‘Uh, okay, go ahead,’ Margaret said, feeling rather uneasy.
‘What is culture anyway?’ the General asked her.
‘It’s what makes us human!’ she quickly responded. ‘It’s learning that’s passed down from generation to generation, and it’s what separates us from animals—’
‘Wrong,’ the General grunted bluntly. ‘Many species of animals have what you have just defined as “culture”, but let’s ignore that for the moment. So tell me, what is culture, distilled to its most essential form?’
‘It’s everything about what makes us human, I guess. It’s the language were raised with, which not only shapes the way we communicate and think, but how we see the world – I remember reading research about that. It’s other things too, like what traditions we follow, what rituals we believe are important, what religion we’re likely to believe in, how we see morality, what we define as right or wrong. It influences what kinda music we like, and what sort of art we appreciate. Pretty much everything about how we see and make sense of the world, I guess, if you want to define it that way. It’s also an accumulation of knowledge and uh, wisdom and learning, passed down from one generation to the next, but, what’s different with us humans, is we accumulate and add to that knowledge with each new generation, in um, in exponential terms, almost.’
‘Correct,’ the General said with a wry smile. Margaret was taken aback; he was actually agreeing with her. This was a most unexpected turn of events. ‘You have listed many admirable aspects of human culture, aspects that I will not try to deny or nullify. However, you must also admit that you’re only looking at one side of the coin that is human culture, no?’
‘Um … I guess so.’
‘So, let’s take that metaphorical coin you have in your hand and flip it over to look at the other side … the tarnished, scratched-up side. All of these things, these sacred traditions, these sacrosanct rituals … why are they so precious? What function do they serve? Almost always they are a method of reinforcing domination. Enforcing power strata, ensuring that a human child’s mind becomes irreversibly closed to any alternative possibilities from an early age. Culture is enforced blindness. Culture is a set of iron shackles and manacles, enslaving minds that should be open to a world of infinite possibilities! Culture is violence; culture is brutality dressed up as sacred ritual. Culture, on this side of the coin, is about maintaining existing power structures, about dominating other groups of humans, dominating animals, dominating the entire natural world – it is an ugly tool of power, of reinforcing toxic “us versus everyone and everything else” views.’
‘May I take over for a while, General?’ Dr Ogilvy asked.
‘Please, go ahead.’
‘Dr Green,’ Dr Ogilvy said, ‘if you look at the total biomass that occupies the surface of the earth – and what I mean by that term is the sum of all living things on this planet – if you analyse it in purely mathematical terms, even with the current human population being around seven billion, which is way out of proportion in terms of our individual specimen size and ecological footprint as large mammals, you will see that our planet does have the ability to provide all living beings with a comfortable and healthy life.’
‘I’ve heard people say that, but it seems kinda … far-fetched,’ Margaret said. ‘A little optimistic.’
‘Far-fetched only to those whose minds are closed to the idea, and who are so steeped in their addictions that they cannot see beyond the limited pale of reality created by these addictions. Most assumptions made by the individual are in fact fictions moulded around the need to serve sensory addictions. However, the uncomfortable but undeniable fact remains that if humankind continues along its current trajectory, the destruction of most life on this planet, the collapse of most major ecosystems and a mass extinction of species – including our own – isthe only logical end result. Despite this apparent inevitability, though, a cataclysm of apocalyptic proportions is not as inescapable a fate for us as it would seem. It’s going to require massive change on our part, though, to avoid such a catastrophe, and under the term “our” I include every human being on the planet … particularly those residents of the so-called “First World” nations, whose excessive and wasteful lifestyles currently require the resources of five, six or even seven Earths, rather than the single planet we currently occupy.’
Margaret nodded slowly as she considered the points Dr Ogilvy had just put forward. She leaned forward on her chair and clasped her fingers together, noticing for a brief instant how plump, stubby and pale her freckled limbs were in comparison to those of the General, whose lanky, leanly-muscled and rather menacing forearms were a bluish shade of pitch under the diffuse moonlight.
‘Tell me what addictions you’re talking about in specific terms,’ she said eventually. ‘I assume it’s not the literal things that we associate with the word “addiction”, like alcohol and drugs? Fossil fuels? Is that it?’
‘Oh yes. They are part of it, but the true scope of it extends much further. The root of the problem is that – and I believe that this is true for almost every single human culture on every single continent – the human animal does notsee itself as an animal. The human animal sees itself as something else, something that is external to the natural world. The human animal thinks that reality begins and ends with the illusory world of cities, commerce and economies it has created, and that nature is a scenic but somehow tangential and inconsequential backdrop to this concrete “reality” … a mere aside to the untouchable, omnipotent, omnipresent and infallible deity the human animal refers to as “the global economy”. You see, over
