have we exceeded our species' ability to self-organize?
From “Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony” (http://www.amazon.com/Night-Thoughts-Listening-Mahlers-Symphony/dp/0140243283, http://www.ccdmd.qc.ca/media/pdf/en/EEE_SevenWonders.pdf), page 61:
So far, we have learned how to be useful to each other only when we collect in small groups - families, circles of friends, once in a while (although still rarely) committees. The drive to be useful is encoded in our genes. But when we gather in very large numbers, as in the modern nation-state, we seem capable of levels of folly and self-destruction to be found nowhere else in all of Nature.
As a species, taking all in all, we are still too young, too juvenile, to be trusted. We have spread across the face of the earth in just a few thousand years, no time at all as evolution clocks time, covering all livable parts of the planet, endangering other forms of life, and now threatening ourselves. As a species, we have everything in the world to learn about living, but we may be running out of time. Provisionally, but only provisionally, we are a Wonder.
