Stupidity, cowardice and greed are going to make us extinct — perspectives from Caitlin Johnstone and Guy Hatchard

11 May 2026

I suppose one could frame . . .

. . . the below-described 'ignoring ourselves to death' sociological phenomenon as a Greek tragedy.

However, I am more inclined as to see it as mutton-brained Homo sapiens casually and repeatedly shooting itself in the head.

Let's start with the big political picture . . .

. . . and go from there to a medical example of the same suicidal process in action.

Greed is good?

Of human culture, generally speaking and across the globe, Caitlin Johnson correctly observed that — here in excerpts:

It’s not impossible to solve our world’s problems, it only looks that way because we’ve created systems which cause human behavior to be driven by mindless mechanisms of our own making rather than by human interest.

We allow the blind pursuit of profit to govern the way the human species behaves on our planet.

War. Militarism. Ecocide. Exploitation. Imperialist extraction.

These things happen because they are profitable, and we are led by systems and institutions which consistently cause the most profitable thing to happen.

They continually slant all movement toward the most profitable outcome, regardless of the negative impact it can have on human beings and the other organisms with whom we share this planet.

Humans do this because it’s easier to give over our power than to accept responsibility for the outcome.

We’re scared of getting the blame, so we hand power upwards. We keep handing it up and handing it up until there’s no one to hand it to, so we make empty automatons to hold our power for us.

It is a grave sin for us to abdicate our authority in this way.

Humanity does need to take responsibility for the self-destructive trajectory it has set itself on, and reverse course.

An example from medicine

'Civilized' humanity universally ignores the downstream effects of jumbling interacting biochemical substances together in biological systems that were not evolved to safely integrate them.

Of this peculiar bit of human idiocy, Guy Hatchard wrote that — here (again) in excerpted form:

All around us, clever wordsmiths and hired shills are well rewarded if they can directly control our choices and spending, irrespective of whether any benefit or harm ensues.

An article in the NY Times is entitled “6 Common Medications That May Lower Your Dementia Risk”. At first sight it appears to report that getting your flu shot, the shingles vaccine, taking statins and blood pressure medication, anti-inflammatory drugs and diabetes medication will lower your risk of dementia.

[Yet] the recognised serious adverse effects of these drugs [,] when combined[,] are likely to kill you before you are old enough to get dementia.

It is a truism that risks dismissed as small or manageable by regulators, politicians or scientists actually accumulate when taken together and become big risks affecting whole populations and generations.

The pollution of our traditional foods with preservatives, pesticides, ultra processing aids, artificial flavours and colourings and now synthetic biotech ingredients adds up to an unhealthy food supply which inevitably degrades public health outcomes.

Risk has not been thought of collectively.

Instead, individual chemicals, compounds, processes and products are tested in isolation and approved on the basis that their individual adverse effects are ‘probably’ tolerable. But the combined effect of the massive chemical onslaught endemic to modern life is overwhelming us.

Yet by and large scientists and politicians mistakenly delude themselves that the potential upside for humanity easily outweighs the risks.

Anyone familiar with the biochemistry . . .

. . . of physiological pathways knows that Hatchard's cautionary assessment is a sensible one.

The interactive complexity of these systems is intellectually intimidating. Even for very smart people.

In thinking about this, let's remind ourselves that substances (biological or not) are often metabolized into different substances. Which themselves go on to affect (and effect) the same — and often off-shooting — biological pathways and systems.

Add in the fact that genetically personal and subgroup deviations in these pathways are common — and we are left with the conclusion that safety and efficacy testing (as they currently exist) are too simple-minded — and often intentionally distorted for profit's sake— to adequately predict anything.

And to top all this off, many of these substances — original or metabolized — interact with each other, causing still more downstream effects.

The moral? — We humans have been too societally mindless . . .

. . . to adequately control Homo sapiens' oft-surfacing, destruction-producing greed.

Humanity's unobservant unwillingness to actively rid itself of human parasites will become our species downfall.

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Stupidity, cowardice and greed are going to make us extinct — perspectives from Caitlin Johnstone and Guy Hatchard