NATURE'S GOVERNORS AND THE HUMAN DILEMMA

                                     
If you own a 1903 edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica (as I do, but Wikipedia will do) you can learn all one needs to know about Nicholas Otto’s invention of the internal combustion engine during the last decades of the nineteenth century.  Like James Watt with steam engines, he built on developments by preceding inventors, arriving finally at the four cycle engine that underpins most of today’s petroleum fueled power plants (Otto’s early engines burned hydrogen!).

Photos of early engines, steam engines too, taken from the right perspective, will show appended to the engine two or three metal balls, usually shiny brass spheres about the size of tennis balls, on a vertically spinning shaft, contrived with linkage so that with increasing speed, centrifugal force will cause the balls to move radially outward from the spinning shaft. Within the linkage, this movement is used to control the speed of the engine. When there is added load on the engine, it wants to slow down. That causes the balls to retract radially toward the shaft, and mechanical linkage to the fuel supply increases fuel flow to the engine. Similar devices were used to control the speed of steam engines. On some single cylinder engines, called one-lungers, the design provided for saving fuel by skipping firing for several strokes before firing again to keep the speed constant. A big flywheel on the side of the engine provided the momentum to keep the engine smoothly rotating. It was not an unpleasant sound, across the countryside..... a  green John Deere tractor  going chuff, pause, pause, pause, then chuff chuff chuff chuff when it had to work harder.

These spinning brass spheres were called governors. For good reason.... they governed the speed of the engine to respond to whatever load was placed upon it. They still do, but have evolved to improved, often computerized methods. The governor for the automobile engine, however, is the linkage between a person’s brain and foot, responding to whatever the condition is on the road, or the driver’s sense of urgency, thrill, or other emotions.

Nature provides for governors in vast variety to control population. The seasonal movement of lemmings, who reproduce prodigiously, reduces the population by mass migrations across waters. It is a culling process, where the strong emerge to produce the next generation. The rest are fish food.

When deer get numerous, nature’s design is for wolves to move in. In many cases, however, the natural course of events was gummed up by interference of hunters, historically capable of wiping out entire species. Only recently has there been an awakening that mandates humans working with nature if the natural world is to be preserved. There is a moral imperative to act the part of governors.

Nature’s governors are quite remarkable in their variety and flexibility. During my early years when living on a dairy farm there was a period when our barn was infested with rats. There was plenty of food, and the manure pile beneath the barn, fermenting and providing a warm environment, was a perfect place to bear and raise young ones. One day a pair of owls moved in, staring down from the rafters. They hardly had to move to snatch up the next dinner. Three stray cats also took up residence. In short order both parties took care of the rat problem. In the springtime, when the none-too-pleasant job of shoveling the manure beneath the barn was upon us, we noticed a pair of long, gray-hued snakes slithering along the back of the dung pile. Eventually we came upon empty rat nests. The snakes had dined heartily, it seemed, on all the young ones.

Therein lies the problem of large numbers of rats in highly populated areas. Food is plentiful and  nature has been literally squeezed out of opportunities to govern. Natural processes are thwarted. Rat population control has devolved into whatever means humans can devise to keep the problem manageable, with poisons and other practices whenever there is public complaint of a large infestation. Humans and rats grudgingly coexist.

Nature’s ways are both elegant and subtle if left to itself to perform its on-going symphony. But Nature can be helpless when the balance is upset. An impressive example was the introduction of European rabbits to Australia in 1788, and again in 1859 and 1866. Just a few dozen rabbits. In Australia rabbits had no natural enemies. Some rabbits soon went feral and the ensuing problem of millions upon millions of rabbits on the loose has not been fully solved to this date and has resulted in unprecedent ecological disaster for countless other life forms.

 Nature has also struck out on the human scene. Methods available to Nature for population control don’t work on humans. If there was once a natural governor, it turned ineffective centuries ago. The last time there was a real scare was in the 1300’s when the Bubonic plague struck China, and then migrated west along a trade route that led to the Black Sea, where further carriers were believed to be rats on merchant ships. Starting in Mediterranean countries around 1347, the disease spread north to include England and the Scandinavian nations. By the time the black plague, as it came to be known, had run its course in 1352, Europe’s population of 75 million was reduced by a third to 50 million.  But world population, then at about 360 million, was diminished by less than ten percent. In current times, when a deadly virus appears an advanced medical profession around the world immediately takes up the attack, to understand it and to mitigate its effect.

Everything now works to preserve and grow human population. In my lifetime world population has doubled,  and nearly doubled again. The totality of the human mind, the psyche, is to preserve life regardless of cost, but remains blind to an aspect that obligates it also to preserve quality of life. Reproduction and preservation contains darker elements in some areas of the world where children are a commodity to be sold into the workplace and girls into early marriage. Children are their parents’ survival and retirement packages.  Wars have no overall effect on population growth. All the wars and political turmoil of the twentieth century barely made a dent in world population.

There is evidence that humans could self govern, as in more advanced nations birth rate has dropped to levels that maintain steady populations. This appears to correlate with higher levels of intelligence and improved quality of life. So perhaps that is where humanity should head. It would mean major shifts in thought process and abandonment of allegiance to the Good Book, which is okay with wars, relationship between slaves and their masters, retribution, accumulation of riches, concentration of power and superiority of men over women. It would mean ignoring Papal advice that there is no such thing as coincidence, that all is in God’s plan, and commit instead to the reality that we are on our own.

But it would be difficult. Even today, in an advanced nation, we have the spectacle of wannabe Gods who proclaim that an embryo, from the moment of conception has all rights, the same as when born. Where did that come from? In the light of day it appears to be the mischief of those who cling the notion of male superiority over women..... males who were shattered upon learning just a few decades ago that there is an egg involved. 

There is an uncanny parallel between the rabbits of Australia and human occupation of the planet. Ravages on the environment, at tragic cost to other living forms correspond to consumption oriented societies, exploiting resources at a rate that foretells misery for future generations. Paradoxically, humans will eventually devise a governor for the rabbit population. (Scientists are trying to develop viruses to accomplish this. Nothing else has worked).

With humans the solution arguably lies in education, universal improvement of quality of life,  and adoption of mindsets that vilify excessive accumulation of wealth, along with eliminating existing concentrations of private wealth. Movements are underway. There are budding worldwide organizations like GTI Perspectives (www.gtiperspectives.org). That organization is beginning to develop something called “The Great Transition.” This is also the substance of admonitions in lectures by sages like the Dalai Lama, who sees more clearly than most the human dilemma.

As yet, the human scene lacks a dependable governor. God is detached, and we’ve not yet found our way.