Great Leap Backward Human Self-Destructive Behavior Within the last few decades we have developed the means to send radio signals to other stars, and also to blow ourselves up overnight.
The theory is that it was the development of language, which about 40-50,000 years ago gave Homo sapiens the real push in the "Great Leap Forward" although coincidentally Neanderthals who did not have the facility of language all but disappeared and some speculate it was because our relatives the Cro-Magnons murdered them and perhaps they even ate them. Chimps who are only 1.6% different from us also resemble us and we both have a possible genetic predisposition kill unprovoked, but Homo sapiens also have more than that; we have the ability for abstraction and we have art and religion and more lethal weapons than sticks and rocks with which to kill our species and other species. With our ability to use language also comes the awareness that we can destroy our biosphere and yet we go on doing it. We keep destroying our environment just as societies have collapsed by using up their vital resources. A few can take more than they need thus depriving the many and we do so intentionally. The "great leap" appears to me to be a leap backward. What seems like progress isn't; it is a rush to our own demise. There is no progress. Gods won't save us. We may have had a period "Enlightenment" of sorts and we were not enlightened and we have not even been able to shed our superstitions. MORE: http://pnews.org/PhpWiki/index.php/GreatLeapBackward
