewable and non-renewable resources) this climate provides... (and) the climate of the last few thousand years is about as good as it gets.” (pg. 52)
Ronald Wright continues:
“(Climate) change is not in our interest. Our only rational policy is not to risk provoking it. Yet we face abundant evidence that civilization itself, through fossil-fuel emissions and other disturbances, is upsetting the long calm in which we grew. Ice sheets at both poles are breaking up. Glaciers in the Andes and Himalayas are thawing (we now know that Canada’s north and Greenland are loosing their ice layers quickly); some have disappeared in only twenty-five years. Droughts and unusually hot weather (Canada has experienced its hottest year on record) have already caused world grain output to fall or stagnate for eight years in a row. During the same eight years, the number of mouths to feed went up by 600 million.”
“Steady warming will be bad enough, but the worst outcome would be a sudden overturning of earth’s climatic balance - back to its old regime of sweats and chills. If that happens, crops will fail everywhere and the great experiment of civilization will come to a catastrophic end.”
“In the matter of our food, we have grown as specialized, and therefore as vulnerable, as a sabre-toothed cat.”
Talk about your Catch-44, your progress trap, your greedy monkey.
Will humankind suffer through vast changes associated with climate change with its greedy fist caught in a trap of its own making?
Stay tuned.
***
For context, please read Catch-44, the progress trap, and the greedy monkey PT 1 and PT 2 and PT 3.
Part 1 here.
Part 2 here.
Part 3 here.
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