Internal Threats to the Future of Homo Sapiens
Claudewell S. Thomas, MD, MPH, DLFAPA, is an established psychiatrist who is currently retired ,, He received his medical degree in 1956 at SUNY Downstate College of Medicine and specializes in social psychiatry, public health psychiatry, and forensic psychiatry. Dr. Thomas was board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry... more
Biodiversity and population control are the mechanisms employed by living organisms and near living organisms, mostly proteinaceous, to cope with and adapt to ecological change. This change is mostly global warming due to CO2 concentration. We have to prevent an additional one and one half degree rise (Celsius) which will result in irreversible damage in the form of fire, flood, loss of drinking water, proliferation of epidemic illness and pandemic illness. I can picture a nightmare scenario of a seal Phocine virus falling into a break in the arctic ice, being eaten by a bear or wolf and finding linkage with its close relative, the measles virus. The combination yielding a new and almost irresistible new pathogen.
The World Health Organization has reported that youth around the world are not getting sufficient exercise. While perhaps understandable in poverty ridden lands where drought, fire, flood or drug cartel control of essential crops (e.g. Ecuador and avocados) are rampant, the phenomenon is less understandable in North America, Europe, Japan and the U.K. Access to the digital world via computers, cell phones, game players, etc. is blamed by experts around the world. It seems that these resources encourage passive receptivity and discourage active motion.
Given the relationship between the body and mind, the combination of excess stimulation of hippocampus and midbrain by digital excess, may diminish frontotemporal activity which is essential not only to individual intellectual development, but also to group social and ethical advancement. Incidentally, the increase in weight and size of individuals, both male and female, which characterized the last 100 years has been halted.
On a similar note, Yale President Peter Salovey in his last conference call expressed his concern about the difficulty of communicating with Millennials and Gen Z, thus making the value transfer critical to Socratic learning impossible. Once again, digital communication and algorithmic processing are implicated. Old Eli and Columbia with something similar at Stanford are the only colleges left with Contemporary Civilization, the linchpin of a core curriculum.
P.S. Congrats to Yale for its share of the IVY championship, Yale 50 Harvard 43 OT.
