Antropogistony - it can be as dangerous as a nuclear holocaust

Antropogistony is the paralysis of the people on the planet Earth,
a gap between action and ideation that could lead us to total annihilation 

We all know the importance of recycling waste, to combat the indiscriminate dispersal CO2 in the atmosphere and how fragile life is in our small planet. And yet, we have barely begun to design policies that ensure the quality of life for our future generations.

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The devastation caused by ancient Mayans on their lands, along with the indiscriminate felling of trees to build their temples, provoked a century drought that made them directly responsible for the degradation of their micro region, the price for their actions, was the extinction of their own civilization. The Rapa Nui of Easter Island and the people of Mesopotamia also made the same mistake. Unlike these people, we have the exact knowledge of the risks of our actions and still, we continue in the course of self-destruction.

The question posed is "Why we do not stop now with these self-destructive attitudes and create new rules for serious strategies in order to ensure the well being of our future generations, for say... 500 years from now?

Biomimetics gives us the answer, it is the Antropogistony (Greek - οι άνθρωποι της Γης, people of Earth, and the Latin 'tone' of Latin; tension) term used by blog Blemya to describe the paralysis of the people on the planet Earth due to stress caused by panic, which makes it impossible to have attitudes by an evident problem.

A Brazilian sarué playing possum

Playing possum, or Tonic immobility (TI) is a behavior in which some animals become apparently temporarily paralyzed and unresponsive to external stimuli. In most cases, this occurs in response to an extreme threat such as being captured by a (perceived) predator. This apparent death can be used as a defense mechanism or as a form of aggressive mimicry, and occurs in a wide range of animals. Such behavior became popular after appearing in an episode of Mythbusters TV series that showed myotonic goats, otherwise known as 'the fainting goat', in which these animals freeze its muscles for about 3 seconds when in panic, and the results, the animal collapse falling sideways with rigid legs.

Another possibility is that we have a gap between action and ideation caused by our lack of ability to apply intelligence in its full scope. According to Neil deGrasse Tyson, scientific disseminator of COSMOS series, taking into the account the time of existence of life on earth, our intelligence is very recent, and it is not active part of our survival reflexes. We’re not sure yet how to deal with it, a good example is the way that millions of people’s intelligence were and still is, naively manipulated by political and/or religious leaders, for different purposes.

The recurrent claim is that prophylaxis is expensive. Well then wait to see the price of medicines - ecological control measures such as the cleaning and maintenance of life in the rivers, the liability of companies recycle their own packaging after the consumers use (extended producer responsibility - EPR), among others, can really have additional costs that affect the final result of the companies, but believe me, the remedy can be exponentially more expensive as time goes on.

A predator at the sight of his prey instinctively stands against the wind, hides in the grass and creates hunting strategies and well formulated by reflex action. In our case, this gap between what we know what is right by reasoning, and the effective placement of these strategies into practice makes us static.

We are comfortable in an economic system that emerged when the air, the rivers and the seas seemed to be unlimited resources, and that would never be subject to any damage caused by us. We follow our shortsighted course, with an obvious fatal end, waiting for someone to change the rules of the game. The sad conclusion that our antropogistonic civilization may come is that perhaps it may never happen.

The cure for antropogistonia might be found also with the help of biomimetic studies, but we are already aware about our sickness, by that we might have the chance to cure ourselves by entering, each one of us in the individual process of nature healing.