The new human quest to find a viable way to live on our planet inevitably leads us on a search through the inner depths of our individual and collective selves. Who are we? What are the deep and hidden forces within us that determine how we respond to a world in which we must learn to live in some modicum of ecological equilibrium? Why do we treat nature as we do?

Indeed, the deeper we look in an outward direction to measure our impact on the planet’s physical environment — both locally and globally — the deeper we penetrate inwardly to reveal the labyrinthine intricacies of our own human character. Who we are is what we do, and what we do is who we are.

Psychologists and psychiatrists might provide useful insights into our individual character. For a glimpse into our collective character, we might consider the work of historians, anthropologists and archeologists. Their wider perspectives help define humanity as a whole, offering clues to the inner mechanisms that drive us as a species. Or we might consider the thoughts of a primatologist named Adrian Barnett and his submission in a recent edition of the New Scientist (#2589), The Last Human.

“Humans are unusual mammals,” writes Barnett. “Along with bipedalism, naked skin and our unusually large size, there is also the uncomfortable fact that we are the only living member of our genus. Most mammals have at least one or two close living relatives.... But genetically speaking, modern humans are alone on the planet.”

Is this an accident of evolution or a revealing indication of our collective character? As The Last Human points out, (Globe & Mail, Feb.15/07), “...we become more isolated every day as we push our closest relatives, the great apes, to the edge of extinction. This action [many] believe is just the latest manifestation of a violent intolerance of competition that has characterized the genus Homo and probably its antecedents.”

Archeological evidence confirms that we once had many close relatives that all disappeared into extinction. Why would our genus, Homo sapiens, have been the sole survivor of our immediate relatives? We know that our ancestors spread from Africa about 85,000 years ago, eventually inhabiting almost every part of the planet. We also know that Neanderthals disappeared from our company about 30,000 years ago, along with a growing list of non-human species. And the future now looks dim for our other closest relatives, the gorillas, orangutans, bonobos and chimpanzees. (Chimps, incidentally, have 99.4% of the same critical DNA as ourselves, and are so similar in other biological details that we once placed them in the same genus as ourselves. In 1816 we moved them to the genus Pan for philosophical and theological reasons.)

We treat other species with the same disrespect that we have been treating our primate relatives. If they get in our way, if they obstruct our ambitions, if they compete for the resources or territories we want, we either displace them or kill them.

Aside from the vicious competition among ourselves — about two recorded wars for each year of our recorded history — we can make a very long and expanding list of the species we have abused. Some we have sent into the dark silence of extinction. As for the others, we can begin with the nearest and most obvious. Hunters in BC continue to shoot cougars for the sport and wolves for the fun, usually under the unsupportable pretext that these predators — as if we’re not — take the game we need for survival. Our justifications for these killings are often transparent rationalizations for the primitive urge that still rises from some recess in our lower brain.

We claim the territory of grizzlies and then wonder why they become “problem” bears. We possess the forests needed by spotted owls, murrelets, hawks, falcons and mountain cariboo, and then bemoan how protecting them is an inconvenience that thwarts our just causes. We occupy vast stretches of grasslands with our farms and then begrudge burrowing owls, prairie dogs or buffalo a little corner for themselves. We once shot orcas with 50-calibre machine guns because they were consuming the wild salmon we commanded for our exclusive use. And in a paradox that is explainable only by pathology, we abused the rivers that gave us the salmon because we wanted the trees of the forests that provided the cool, clean water to grow the fish..

Salmon farming is the latest and most obvious expression of our intolerance for competition. We usurp the sea and then assign seals, sea-lions, porpoises, dolphins, otters, herons, eagles, even sea lice — virtually anything that eats fish — to the category of enemy. Our view of them is entirely a reflection of our own character; they are merely doing what they have been doing legitimately and naturally since long before we left Africa.

Nature is the generic term we use for the conglomeration of all species and for all the physical attributes we assign to land and sea and air. We have been so busy conquering, subduing, taming, developing, harnessing and generally using them — in that words most abusive sense — that we haven’t noticed until recently that we’ve been destroying it all.

For the moment, perhaps the most uncomfortable aspect of our current and deepening global environmental mess is the insight it is providing about our own character. If we look into the dirty skies, we will see a reflection of ourselves. If we look at the dying seas or the searing land, we will also see ourselves. Each place we poison and each species we send to extinction is another indictment of who we are. If these insights are painful, it’s because we deserve them. Our redemption will be measured by the changes we make in ourselves.