Of elephants and humans

Matt Minshall draws an interesting comparison between elephants and humans, urging the latter to embrace harmony with nature for sustainability 

Image: pikisuperstar | Freepik

It is true that elephants will denude an area of vegetation before moving on to pastures new, quite literally.

In a short time, nature will repair the temporary damage and redress the balance. She only allows her products to live where there is adequacy of the fundamentals of life: water, light, and a balance of science. She will restore the trees and bushes and ask the fauna once more to bear fruit for future generations and to remove and store harmful carbon from the air while providing oxygen and moisture and maintaining lower temperatures. At the right time, she will once again allow the trees to donate part of themselves for the welfare of the elephants.

But nature would not be able to assist if the elephants behaved differently.

If the elephants not only stripped the vegetation of its nourishment but then ripped out the roots and replaced them with heat-absorbing, unnatural constructions, there would be a problem. If they were then filled with devices that emitted carbon into the atmosphere without absorbing any, an imbalance would swiftly occur. If the area were then populated with far more elephants than could be naturally supported, a crisis would develop. If the need for water became so great that it had to be diverted away from other areas, then the imbalance would become precarious. If there was a further need to denude wider areas of their life-giving vegetation to nourish the unnatural concentration of elephants, a one-way journey to disaster would be embarked upon.

Luckily, elephants do not do this, but humans do.

It gets worse.

What if the elephants started to believe they could manage themselves and their environment?

What if the elephants started forcing other creatures to work for them; to build shelters, gather food and water, and fight off their predators?

What if the elephants got together in large groups and went around killing other animal groups and overrunning their habitats?

What if the biggest bull decided that only elephants with a certain colour and size of tusk were allowed to have most of the food?

Luckily, they prefer to stay within the bounds of nature, and such folly has not happened; however, the same is not true for humans.

Elephants are the noble descendants of ancient creatures. They have evolved to a point of natural efficiency and have few predators. Their form has adapted to cope with their environment, and nothing on their bodies is redundant or needs artificial aids to support life. Had they not evolved, they would have died out.

Humans are the descendants of noble creatures. They evolved to a point where they began to consider themselves superior to other beings. Since then, they have tried to use the natural world to protect themselves from the elements and, indeed, from time. The error in this concept is that humans do not understand that they are frail, short-lived mammals and that nature is a force of infinite strength supported by science and time.

The result is that humans ceased evolving naturally and developed a dependency on the superficial manipulation of both science and nature to create a false situation. Medicines prevent diseases, which nature provides for through natural selection and population management. The early concept of building shelters against both heat and cold has resulted in a decline in the natural awareness needed for survival. It has also had a substantial detrimental effect on the natural climate's evolution, which is inexorable and requires organic species to evolve with it or perish.

The madness and arrogance of humans are further illustrated in their relationship with elephants. Early man behaved, as many creatures do, by hunting other species for food, but there is no evidence that any other mammal has undertaken to kill others simply to use a small part of the body for vanity or decoration. Humans brought the elephant to a point of near extinction by savagely hunting them solely to make trinkets out of their tusks.

Humans have been given a gift of intelligence, which they have not yet understood. Instead of progress, value has been hijacked by selfish emotion and individualism, which are killing their own chances of survival but not the planet’s.

The world will continue its natural cycle of evolution for possibly another three billion years of existence. Humans will probably die out in a few thousand years, or less, unless they can harness their intelligence for the collective good; the growing fantasy that artificial intelligence and robots (AIR) will allow humans to live and exist longer is already redundant. AIR will be of great assistance to humans but may hasten their feebleness in the natural world in which they live and thus their extinction, and without humans, AIR has no purpose and will disappear like a puff of wind.

When humans are extinct, their time relative to the lifespan of the planet will be barely noticeable, and most traces will be eradicated in a metaphorical flash. Even the catastrophic effect of plastic waste imposed by humans will be entirely eradicated within a millennium.

We have no option but to start listening to nature and learn how to survive a little longer. It is possible, but the greatest barriers will be the humans who cannot see beyond the end of their own selfishness. At globally represented summits, the leaders of countries and commerce struggle to make agreements that will have even minimally effective behaviour. Why? Because money talks louder than common sense and reality. For some green-claiming financiers, the return on investment is of greater importance than the vital benefits of the technology. This is understood. The financial depth and dependency of world management are too embedded to change within the time left for humans to survive, but they can be adapted to cater for all needs with strong leadership and intelligent management. The crisis does not need to become a drama.

Elephants do not seek rewards for herd management other than survival and harmony. If they did, they would lose their instinct for survival and die out.

In their absolute need to see and harness nature as an ally, humans might begin by examining the simple yet perfect lives of elephants.