*[Enwl] Люди и их Экологическое Пространство
ecology
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Вт Сен 30 21:43:13 MSK 2025
Перевод на рус. язык статьи Анастасии Макарьевой
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fF0Y9mw7rW5tJIsoZlTJkYg629hCfWRhH3FLU_04HIk/edit?usp=sharing
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Best regards,
Bulat K. YESSEKIN
пт, 12 сент. 2025 г. в 09:24, Anastassia Makarieva
<bioticregulation на substack.com>:
Reflections on a global drama
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Humans and Their Ecological Space
Reflections on a global drama
Anastassia Makarieva
Sep 12
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Though they live less commodiously in the conuco, they love to
retire thither as often as they can. The irresistible desire the Indians
have to flee from society, and enter again on a nomade life, causes even
young children sometimes to leave their parents, and wander four or five
days in the forests, living on fruits, palm-cabbage, and roots. … Among
civilized nations, the passion for hunting arises perhaps in part from the
same causes: the charm of solitude, the innate desire of independence, the
deep impression made by Nature, whenever man finds himself in contact with
her in solitude.
Alexander von Humboldt, Personal narrative of travels to the
equinoctial regions of America, during the years 1799–1804
Eighteen years ago, in September 2007, Victor Gorshkov and I were
invited to speak at the Religion, Science and Environment symposium
organized by the Greek Orthodox Church. It took place aboard a large ship
cruising along the coast of Greenland (this was before the 2008 financial
crisis and funding in Greece was generous).
That same year in spring, our first paper on the biotic pump was
published in Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, and we were excited to
share with the world just how mind-blowingly important trees are to life on
Earth. When the invitation came, thanks to our dear friend Antonio Donato
Nobre, we decided to sacrifice our autumn pilgrimage to the White Sea
(“autumn isn’t spring; spring you can’t miss”) and accepted with gratitude.
We gave two talks on board. The first, naturally, was about the
biotic pump. The second was about human nature and our current predicament.
Below is the unedited text of my speech along with the images that I had
shown. Afterward, a former Canadian MP told me he had never seen a scientist
speak so passionately.
Since then, I’ve grown much older and have somewhat modified my
views, which I briefly reflect on at the end of this post.
This is another scheduled post. I am offline till the end of
September.
Homo sapiens — the rightless animal?
1. Introduction: What determines natural human rights
Something wrong is in the air with the Humanity. What is this and
how this should be fought with before it is too late is the issue that
bothers millions of people around the globe. Here we will argue that the
essence of the catastrophe is that Humans have lost some major rights
implied by their biological and ecological design.
Apparently, all living beings, with humans being no exception, are
designed to eat and to drink. Accordingly, the rights for food and water are
the primary rights reflected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
If we look at the Humanity on a global scale, we will see that some
biological rights are largely preserved, although increasingly threatened:
a.. the right to breathe,
b.. the right for comfortable ambient temperature,
c.. the right for food,
d.. the right for water.
But here we will give scientific evidence that several more
natural human rights, as inherent as the above, have been globally lost. We
termed them ecological human rights; these are
a.. the right for individual territory,
b.. the right for social significance,
c.. the right for human virtues.
Uniquely, these human rights have been lost without being
explicitly recognized.
Generally, rights of living creatures follow directly from, and
are dictated by, their design and natural needs. A bird is designed to fly,
a fish is designed to swim. Accordingly, they have the right for the sky and
for the river, respectively.
What is the biological design of humans? Answer to this question
will determine natural human rights.
2. Humans are designed to move and have the right for an
individual territory of four square kilometers
The power of human body is equal to approximately 100 Watts. This
is the power of two reading bulbs. This power, which is called metabolic
power, is used to support all biochemical processes within the human body.
The energy comes with food. Food is provided by the biosphere.
The biosphere receives all energy from the Sun. Green plants
convert some part of solar energy into organic matter, which is used as food
by humans and other animals. Mean global productivity of the biosphere is
about half a Watt per square meter. This is a very low power. It cannot
satisfy a human body, which demands thousands times more per the same area.
From these two fundamental parameters, the metabolic power of
human body and the productivity of the biosphere, we conclude unambiguously
that human beings must move and collect organic matter that is produced on a
very large territory. Obviously, this territory must be protected against
competitors. In other words, humans are designed to move and possess a large
individually controlled territory.
Humans are not unique in this design. The right for individual
territory is invariably respected in all natural species of animals. There
is a fundamental dependence between the body size and the size of individual
territory in animals. Home range area grows approximately proportionally to
body mass, Fig. 1. Small animals like mice and shrews are granted with small
territories of several hundred square meters. The largest animals like
elephants or rhinoceros or some large predators defend individiual
territories that can exceed several hundred square kilometers.
Fig. 1. The dependence of individual territory on body mass in
mammals. Green and black dots denote herbivores and carnivores,
respectively. After Kelt and Van Vuren (2001). Red arrow and dot denote the
natural territory allocated to Homo sapiens (the upper one) and mean
individual territory of modern humans (the lower one).
And only in humans this right has been dramatically violated. The
unprecedented explosive growth of human population during the last two
centuries has resulted in the situation when an average human being can
control a territory of no more than a hundred square meters. Of such a small
individual territory even some rodents would be ashamed.
3. Major right lost: Consequences
Deprived of air, human beings perish in a few minutes. Deprived of
water, human beings perish in a few days. Deprived of food, human beings
perish in a few weeks. Deprived of individual territory, human beings are
not human beings.
The fundamental nature of the right for individual territory can
be traced in all aspects of human existence. What is the main punishment
applied to Homo sapiens? Territory deprivation.
Vincent van Gogh "Prisoners exercising"
Vice versa, the highest peaks of human spirit can be reached in
solitude when the individual commands a very large territory. Not
incidentally, many saints and sacred figures in world religions are known to
have reached their perfection in solitude, like, for example, the famous
Russian Saint Sergius Radonezhskii.
N.K. Rerikh "St. Sergius the Builder"
Another sign of the vital importance of territory for the human
beings is manifested in the love of humans for traveling. Whenever free from
their obligatory work, the majority of people choose to travel. They try to
compensate lack of individual territory by the illusion of vast, although
shared, space available to them when they travel.
Given the vitality of territory for the human design, it can be
expected that the global loss of this inherent right will profoundly affect
human performance and well-being. To realize how many terrible features in
the modern civilization stem from the loss of this right, one can monitor
the consequences of natural animals being deprived of their territory.
The fact that one does not have a sufficient individual territory
signals to the individual about his low social status, results in
humiliation and reduced biological performance. A comprehensive study of
captive black rhinoceros that are notorious for their poor reproduction in
captivity revealed the following. Those rhinoceros who were kept in closed
cells with non-transparent walls reproduced worst of all. Both male potency
and female reproductive capacity were the lowest. In contrast, those animals
that could at least see a large free territory from their enclosures with
transparent walls — all reproduced better. These findings, confirmed in many
other species, including, for example, the tiny jerboas, indicate that the
command of individual territory has a profound physiological significance
which can be communicated by visual signals. Looking at the modern humanity,
do not we notice a very similar pandemic of sexual disorders? People world
over are losing the happiness of sexual life and the ability to leave health
progeny. The parallel with territory-deprived animals is straightforward.
Another manifestation of the global loss of the right for
territory, and this manifestation cries out, is the unnatural aggressiveness
of our species. Massive killing of conspecifics is absent in any other
species except Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens is an unbeaten and unrivaled
champion of atrocities in the animal world. Terrorism, extremism all drink
from this source.
V.V. Vereshagin. "Apotheosis of War"
To summarize, humans are not mice and cannot normally exist and
implement their design on tiny spots. We are not bad, we are deeply unhappy.
The natural territory that is prescribed by the human design is of
the order of 4 square kilometers. Four square kilometers of quieteness and
relaxation, of solitude, of communication with nature, four square
kilometers of home. Are there many people among those reading these lines
who have experienced this at least once in their lives? (=Are there many
birds among birds who could fly at least once?)
4. The right for significance and the right for human virtue
The right for territory is tightly connected with other natural
human rights, the information about which can similarly be gained from a
study of the biological design of human beings.
We notice that per capita individual territory of humans is about
four square kilometers. At the same time our voice is so powerful, that we
can vocally mark a much larger territory. If one screams at full voice, he
can be heard over a territory of a few hundred square kilometers.
Since normally no alien intruders are tolerated on individual
territories, this means that the normal social group of humans consisted of
about 100 individuals, who were closely correlated with each other.
In such a natural population every human being had an average
1/100th impact on the life of the society. Individual significance on
average equaled 1/100. In modern overpopulated societies individual
significance has shrunk by millions of times, producing unsatisfaction,
humiliation, and anxiety.
Most people feel they do not produce any impact on the society, do
not decide anything — and suffer. Those people who are on the top of the
society, naturally, desperately defend their natural right for social
significance against any possible rivals (their co-citizens). As we know, in
each country the number of actual decision-makers can be counted in no more
than a few hundreds, with all of them knowing each other very well. This
exactly corresponds to the size of the natural social group of human beings.
Note that such people cannot be straightforwardly blamed, as cannot
straightforwardly be blamed people defending their rights for food and water
amidst a terrible famine or drought.
That the right for significance penetrates all aspects of human
existence can easily be seen from many aspects of modern life. People try to
invent ways of re-gaining significance:
a.. Professional societies organize at sizes close to the size
of natural human groups ~ 100-1000 individuals (sportsmen, scientists,
musicians etc.)
b.. Most religions try to compensate the lack of significance in
their believers by sending the message of each person being individually
valuable and important for God.
c.. Internet communication competes with religion for this
function; people are able to create web societies close in size to natural
human groups and get a feeling of influencing life of the society.
Ultimately, people have even lost the right for human virtues.
Biological design prescribes every normal human being to possess a certain
set of behavioral standards (virtues), which ensure stable existence of the
natural population. People have to be clever, kind, honest, capable etc. and
competitive, i.e. socially active. In the normally-sized population all
these qualities in each individual are monitored by the other individuals
with high precision. Those who possess all these qualities, the most
harmonic human beings, get to the top of the society.
In a small natural social group all individuals are approximately
equal in performance and possess the complete set of behavioral properties
essential for a stable existence of the group. The best among the equal rule
the society.
The unnaturally high intensity of competitive interaction in huge
populations makes human beings choose among human virtues; nobody can afford
retaining all of them. The individual has to choose to be either clever or
competitive, either kind or competitive, etc. This choice among virtues can
be compared to a forced choice between eating and drinking, breathing and
sleeping etc. In the result, only those get to the top who spend all their
time on competition. But these are no longer are the most harmonic
individuals in the human society.
To get to the top of an unnaturally large social group one has to
sacrifice the majority of human virtues spending most time on social
competition.
Although for different reasons, this situation produces
unsatisfaction, moral sufferings and diseases both in those decent people
who cannot get to the top and in those who ultimately get there. Needless to
say that this critically destabilizes the civilization, because the best
human virtues remain undervalued and gradually lost from the society.
5. Conclusions
Thus, having lost the natural human rights, the overwhelming
majority of people on Earth will never in their life have an opportunity to
feel what it actually means to be a human being. What can this global
humanitarian catastrophe be compared with? For example, if all human beings
lost the ability to hear and, without knowing what happened, continued to
believe that they have everything a human being must have. Or if all people
of Earth became of one and the same sex and never knew the beauty of sexual
relationships between men and women. Or if people lived under ground and
never saw the sunlight, without even knowing that it exists. In the same
manner modern humans have lost their right for individual territory, for
social significance and human virtues.
Is our planet inhabited by human beings? Or, rather, by pathetic
fragments of what once could have been conceived as a majestic design? As we
have argued, all problems of modern civilization are the consequence of
global overpopulation. Not only is this problem unresolved, but it has not
even been set up properly. Usually human population growth is considered as
an inevitable law of nature that cannot be modified. It is assumed that all
civilization processes must be adapted to this law. Free market economy
strongly relies on population growth. Mass-media not only ignore the
overpopulation problem, but advertise the need to mitigate the demographic
crisis in some developed countries.
In natural species, overpopulation is strongly suppressed and is
practically never observed. It destroys the ecological community. But under
some rare conditions overpopulation does exist in nature. What are these
conditions? It is the abundance of some environmental characteristics used
by life. Such abundance arises for species introduced on new territories,
like rats and rabbits in Australia, or after volcanic eruptions. In all such
cases we observe exponential growth and population expansion.
The reasons for this expansion are not obvious and must get a
scientific explanation. Life cannot be stable without competitive
interaction of individuals inside each population. Without competition and
selection of defective individuals, the number of the latter increases. The
species loses its organization and goes extinct.
Under conditions of abundance, defective individuals can occupy
free territory and claim free resources, and thus avoid competition with
normal individuals. In order to switch on competition, it is necessary to
expand the population to occupy all available territory and resources, in
other words, to do away with abundance. Life in continuous abundance is
impossible. Therefore, expansion is a genetically programmed characteristic
of life.
Human brain and thinking put the humanity under the illusion of a
continuous resource abundance, which arises during the unstoppable
intellectual development of the civilization. This very dangerous situation
must be realized and seriously analyzed by modern humanity, in order that at
least the future generations of people on Earth would live up to the proud
name of the human being.
Retrospective
In the eighteen years since I gave this speech, the most important
lesson I've learned is the need for greater humility in the face of the
complex social dynamics we are now part of.
I also learned that speaking about territorial deprivation in humans
is not easy. It’s an uncomfortable realization—that we are all deprived of
something vital, and that reclaiming it can only come at the cost of
depriving others even more. This can trigger a strong emotional pushback.
Yet, as an old lady once told me when I shared my fear of flying, sometimes
looking down from the plane and seeing how far you are from the ground can
actually help you overcome the fear. The more we acknowledge what we lack,
the more we can appreciate what we (still) do have.
Apparently, it is not possible for the human population to
disintegrate back into many small groups without losing most of the
scientific knowledge we have so painstakingly accumulated (it would be very
sad to lose that). The high degree of specialization in modern,
technologically advanced societies, where everyone depends on everyone else
for survival, lessens competition (liver and kidneys do not compete, either)
and leads to greater respect for all members of society, including women,
thus partially offsetting the stress caused by deprivation of individual
territory and broader social significance. Losing this mutual respect and
degrading back to rudimentary tribal mentality would be sad, too.
That said, human biology (apart from the accumulating genetic load
that contributes to all of us progressively becoming less healthy) has not
changed much, and understanding our basic ecological needs and rights is a
prerequisite for building a happy ecological future for our species—if we
can indeed meaningfully modify what the future has in store for us.
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© 2025 Anastassia Makarieva
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
From: Bulat Yessekin <bulat.yessekin на gmail.com>
Date: вт, 30 сент. 2025 г. в 09:34
Subject: Люди и их Экологическое Пространство
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