Zapffe compared humanity to a species of giant elk that once actually existed — magnificent creatures whose antlers grew so large and heavy that they eventually doomed them. Their beauty became their curse. Their own biological evolution led to their extinction.
He believed that we are that elk. That human consciousness — our capacity for reflection, abstraction, self-awareness — evolved too far. We became so smart that we broke the game. We realised that we’re going to die, that the universe is absurd and that existence itself has no inherent meaning. We became animals cursed with godlike awareness.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s. Let’s be honest: saying that we humans got too smart and possess “godlike awareness” is being way too generous. Looking at the world today, one is not inclined to say that things would be better if people were a little less smart. Yet the Norwegian philosopher Peter Zapffe might have been on to something. Whether we realize it or not, most of us probably assume that evolution moves toward efficiency, improvement, greater adaptability. Of course, scientists have long cautioned that natural selection does not go in any particular direction: better, faster, smarter, more complex. But it stands to reason that “the survival of the fittest” would privilege adaptations that, you know, help the being in question to survive.
And here we have these elk. In the competitive world of mating, big antlers are both symbolic (signaling strength) and practical (good for fightin’). It almost looks like a kind of biological hubris that this body part would get so large that Buddy the Elk would just tip over and die.
In doomy fashion, Zapffe sees our own consciousness as such an adaptation gone awry. Wouldn’t it better if we were unreflective apes, content to forage for food and fuck? Who hasn’t been in a moment of grief or frustration and thought it would be nice not to be burdened with all these thoughts and feelings? To be as dumb and carefree as a butterfly.
Still, this way of thinking feels like it’s giving us a little too much credit. We are neither too smart nor too stupid — I think we’re just stubborn and myopic, most of the time. The horrors and folly of humanity are all too well known even to someone who doesn’t follow the news, and triply so if they do. We live in a world with genocide, multilevel marketing schemes, and Marc Andreessen. (On second thought, maybe we are doomed.) But it is the same world where courageous people put their lives on the line for strangers and the most sublime art and music is made every damn day. It’s a world where we get to watch CGI sheep solve a classic Agatha Christie-style murder mystery.
This week’s round-up of the best of the web ranges far and wide, alighting on the usual spots: philosophy, technology, politics, literature, cults, animals, the Rapture, and cartoons. Take a little break from the old doomscroll and have a peek at these vistas of our crazy humanness:
- How Podcasts Ruined America (Compact Magazine)
- Democratic socialist Melat Kiros defeats 15-term incumbent in Colorado House primary (Guardian)
- Karr’s Kill Cult: Virtual Cults and Pseudo-Killing in the Digital Age (New American Notes Online)
- Is This Blue? Chilean Philosophers Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela on Love and How We Know the World (Marginalian)
- What is Moltbook? The strange new social media site for AI bots (Guardian)
- The Existential Elk Theory (DAWN)
- An Inconvenient Truth About AI (Rutger Bregman)
- Literature fans should welcome AI as a fellow wordsmith (Aeon)
- Andreessen Horowitz Partner Quit Firm, Horrified by What His Old Colleagues Are Doing to Humankind (Futurism)
- Let’s Lose Lots of Money feat. Ed Zitron (Chapo Trap House)
- Starbucks Union Wins 700th NLRB Election (NLRB Edge)
- ”In this Essay I Will…”: On Owning Ideas (Flow)
- Would You Eat This Guy? What If He Were God, Or A Baby? (Defector)
- ‘We are screwed’: People near data centers dread heat wave pollution (Politico)
- This man bought the land stolen from his Indigenous ancestors (ABC)
- Vladimir Nabokov’s 1964 Playboy interview (Scraps from the Left)
- Was Nabokov a Victim Too? (ToM)
- A Better World Is Not Possible (LARB)
- The Sheep Detectives Is EVERYTHING Cinema Has Been Missing (Smarty Pants)
- 40 Best Cartoon Network Shows Of All Time, Old And New (Buzzfeed)
- After 11 Years, American Dad’s Big Change Risks The Best Thing About The Series (ScreenRant)
- Who was Leo Schilperoord? 5 things to know about Hantavirus ‘Patient Zero’ in cruise ship outbreak (Hindustan Times)
- Why Japan has millions of abandoned houses (The Hustle)
- ‘Rapture Delayed Until Epstein Files Drop’? Viral Claim Sparks Christian Pushback—and a Reminder From Scripture (Beliefnet)
- Mythology, with Moiya McTier (Dreaming Against the Machine)
- A discovery about this bat’s diet was hiding in a Renaissance painting (Science News)
- Ocean Census project discovers 1,121 new species of ocean life around the world in one year (ABC)
- At the Fishhouses (Poetry Foundation)