It was as if a vital evolutionary advantage had been bestowed centuries ago on those members of the species who lived in a state of concern about what was to happen next. These ancestors might have failed to savour their experiences appropriately, but they had at least survived and shaped the character of their descendants, while their more focused siblings, at one with the moment and with the place where they stood, had met violent ends on the horns of unforeseen bison.

It started with population. Not having a fixed breeding season was among the reasons why mankind achieved dominance; it kept our numbers topped up at an explosive rate. Past certain stage restrictive process set in: male libido is reduced or diverted into nonfertile channels, female ovulation is irregularized and sometimes fails completely. But long before we reach that point we find the company of our fellow creatures so unbearable we resort to war, or a tribal match. Kill one another or ourselves.
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humans wrestled endlessly with their own overpowering egos. Some tried suppressing selfness, seeking detachment. Others subsumed personal ambition in favor of a greater whole — family, religion, or a leader. Later they passed through a phase in which individualism was extolled as the highest virtue, teaching their young to inflate the ego beyond all natural limits or restraint.

"The "control of nature" is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man."

Yet egotism can also be useful to ambitious creatures, driving their single-minded pursuit of success. Madness seems essential in order to be “great.

Conscience makes egotists of us all.

We have in past been forced into reluctant change by weather, calamity, and plague. Now the pressure comes from our biologic success as a species. We have overcome all enemies but ourselves.

We have probably had too good an opinion of human nature in forming our confederation.

W might 'conquer' nature if we could first, or at the same time, conquer our own nature, though we do not see that human nature and 'outside' nature are all of a piece.

The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery, not over nature but of ourselves.

Humans nowadays completely dominate the planet not because the individual human is far smarter and more nimble-fingered than the individual chimp or wolf, but because Homo sapiens is the only species on earth capable of cooperating flexibly in large numbers. Intelligence and toolmaking were obviously very important as well. But if humans had not learned to cooperate flexibly in large numbers, our crafty brains and deft hands would still be splitting flint stones rather than uranium atoms.

Perhaps no sin so easily besets us as a sense of self-satisfied superiority to others.

I suggest that the true Darwinian spirit might salvage our depleted world by denying a favorite theme of Western arrogance — that we are meant to have control and dominion over the earth and its life because we are the loftiest product of a preordained process.

In contrast, humankind ascended to the top so quickly that the ecosystem was not given time to adjust. Moreover, humans themselves failed to adjust. Most top predators of the planet are majestic creatures. Millions of years of dominion have filled them with self-confidence. Sapiens by contrast is more like a banana republic dictator. Having so recently been one of the underdogs of the savannah, we are full of fears and anxieties over our position, which makes us doubly cruel and dangerous. Many historical calamities, from deadly wars to ecological catastrophes, have resulted from this over-hasty jump.