BrynVilla

Earlier today I emailed the press office of an internationally respected technical body for some advice about a piece I was working on and a few minutes later got her ‘Out of office’ message. Well, it is July and people have holidays. The message gave contact details for a colleague, so I re-sent the message to him. Nothing happened, so I phoned the number on the out of office message.

“The extension belonging to (Mr X) does not answer, please leave a message or press zero to speak to the operator.”

An odd form of English, but I assume it means his number is unavailable to outside callers and wonder why his colleague didn’t know that. I press zero and ask to speak to Mr X. She puts me through. I get the same message. I press zero again. I explain what happened, she doesn’t care very much.

“It’s the only number we have for him.”

“But it’s no use if it doesn’t accept incoming calls.”

“Uh?”

I repeat the message.

“Well he might just be away from his desk.”

“So why say his extension doesn’t answer?”

“Would you like his email address?”

“I’ve got that, I’ve emailed him, he hasn’t replied. That’s why I want to speak to him.”

“Well we haven’t got another number.”

Now bear in mind this is the receptionist of a major body not some backstreet shop, I’ve made it clear I’m a journalist and I’m trying to contact the press office. Only in London. I phone companies and trade bodies all over the over the world and nowhere else does this happen.

I have a theory, the UK is uniquely centralised, everything remotely important has to be based in London or very close to it. There are too many offices and not enough talent to staff them with the result that people who wouldn’t get near the desk of the Llangollen Tourist Information Centre are fronting major corporations. Very badly.

It struck me later, “The extension for (Mr X) does not answer” is probably the default message installed by the, no doubt Chinese, manufacturers. Either no-one at this major, internationally respected technical body has the wit to see it needs changing, or they lack the ability to do it.

Well, so much for the promise to be uncontroversial…

Evolution has got us where we are. Since life began the ability of an organism to thrive in the prevailing conditions has determined which genes pass to the next generation. It’s the mother of all coping mechanisms, but by definition it’s reactive.

There’s no reason to suppose evolution won’t continue to work even if extreme climate change occurs, life will continue, life forms will evolve. Species that are well adapted to the changed conditions will thrive. Others, including humanity will suffer habitat limitation and declining population at best, extinction at worst.

In our rational minds we know this. We know that the best chance for humanity is to co-operate, to reduce our population by humane birth control before drowning, thirst and starvation do it. To reduce our energy consumption. To organise a safe transfer of populations from inhospitable regions. To protect the environment to maintain as much of the world as we can in a state that can support us and the food species on which we depend.

We know this, but our selfish gene doesn’t, it seeks short term advantage. We favour our children over our neighbour’s, our neighbour’s over a stranger’s and a stranger’s children that look like us, talk like us or pray (or don’t pray) like us over those who are different. It’s perfectly logical, those children are more likely to have a similar genetic make to us. We have created nation states, political and religious systems to regularise this behaviour. But it’s a pattern of behaviour which is unsustainable.

At this stage in a piece like this you’ll be expecting me to pull an answer out of a hat. Sorry, but I don’t think there is one, we have developed technically way in advance of our evolutionary progress.

The majority of the world’s population believes that some form of god is in charge and if there is a problem we should leave it to him/her/them, though a few more prayers, some irrational prohibitions and a little persecution of unbelievers would help.

In highly developed and largely secular societies we smile at such beliefs, erect a few wind turbines and subsidise oil companies to put 2% biofuel in their products and hope we’ll be OK. Meanwhile our politicians work hard at boosting our short-term standard of living and gaining national advantage in trade or diplomacy or war because that’s the way to win our approval and our votes.

Do we just give up then? I hope not, if the apocalypse is unavoidable then it’s our responsibility to pass on as much wisdom as we can to those who survive. I don’t think a post apocalyptic world will be in much need of ignorance, superstition and despotism history suggests there’s always more than enough but science, rationalism, democracy and art are worth struggling to keep.

Our genes have condemned our descendants to premature death or to watching the premature death of millions of others; our education might help the survivors create a future less reliant on such harsh Darwinism.