ilbert and Sullivan just may have been onto something, according to Sophie Dulesh. In her article “Genopolitics” she argues that individual human beings may be innately predisposed to certain political inclinations, and that these inclinations are probably influenced by genetics. Because the same genetic factors predispose some of us to religion, she concludes that it will not likely disappear, despite all of our secular and scientific education. The challenge, she argues, is to keep religion at bay as a personal matter, while enjoying the benefits of a widening secular education, such as improvements in material well-being and reduced violence. While Dulesh looks at the issues of politics and religion from a genetic perspective, Paul Meernik, in “Belief, Life, and Understanding – an Engineer’s Take,” assesses the staying power of religion from a cost-benefit perspective, in terms of the pros and cons for individuals and societies. Meernik also does not foresee the end of religion as it helps humans cope with existential conflicts, but he also holds out hope that humanity, with some help from humanism’s reason-based approach to understanding and meeting human needs, may embark on an alternative to the destructive path so often chosen.

Chris Clugston, however, has little doubt that humanity is hurtling down a self-destructive path from which it is unable to deviate. In “The Most Endangered Species” he explains that our resource-ravenous global civilization is highly dependent on non-renewable natural resources (NNRs), from aluminum to zinc. NNRs constitute a whopping 95% of the annual raw material throughputs of the US economy. Unfortunately for humanity, economically viable deposits of many of the NNRs crucial to our civilization (for agriculture, communications, medical devices, transport, infrastructure and more) are becoming increasingly scarce, and the eventual outcome of this scarcity will be the collapse of our industrial civilization. George Bush notwithstanding, Mother Nature may decree the American way of life to be negotiable after all. And everyone else’s, for that matter. Clugston makes Malthus look like a wide-eyed optimist but, unfortunately for us, his conclusions are based on hard geophysical data.

I would argue that the resource wars that Clugston foresees for humanity are already upon us, but for the most part we do not recognize them as such. Conflicts that become news (and many don’t) are presented almost entirely from an ethnic, religious, or political perspective, when in fact many arise from or are fanned by increasing resource scarcity. That, I would say, was the case with Rwanda in 1994, a grossly overpopulated country, whose hills had been entirely stripped of their forest cover (with the exception of the small area that is the national park) and terraced to grow crops. At the time of the 1994 massacres, Rwanda still had a total fertility rate of 8.5 children per woman. (Now it is ‘only’ 4.6.) Our new book review editor, Eric Thomas, takes a look at that unfortunate country in his reviews of two books by Romeo Dallaire, the now retired Canadian Lieutenant General who headed the United Nations mission to Rwanda during the time of the massacre. One of the books (Shake Hands with the Devil) deals directly with the massacre, while the other (They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children) deals with one of the attendant evils of the societal collapse, the use of child soldiers. (We introduce Eric at in the book review section. Please take him up on his invitation to get a free copy of one of the books available for review and to send in suggestions for books to review.)

While much of who we are and what we do may be driven by genetics, no one would deny that individuals and societies are also shaped by their environment, which includes the philosophies, religious teachings, and societal norms under which we live. Our perception of who we are and of our place in our own society and in the wider world is also guided by what in modern parlance are called “narratives.” Individuals, ethnic groups, and nations can adhere to narratives (secular or religious) as tenaciously as to a religion (and often the two are linked). One such political narrative, that of Arab nationalism, is assessed by Middle East analyst Mordechai Kedar, who argues that pan-Arabism or a collective Arab consciousness has never overcome loyalty to tribal and religious traditions. Arab regimes did not support one another when attacked by foreigners and also fought against one another. Arab loyalty to Palestinians also consists mostly of empty slogans, he says, as evidenced by the treatment since 1948 of Palestinian refugees in Arab countries, and recently highlighted by their shabby treatment at the Yarmouk Camp in Syria. As Arab regimes have weakened, “the al-Qaeda vultures have begun to peck at the weak and diseased body of the Arab nation. Man has abandoned the station of leadership and Allah has entered with a Kalashnikov in his hand.” In the faltering states of the Arab/Muslim world, terrorists arrive from all over to establish an “Islamic state” and bring with them mass death and destruction. In my opinion, it is not alarmist to say that conflicting narratives in the Middle East and between the secular West and the Islamic world (“clash of civilizations”) could lead to a global conflagration, so it is vitally important to critically evaluate and openly discuss these narratives.

We humans are much better at being clever and devising ways to strip Earth of its resources so that our population and economies can continue to grow at the expense of the physical environment and other living things than at being wise and voluntarily powering down the whole human enterprise. I would venture to suggest that this compulsion of continuous expansion is part of our genetic endowment as well – and one we probably share with all other organisms, but who lack our technological capacity to turn the entire globe into their feedlot and dumping ground. Regardless of whether you agree with Chris Clugston (and many others) that the fall of our global civilization is inevitable, there should be little doubt that the times in the decades ahead are going to be far more interesting than any of us would have liked.

What now, humanism? Humanists must continue to vigorously promote critical thinking so that the current of rationalism continues to flow (and, we hope, grow) in the river of ideas – some of which are quite mad and likely to become more so if the collapse of our industrial civilization with its attendant miseries comes to pass. If collapse happens, what sort of narrative will guide the survivors? It must be one that helps humans, warts and all, use their genetic propensities to choose a less destructive path in the future. Humanists have their work cut out for them!

— Madeline Weld, Ottawa