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"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August 2018; see the Supreme Court decision killing the Voting Rights Act, April 27, 2026; click here )
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"How do you spell ICE in German? GESTAPO." (S. Jonas, July 2025)
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"First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.
"Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
"Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
"Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me." Pastor Martin Niemoller (c. 1946)
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As regular readers of my columns know, I revisit this one on a periodic basis. That is because the argument that I make in it, that Homo Sapiens is a self-destructive species, indeed the first ever in the history of life, is unfortunately becoming ever more valid. Let us begin with a major excerpt from the original. I originally published this column back in 2014. It was inspired both by some theoretical work I had been doing on two subjects which were, in my mind at least, related.
The first was the fact that Homo Sapiens is, among all of the myriad species on Earth, the only one that is for the most part dependent for its existence upon the following: the conversion of various resources that it encounters, animal, vegetable, and mineral, in the environment, into various kinds of foods, products, forms of shelter, basic means survival (e.g., finding and preserving pure water supply/figuring out how to dispose of wastes in such a way that they don't kill species-members), and so on and so forth. The processes of conversion become ever more complex as what we call "civilization" proceeds/develops apace. The second subject that I was exploring was the subject of this column: the matter of how and why Homo Sapiens has developed into the only self-destructive-species-on-a-mass scale that life-on-Earth has ever known. I came to the conclusion that those two remarkable features of the species are intimately related. Which is what this column is about.
For me, the examination of both phenomena in some detail happens to have begun with a consideration of a movie from 2014 entitled "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" (for the reference see below). I am briefly revisiting that column in part, at this time. for several reasons that might seem obvious but are well worth stating and re-stating.
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Intrigued with the 2014 movie the "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes," I reviewed it on these pages. In part I noted that the Homo sapiens population in it is, well, classically Homo sapiens. They have guns aplenty and with few exceptions are ready to use them at a moment's notice. Violence, against other species and within their own, is both commonplace and for the most part fully accepted. But of course, as it happens, they are members of one of the only species of animal on the planet that kills, indeed slaughters, each other in numbers that have grown ever larger in the geologically microscopically brief period of time that the species has existed in its so-called "civilized" mode of organization.
Unlike every other species, Homo sapiens cannot exist for very long without converting one or more elements that they find in their environment into one or more other goods and services. In contrast, the Simians are hunter-gatherers, who survive by, for the most part directly using various resources that they find in their communities. And there is a fundamental conflict between an apparently economically egalitarian society of hunter-gatherers which, among other things, rejects the use of intra-species violence, and the classic Homo sapiens society, in which such violence is an essential characteristic.
Further, for homo sapiens, apparently from pretty close in time to the beginning of communities organized at any level, then societies, the ownership of the various means of production that converts elements found in the environment into those goods and services needed/used for individual and species survival has for the most part been in private hands. The "means of production" in those days could include anything from the ownership of farm or grazing land, the ownership/manufacturing of weapons, the ownership of boats for fishing, or the ownership of the means by which raw meat/game, vegetables, and grains were made into food, and then distributed. It is precisely that mode of ownership, and the means the owners have used over time to protect their ownership, that eventually leads to violence within and between societies, on a larger and larger scale.
Indeed, since just about the earliest of times, human society has been characterized by intra-species violence. Confirming what I have said, "Live Science" summarized it this way:
"Compared with most animals, we humans engage in a host of behaviors that are destructive to our own kind and to ourselves. We lie, cheat and steal, carve ornamentations into our own bodies, stress out and kill ourselves, and of course kill others."
It is most likely that it was the private ownership of the means of production that has, over time, selected for intra-species violence. This pattern may have started even before the organization of communities around agriculture: "Now, analyses of archaeological sites as well as ethnographies of traditional societies are etching a more complex picture, suggesting that some ancient hunter-gatherers may have accumulated wealth and political clout by taking control of concentrated patches of wild foods." In this view, it is the ownership of small, "resource-rich areas"--- and the ease of bestowing them on descendants--- that fosters inequality, rather than agriculture itself." And how better to preserve the private ownership of those early "means of production" than through intra-species violence, on the part of the owners and those non-owners who they engage to protect their ownership, against those who work for them and their interests. Certainly, in known historical times it hasn't been done through the use of reason.
Thus in summary, it would appear that it has been, since the earliest times of the organization into communities of the species Homo sapiens, the private ownership of those necessary-for-species-survival-means-of-conversion-then-production that has promoted, and indeed may have even selected for, the use of intra-species violence and the gene or genes that may underlie it. Furthermore, it is the perpetuation of the interests of certain owners of various means of production which have contributed so substantially to the immediate threat of global warming and its catastrophic consequences for species Homo sapiens and myriad others. Combine this with the fact that Homo Sapiens has developed ever more violent and massive means of intra-species destruction, the future does not look too healthy, does it? At least as long as the ownership of the means of production necessary to species survival remains in private hands, that is.
And of course, as I have discussed on a number of occasions in this space, it is none other than P2025 and the development of TrumpRepubloFascism in the United Sates which is determined not only to protect, basically, private ownership the means of production and a governmental form whose primary purpose is to protect and project forward that institution, e.g., private ownership of the means of production and the projection forward of private profit-making as its primary, if not its sole, goal and objective. And, as can be seen in capitalist reality every day, it is the projection of this goal, and the intra-species violence that accompanies it, that is at the center of this projection.
And then comes Artificial Intelligence. In my view and that of many others, it is this new system for organizing thought and action, without, so far, any sort of external regulation, and with every indication that, for now, at least its primary purpose will be the production of profit for its owners/operators, that does, or should, breed terror in the hearts of men. Consider, for example, the warnings set forth by the CEO of one of the BIG AI firms, Anthropic, by its CEO, Dario Amodei.
He warns of the "real danger" that superhuman intelligence will cause civilization-level damage absent smart, speedy intervention. As he warns, "I believe we are entering a rite of passage, both turbulent and inevitable, which will test who we are as a species. . .. Humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power, and it is deeply unclear whether our social, political, and technological systems possess the maturity to wield it." Among his warnings are:
- Massive job loss: "I ... simultaneously think that AI will disrupt 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs over 1-5 years, while also thinking we may have AI that is more capable than everyone in only 1-2 years."
- AI with nation-state power: "I think the best way to get a handle on the risks of AI is to ask the following question: Suppose a literal 'country of geniuses' were to materialize somewhere in the world in ~2027. Imagine, say, 50 million people, all of whom are much more capable than any Nobel Prize winner, statesman, or technologist. ... I think it should be clear that this is a dangerous situation."
- Rising terror threat: "Most individual bad actors are disturbed individuals, so almost by definition their behavior is unpredictable and irrational -- and it's these bad actors, the unskilled ones, who might have stood to benefit the most from AI making it much easier to kill many people."
And then, contemporaneously, there is what the development and use of AI is doing to power supply and use. In summary, courtesy of the Sierra Club: " Power-hungry data centers are causing a massive surge in electricity demand -- the biggest data centers will each consume more electricity than some large cities. Instead of speeding up the transition to clean energy, utilities and tech companies are:
- Racing to build more gas-burning power plants
- Delaying coal plant retirements
- Building thousands of on-site diesel generators
In conclusion, put this all in the context of --- simplified --- production for profit rather than production for use. As my Yiddish-speaking ancestors would have put it: "OY, YOY, YOY." It would (will) be the continued evolution (if I may use that word) of the Self-Destructive Species at is worst.
(Article changed on May 08, 2026 at 2:24 PM EDT)
(Article changed on May 09, 2026 at 6:27 PM EDT)
