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The Meteor Strike That Started a Paradigm Shift (And Why It Matters Now)

The Meteor Strike That Started a Paradigm Shift (And Why It Matters Now)

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 Dinosaur extinction, mass extinction, asteroid impact, meteor strike, mammal evolution, evolution of mammals, Chicxulub crater, Cenozoic era, paleontology, paradigm shift, ancient earth, prehistoric, extinction, history of the earth, science documentary To better understand this Turning, we need to travel back in time again, this time to the previous mass extinction event. Until the moment of the Chicxulub Impact, sixty-six million years ago on the edge of the Yucatan Peninsula, reptiles ruled the planet. “Thunder lizards”—Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops—rumbled unimpeded over every continent. Our mammal ancestors were afterthoughts, flavor bites for Velociraptors. Until the asteroid struck. The nuclear winter that followed—frost across the world for several years—cut off the vast and predictable caloric intakes required to sustain the gigantic reptiles that had thrived for almost two hundred million years. Seventy-five percent of all life on earth went extinct. No animal larger than a housecat survived. Catastrophic as this was for reptiles, mammals found themselves ideally positioned to survive. Warm-blooded, temperature regulating, with small appetites and hard-wired to care for their young, mammals did much better than their cold-blooded forebears. The proof is us. Who dominates the planet today? Who strikes terror into the hearts of all living beings? Imagine if our early ancestors had to compete with dinosaurs. Would mammals have been able to evolve even to point of becoming apes? The last mass extinction event was a kind of cosmic affirmative action program for mammals. Our current mass extinction event provides a similar opportunity. Who are the dinosaurs today and who are the mammals? Who requires massive and predictable energy inputs and who has the capacity to innovate, improvise and make do with small and uneven inputs? Corporations and nation-states fall into the first category. Without massive and predictable and regular inputs of capital, companies and countries will collapse. However, small, egalitarian groups of individuals require no such inputs. They can grow their own food, move around easily, and develop and improvise new strategies on the fly. Recall that this is the form of social organization that Homo sapiens originally evolved into over hundreds of thousands of years. From an evolutionary perspective, our widely accepted notion of living in pyramidally organized groups of thousands or millions, dwelling in cities, is a short-lived experiment. Margaret Meade’s oft-quoted wisdom comes to mind, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, It’s the only thing that ever has.” This is the good news about the Third Turning. While human-driven carbon emissions, if allowed to continue unabated, will doom all or most of biological life, widespread corporate and government collapse will end such emissions. In fact, this is likely how we will survive. We will not voluntarily be able to reduce carbon emissions any more than addicts recover because they are concerned about their health. Only a massive, world-stopping crisis will end the burning of fossil fuels. We can see such a crisis emerging from the long parade of horribles stepping on to the world stage: pandemic, resource scarcity, war, economic collapse. These are immediate threats to our socio-economic order. Any or all of these in combination will be the most likely causes of widespread socio-economic breakdown. In the long run, for our descendants in the centuries that follow our own, this is very good news. 00:00 Paradigm shifts are hard. They look insane, dangerous to members of previous paradigm 01:00 Example of hostile reaction to Alvarez hypothesis about meteorite causing extinction of dinosaurs 02:00 Nuclear winter resulted from strike, killed dinosaurs 02:44 Alvarez hypothesis proved by oil companies 03:30 "That's what a paradigm shift looks like." The way you know it's a paradigm shift is that it is deeply, deeply disturbing. 04:22 The good news about the world falling apart is that we Have to try something new. Because we are homo sapiens, "one who knows," we are shamans. We have the superpowers of imagination and intuition. 04:50 Paradigm shifts super upsetting at first, but then become completely taken for granted 05:16 Mammals brought two paradigm shifts; caring for their young and temperature regulating 06:30 Nuclear winter in Vermont in 1816 07:30. Who are the 'thunder lizards" today? 08:08 Meteor was cosmic 'affirmative action' program for mammals 08:15 What entities are "thunder lizards" today? Corporations and nation states. 08:50 Covid as "gentle" pandemic, but look what it did to supply chains 09:30 Billionaires, corporations and nations states are the Tyrannosaurus of today 10:05. The "mammals" of today will be the survivors
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