My report begins with us; all of us, all six – almost seven billion of us. That's a lot of people. Ask any biologist; this is what overpopulation looks like. Even common sense would conclude that there are more than enough of us to consume most everything on the planet. But common sense is not so common amongst our “leaders.” In fact, some of our major religions' “leaders” have selfishly admitted to being in a population race with each other. Consequently, God's little bunnies have been fruitful and multiplied right beyond the planet's capacity to sustain us all.
So... what are we going to do?
…So far, not much.
I remember back in the 70's, when pretty much all of us (everyone I knew, and everyone I knew of) agreed that if we didn't do something dramatic soon about the environment, life would be very rough for our grandchildren.
…and what have we done since then? Well, we've recycled our beer cans. Obviously that's not enough. It's over 30 years later now. The grandchildren are here – and it's time to face the frightening consequences.
What are the consequences? At the top of the list is the very real and immediate threat of total environmental collapse. We knew of the risk back in the 70's. We tried to do something about it. We thought we were winning. And then we relaxed.
Abolitionist Wendell Phillips once said; “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” We stopped paying attention. We had lives to live. And somehow, in the process of living our lives, we lost our lives' purpose – to save the earth – from us.
We lived our lives like we had been raised. And we were raised on television – with its entertaining distractions, half-truth news, and religious propaganda channels. Somehow, television became more real to us than the reality of our life experiences.
But apparently, maybe because of television, those lives weren't all that satisfying. And somehow a number of Americans turned to prescription psycho-drugs.
We now have adults who've been on prescription mood altering drugs since they were children... And we wonder why there isn't a viable counter-culture any more. It's simple, they've been neutralized. And if that didn't work, somehow we've ended up with the largest prison system America has ever seen.
The rest of us – we somehow just became too afraid to speak up. For some of us, speaking up might risk our job – or our job prospects. For others, somehow it just didn't seem like the risking of our boring little comfort zones would make any difference.
Personally, I just got tired of it all and decided to move as far away from it I could. But that didn't work. Even in the most remote place I could find, I couldn't get away from it all. It was then that I realized that I was cornered – that we've all been cornered. And that I couldn't run, I couldn't hide, I had to fight.
But what was I fighting? In a word; exploitation. In a phrase; exploitation to the point of self destruction.
We have allowed the few to rule the many. And guess what? Somehow they cared more about their own personal issues more than they cared about the fate of humanity.
Our system is out of control - because we have so little control. What this world needs is more democracy.
What our civilization needs is to pay more attention to common sense.
What the powers-that-be need is to realize that by somehow controlling us for their own immediate personal or organizational swindles, there is a cost that is far too high - for everyone. No empire, no matter how close to God, will prosper during a total environmental collapse.
No comments:
Post a Comment