Lately I have been living with great guilt for bringing children into this world. I know what is just around the corner, and I know what they'll be facing. My natural reaction is to try and do something about it, but what? There are dozens of organizations who are addressing the world's problems from many different angles. My goal is to find a volunteer movement that will have the most effective results for my limited volunteer time. But what?
When I first got back into environmentalism in 1997 I decided that the most important issue was global overpopulation, and I STILL think it's a top issue. I spent hundreds of hours creating a local population group, marching in parades, tabling at events, organizing forums, and giving presentations. Ultimately, I think I accomplished a little, but not much.
My fellow activists said I should "Think Global, But Act Local," so I got involved in a wide range of issues ranging from urban sprawl to stream buffer protection. I also worked in the campaigns of green politicians and organized against the bad politicians. On the county level, I did enjoy fair success knocking out developer puppets on county commissions and replacing them with greenies. But, eventually, those green politicians either moved on or were corrupted.
By 2003 I realized that overpopulation and global warming were simply symptoms of some global inner struggle. Our technology seems to have advanced faster than our maturity as a species.
The Logical Song
At age 50, my main conclusion is that humans in general are simply far less intelligent than I ever imagined. People are simply dumb, especially those who smoke. Humans are also petty, self-centered, disconnected, and most are incapable of critical thinking.
Being the hopelessly logical person that I am, I thought we could just say, "Here's a problem, now let's all work together to fix it." In fact, when I was working on overpopulation I felt that I could present a sensible argument and that people would say, "Yeah, you're right, let's fix that."
But the push back I see with any new idea or progressive proposal is simply incredible. For instance, with global warming, much of the general public simply doesn't care or is too stupid to know better, and then the handful of smarter ones simply deny it. Working behind the scenes are powerful special interest groups, with tons of money, who strongly influence the media, and would prefer that things remain "as is."
Cycles
I am now thinking that civilization simply operates in cycles, and there is NOTHING I can do to prevent our impending economic and ecological collapse. Great civilizations have died before, and we've certainly experienced the Dark Ages before. Thus, history is repeating itself and we are about to go through it all again. Who am I to resist?
The human dieoff part will be the worst. The abundance of cheap petroleum is supporting an artificially large population. When fuel becomes scarce, the population will shrink back to sustainable levels. Nature will do the job that we "smart" humans are incapable of doing ourselves. Unfortunately, the "adjustment" will not be pleasant. On top of everything else, I'm sure we can expect to see some all-out desperate wars.
New Beginnings
Colleagues tell me that nature always recovers from the havoc caused by humans. Some of the richest ecological areas are places where humans are not allowed, such as the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, or the land that's cordoned off around Chernobyl. I'm not sure of that at all -- it is completely possible for us to do irreparable harm to the planet.
But, you know, I'm now thinking that's okay. In the vastness of the Universe, with its trillions of stars, I'm betting that there is a handful of other Earth-like planets. My hope is that if some intelligent species ever evolves on them, that they will treat their planet better than we treated ours.
4 comments:
Goose, you ARE doing something, as Sierra Club pres and blogger, no need for guilt
AND
no need to succumb to defeatism (as the powers you oppose would like - they want us to feel powerless and they want us to feel confused, apathetic, ineffective)
AND
letting go of outcome, resisting, refusing to go along, not expecting "victory" but throwing your lot with what you perceive is the moral and logical answer to Sartre's dictum: learn to think; think clearly about good and evil; do good
sez I - tom ferguson
I guess I should just do what I can as a Sierra Club officer. However, there is a lingering cloud of defeat that hangs over me, as if all I am doing is in vain. I am fighting 200,000 years of human evolution and it ain't easy. I think I now adhere to the cycle theory, and after every crash we get a little closer to social maturity.
Todd, anyone who knows you has hope for our future because the world is a much better place with you in it! The "footprints" we leave are important, as well as everything we do, say, and think. It seems to me the reaction to the recent Wikileaks exposure should be giving you and the rest of us hope! Think about it, the only negative feedback which I am aware of are from governments, not from individuals.
This speaks volumes; moreover, I'd like to think of this as a good thing rather than people's apathy. It seems to me there are so many ways people are coming together for good. Of course, there are others intent upon destruction, but their hatred and negative attitudes don't seem to me to be as acceptable as they once were. Historically, as you know, hatred spread like the plague without much opposition.
There is a swelling of opposition to hatred. The more I look, the more evidence I see of people promoting the human family as just that - a family. We have our differences and problems, but isn't that what keeps things interesting? Our differences are being utilized more and more as our separate abilities and talents are shining in a sort of brainstorming wave of positive intellectual cohesiveness. Rather than seeing our differences as reasons to be apart, they seem to be exactly what brings us together to heal. I choose to look at this "working together" attitude as what will eventually succeed!
There is less and less room for people who choose to spread hate. It seems to me those people are failing in finding broad support!
Even in the Dark Ages, there were places where people chose not to be simply accepting, but rather promoted learning. Eventually, we came out of the Dark Ages, and this is due to the proliferation of the good in literacy over the evil of subversion of ideas. I'm just saying!
Spiritual1Rav, thanks for your kind comments -- they really, really meant a lot to me. I appreciate and am impressed by your deep wisdom. I agree that that the "love" is defeating the "hate." But I also think life may be like Star Wars -- where there is a good force, there is also a dark side of the force. Sort of matter and anti-matter -- the Universe may be designed so that everything must have a balance, to somehow create equilibrium in the cosmos. Also, if there was no hate, we really could not learn how to love, so maybe it's more of a matter of accepting the hate and working against it by drawing together those who choose love. Maybe...
Post a Comment