SUMMARY
OF LEARNERS INTRO & VOCAB
“There are seven sins in the world: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice and politics without principle.” Mahatma Gandhi.
Environmental
desecration has set root in the politics of disinformation. Paradoxically, it has become a fixation of ‘conservative’
doctrine. Reactionaries do as much
damage to foreigners, to children and to the natural world as they can get away
with; the same way bull sea lions trample cubs that get in their way,
silverback gorillas trash the undergrowth when something pisses them off, and
other primates cast their dung at passers-by they don’t like. If conservatives don’t change their ways, I’m
sorely tempted to do the same to them.
This nonstop
environmental destruction brings us unprecedented meteorological disasters—and
perhaps additional tectonic upheaval.
Massive reforestation could soak continental surfaces with a little more
water, which might buffer some of these cataclysms.
Civilizations of the
past sealed their fate by denuding bottomlands and forests nearby. Bad weather and famine followed
inevitably.
The Chinese invented
an expression for abuses of this kind (lack of empathy or propitious ritual,
that brings on environmental catastrophe), and for the wisdom that prevents
it. The latter retained the “Mandate of
Heaven” whereas the former had lost it.
Just like Rousseau’s “general will” in the West, this mandate was the
only valid endorsement of oriental government.
Without it, a government automatically invalidated itself and became
illegitimate. Revolution was not only
inevitable but mandatory to end the abuse caused by this deficiency.
These days, we are
witnessing the approaching drumbeat of inexcusable industrial disasters. Learners will take every possible step to
bring that din to a halt, restore the general will and the Mandate of
Heaven.
Redundant on-site
monitoring groups and voluntary public inspection teams will supplement
governmental and administrative overwatch agencies for every high-risk project.
We should draw an
important distinction here. People
invoke environmental regulations like the Superfund to clean up hazardous waste
sites. Yet these efforts are incredibly
crude. Most remediation projects use high-pressure
water, superheated steam, dredges, bulldozers and toxic chemicals to scrape
everything away—the good, the bad and the ugly.
They do little more than this, for eventual disposal in elaborate and
leaky dumps, out to sea or in poorer countries.
There is no proven
method to dismantle a worn-out nuclear reactor―much less the 500-odd
commercial ones and who knows how many more in existence at present, military
or covert.
Much of the
multi-billion dollar Exxon Valdez cleanup was either value-neutral or
injurious; it was ordered anyhow, for its propaganda value, per Jeff Wheelwright’s Degrees of Disaster – Prince William Sound: How Nature Reels and
Rebounds, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1994. Here we are, a decade later, and ExxonMobil
has yet to pay its fines in full, while the environment continues to bear the
scars of pollution. “What is the best
remedy for environmental disaster? Hire
more lawyers… and judges!”
Let’s not speak of
the Gulf of Mexico, or Fukushima or of planetary disasters to follow, evermore frightful,
painful and numerous.
Seven complementary
remediation paths suggest themselves, (the last one perhaps the most
important).
·
Eliminate
lifestyles, technologies and corporations that generate the worst
pollution. Among the worst, military
technologies (see http://www.uwec.edu/grossmzc/schrinrj.html)
as well as those that build private automobiles, motorboats and their fossil
fuels, as well as agroindustries based on trial-and-error genetic engineering
·
Shut down the
worst point-source (factory-type) polluters preemptively. Subsidize less shitty technologies.
·
Regulate
potential polluters to minimize their negative impact. Mandate dependably closed systems that
recycle industrial toxins and lock them in impermeable membranes.
·
Stock sufficient
emergency containment and clean-up equipment on-site at all times. This would include double-hulled and
bunker-hulled oil tankers, inspected tugs with certified crews at every tanker
landfall, and containment buoy systems in every port.
·
Research
alternate energy sources and substitute as appropriate. Learners who share this topic of passion
should focus on every scale of energy management from top-to-bottom: botanical,
biological, ecological and social, as well as the deader sciences that run on
nothing but algebra.
·
Stop disturbing
natural recovery. Beyond isolating and
collecting clearly defined layers of pollution, accelerate post-disaster
recovery only where and when it would be feasible and safe.
·
Determine
if biochar, agrichar and terra preta
can be engineered on industrial scales to produce high-carbon soil supplements
while drawing the most carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100810122030.htm
· some unforeseen new technology?
The supertanker Exxon
Valdez lacked an alert bridge crew and wary watch officers; its corporate bosses
lied about the state of their preparedness, long before and during the
disaster. The ExxonMobil Corporation
(among others, like Mitsubishi, giant agro-combines and precious metal
extraction companies) spearhead the most destructive environmental policies
that their Masters of Business Administration can dream up. May they experience a massive change of heart
and make amends.
In the future,
bridge-mounted video cameras will scan the instruments, crews and surroundings
of supertankers and other vulnerable machinery.
Distant hobbyists will oversee them, the equivalents of today’s ham
radio operators. Professional, on-site
crews and home-based amateurs will share the monotonous chore of monitoring
every control center by means of many signal frequencies, telltale panels and
control boards currently being developed as ‘glass cockpit’ aircraft
controls. Theses Virtual Monitors will
access complete on-line Operations & Maintenance Manuals, pre-filed
contingency plans, and e-published Emergency Guides. Random inspection of on-site monitoring
equipment will ensure against malicious tampering.
Their primary goals
will not be to guarantee procedural minutia, but detect gross institutional
negligence in the long run, and, in the short, multiple simultaneous system
failures that could not be planned for.
The minute an alarm
went off or was disabled, word would go out on the Overwatch Network:
“Something interesting is happening at YYY address.” Scrutiny would then intensify as more
monitors checked in. Like good
journalists, these international hobbyists would make it a point of honor that
no incident went unreported within their purview. Alerted locals would gather to witness
on-site incident response in person.
Current spy
satellites may serve as periscopes for these future hobbyists. Some observers will specialize in a certain
type of structure or industry (for example, nuclear reactors); others will be
regional specialists. Through obsessive
observation, they will memorize every detail of their chosen specialty and pick
anything out of the ordinary with microscopic precision.
PeaceWorld will be
surveyed a thousand times more minutely than the CIA and its international
strategic survey equivalents could hope to survey WeaponWorld today. These days, we are ignorant about the basic
nature of this planet; in the future, we will be better informed.
Virtual monitors will
register their topics of interest in a public record intended to reveal those
who misuse this kind of information, listing their points of focus in
detail. These records would lead
investigators to whoever plotted deliberate harm. A majority of honest monitors will make the
identification and isolation of these traitors to their topic of passion, a point of honor.
Finally, many of
these Learner investigators will specialize in the preventative study of “worst
cases” that financial interests have the habit of hiding without taking costly
preventative measures (like Fukushima, etc., etc.). If their conclusions are confirmed by a
majority of their study peers, they will take priority over the deficient plans
of the rich.
Globally, hundreds of
thousands of shock troops wait to be deployed from their barracks and
dispatched with their high-tech weaponry to almost any point on Earth within a
few days.
Why are so few
professionals assigned to respond to ecological disaster? Are good government, pure air and clean water
so bound-up together that no written guarantee is called for? Fat chance.
No one can afford to waive rock-bottom guarantees of personal
protection.
The future world
constitution should list them in black and white. Dedicated, independent overwatch officials –
mandated to exert the full force of the law without favor or prejudice – must
back these guarantees. Anyone who gives
up such protections should expect nothing more than to be crapped on as often
as they’re lied to, and beaten without redress in the meantime.
Throughout history,
those who controlled the water supply ran everything else. China, Egypt, Babylon and other hydraulic
civilizations flourished by regulating the course of waters. Entire civilizations collapsed when
environmental, commercial and political errors induced too many unintended
consequences. Multi-year famines
resulted, and annihilation all too often thereafter.
Such
errors would occur less often under Laocracy.
Laocracy requires absolute private equity, personal emancipation,
elaborate safeguards against internal and external exploitation, and lots of
free time to philosophize. It requires
that we raise rare and beloved children into healthy adults, and that an
enlightened public heed ethical warnings to relieve unintended
consequences. Finally, it requires that
everyone value Learning above all.
Laocracy may have
first evolved among bands of nomadic subsistence hunter-gatherers. It must have flourished in the irrigated
fields of prehistory, despite the Plant Trap’s
sentence of hard labor. Egalitarian
societies arose spontaneously among subsistence hunter-gatherers; they remained
in force among farmer/warriors, insofar labor-intensive agriculture
permitted.
No matter how arduous
the daily routine, everyone required their fair share of freedom and
justice. As among wolf packs established
much earlier, unchecked tyranny invited collapse. Gravity-fed irrigation systems were
surprisingly delicate structures that required intensive labor from all
hands. In a single night of furious
payback, disgruntled farmers could wreck the most elaborate irrigation
system. No one could be denied an equal
say in the allocation of water and other privileges, without jeopardizing the
whole.
Empty ultimatums of
death and family torture may have been invoked and executed all too often. But this abuse never silenced the perpetual
demand for justice, at least not for very long.
In ancient Vietnam,
for example, the best leaders adhered to the following rules. The king had to maintain the lightest
possible control over his districts; the district chief, over his villages; the
village headman, over his households; and the senior householder, over the
members of his family. This was and
remains plain common sense: an iron law of social cohesion.
There is a strong
link between liberty and clean water.
When clean water becomes so scarce it must be metered or sterilized
before it can be drunk safely, liberty is in danger.
For the first time in
history, we face the same problem with clean air. Weapon managers look forward to turning all
the air that’s fit to breathe into a marketable commodity. That would just add another coil to the
chains that bind us.
Face it. Oxygen is a 100% lethal addictive drug. Oxygen withdrawal makes going cold turkey
from heroin seem like running out of bubble gum. What’s more, our bodies turn oxygen molecules
into free radicals that rust out human cell tissue in a cumulative demolition
derby we call aging.
Of course, once
enough Learners come to this irrefutable conclusion, that will put an end, once
and for all, to the Prohibition of recreational drugs and betray the serial
stupidity and self-interest of its fat-cat hierarchy.
Corporate hirelings
haven’t yet turned free air into a controlled narcotic. They haven’t figured out how to inflate the
expense and legal risk of breathing it, because they haven’t monopolized its
supply. Give them another generation of
private automobiles and suicidal over-industrialization to make natural air
unbreathable, and then watch them turn the trick. I can already hear them bellow “the children
must be protected from this insidious danger” by locking them up by the million
and throwing the key away.
These days, we
confront an ever-worsening resource base.
Everyone prefers almost any drink to what flows at increasing expense
from the tap. Go and take a sip from it. Chances are, it is at least slightly toxic
and tastes awful. Middle-aged prostates
give up in despair and fertility indices collapse. Children’s test scores decline as youngsters’
brains suffer cumulative damage from over-chlorinated wastewater and airborne
contaminants that only a massive forest could purify.
That is what big
forests do: they soak up torrential downpours that wash all the ash, dust and
smoke from the air. They let that
pollution drift calmly out to the sea and metabolize all its useful components.
Industrialists gloat
over the average person’s preference for their expensive soda pops, ground
powder beverages and bottled water, over tap water. One TV ad crowed that its over-sweetened
brown pap was to America what water was to ancient civilization. This attitude is an abomination.
No stream, lake,
aquifer or catchment basin is safe.
Rainfall is a vile corrosive.
Snow bears its toxic burden, even on remote mountainsides where
sparkling streams harbor fecal decay.
Washington State’s Puget
Sound was once a sylvan nursery for gray whales and matchless marine life. It has become their graveyard. Gray whales enter Puget Sound and die of
liver rot. Yet this region has one of
the most stringent quality standards for a body of water of its size. Even Lake Baikal, sacred Eye of God with at
one time the purest water in the world, has been pumped with toxic industrial
effluent for decades.
Despite this, or
because of it, our urban waterways are open sewers. Across the globe, marine mammals crowd the
shore to commit suicide, driven mad by inflamed sinuses. Ask any congested diver or high-flying
airline passenger how much this hurts.
Their immune systems (and ours) are compromised by tons of dioxins, PCBs
and other toxic chemicals that lace our air and water, plus three times (four
times, now) as much background radiation as the Earth has experienced in
millions of years.
Once-fertile
farmlands have undergone two destructive processes. Real estate developers acquired the best
bottomland, pulled up its native growth and paved it over with buildings,
parking lots and roadways. What
agricultural land remains is soaked with industrial herbicides, pesticides and
fertilizers. As a result, the soil’s
organic balance has been shattered; once-fertile soils have been turned into
sterile clay, to which every plant nutrient must be added artificially. Lacking organic binding, loose soil erodes at
irreplaceable rates. It slimes our
waterways; its oxygen-depleting mud, saturated with artificial fertilizer,
chokes the life out of rivers and seas through the microbial growth it feeds.
People have been
taught to prefer greasy, over-processed foods over ‘healthier’ raw
vegetables. This prejudice is neither
thoughtless nor accidental. Digestive
disorders increase when we consume dangerously contaminated raw foods. Modern pesticides, antibiotics and
radioactive toxins (and genetic tampering, most of all) are highly resistant to
standard cooking/cleaning/decontamination techniques. They defeat the human digestive systems that
took millions of years to adapt our bodies to natural foods. It would take another million years to adapt
our bodies to new contaminants in over-processed foods.
Agro-corporations
encourage this partiality. They
sterilize over-processed foods very carefully and allow greater and greater
toxin loads in raw foodstuffs. Their
ultimate objective? Turn high-priced,
irradiated, pre-processed foods into life necessities for everyone, three times
a day. Public health officials ignore
this problem, even though food irradiation schemes threaten us with insidious
medical disasters.
Fresh food gives
life. Food long dead gives nothing but
obesity and gastritis. Irradiated and
long shelf-life foods should be minor consumer items reserved for emergencies. Otherwise, most foods should be bought fresh,
cooked lightly, and chewed slowly and hungrily (hunger being the best sauce) on
the same day. This nutritional habit is
a peace requirement, practicable at current scales of consumption only under
pure peace parameters.
Not satisfied with
strip-mining the Earth of its mineral wealth, corporations have strip-mined our
health, talent and dreams; the air and water of its purity; the soil of its
fertility; and our bodies of its healthy appetite. Very little is left to embezzle, short of our
lives.
In addition, we rely
on ‘factory farming’ for cheap meat.
Livestock is trapped in cages so small that it can’t move, or in mass
pens intended for half as many. Their
brief existence is spent buried alive – sickly bodies fattened on powdered
animal flesh, antibiotics, hormones and other noxious additives – before mass
slaughter cuts their nightmare short.
Road rage and
spillover criminality may result from salting our meat with those unsavory
compounds. Surely a God of Irony would
reincarnate consumers of such obscene foods into a ‘factory farmed’ animal
existence, for a few life cycles, as a lesson in manners. And any corporate CEO
who pauperized his indentured farmers unless they farmed in this manner, merits
a worse fate, as part of his Karmic lesson plan.
I’m kidding. Every life destiny belongs to everyone, for
all to share. That’s the main reason we
need to raise everyone’s standard of living: to raise our own. The worst life you can arrange for someone
you despise: his misery, the fading of his children and his excruciating death:
those are the outcomes you are destined to reincarnate into. A simple rule of Karma.
Don’t hurt yourself,
however much you may hate yourself. In
truth, you are beautiful, and loved.
Perched, as we are,
at the top of the food chain, our immune systems are overwhelmed by cumulative
loads of toxin. We suffer from an
internist’s nightmare of allergies, rumble-tummy, runs and/or constipation,
vertigo, gray-outs, panic attacks, headaches, chronic fatigue, lupus,
respiratory ailments, diabetes, infertility, cancer, fetal and neonate
mortality. Public health officials blame
all this sickliness on smoking, overeating, failing to exercise and generally
hating ourselves. Thus they deftly
subtract from the cause/effect equation their insignificant efforts at
remediation and public health. Our minds
are numbed, our nerves irritated, our wills eroded and bodies exhausted. In the absence of superb public health,
mental decay, violence, denial and neglect must intensify; apathy, inertia and
fantasy must come to dominate our thinking.
Constitutional protections lapse as the commonwealth decays.
As you read these
words, the ozone layer is unraveling.
The sun itself bears a lethal frown.
Once-healthy outdoor lifestyles offer nothing more than skin cancer and
early blindness.
Please get your kids to
wear sunglasses and shaded hats when they go outside! Slather their exposed skin with good
sun-block cream at every opportunity.
They will thank you for your annoying interference later, when their
colleagues go prematurely blind or come down with lethal skin tumors during
middle age.
We face equally grave
problems: institutional inertia, laughable education, criminal rampage and
pandemic disease ... If clean air, soil,
healthy plant life and pure water were freely available, and if we benefited from
them without regard to weapon requirements, a surprising number of these
massive problems would shrink to mere irritants.
At Mt. St. Helens and
elsewhere, nature has shown us her remarkable resilience. After major pollution sources are shut down,
many faltering ecosystems will restore themselves spontaneously. More delicate environments cannot recover
without human support. Don’t count on
natural regeneration, however, until we shut down most toxic outputs; or until
nature shuts us down and takes a well-deserved break from our childish
tantrums, wipes the slate clean and starts over from scratch: bacteria and
such. Do we really want to
reincarnate into bacteria, another few billion trillion times?
Clean air, soil and
water will become Learner priorities. Dedicated
environmental agencies will arise, under a supranational World Court and
alongside enthusiastic local Administrations.
These will:
·
census air, soil,
water and bodily contaminations impartially,
·
shut down
persistent offenders, and
·
enforce new
environmental regulations.
Deliberate polluters
will be bankrupted by withdrawn subsidies, public boycott and punitive
taxation. Proceeds therefrom will buy
effective controls for less sloppy industries.
A convicted polluter should occupy his toxic site until it is certified
safe. Whatever the cost, we must shut
down runaway pollution; tear out and rebuild obsolete transport, garbage and
water systems; flush out and repurify aquifers, rivers and lakes.
Halfway, feel-good
measures are no better than doing nothing at all. False economies are as worthless, here, as
starving to death to save on grocery bills.
Massive reforestation
is essential in every territory that once hosted large forests. Recently, vast stretches of Yellowstone,
America’s premier National Park, burned down like a slum-corner convenience
store. What more warning do we
need? We were told this disaster was
only natural; the fifty years or so it will take to grow back are
“acceptable.” Assuming, of course, the
rest of the Park doesn’t burn down in the meantime, leaving us a cinder desert
where our best park once stood.
Actually, Yellowstone
is a gigantic volcanic caldera that threatens to blow its ground-glass smoke
all over the country. We are talking
about a thousand Mt. St. Helens at once, with yard-thick ash falls a thousand
miles downwind, plus nuclear winter, whatever the season. My intuition: a thickening global veneer of
climax forest might be the only living thing that could hold this type of
catastrophe in check.
Every river and
coastal region should be edenized.
Climate shifts for the worst have coincided with biohabitat
simplification along coastlines, river lines and between margins of latitude
and altitude.
Perhaps we should ‘pre-seed’
our drive to become civilized, with another priority: becoming ecologized. World edenization might moderate the worst
effects of our pollution and its climatic extremes.
Urban cleanup tasks
will include, but not be limited to:
Breaking up built-up
surfaces pointillistically in urban zones.
In other words, perforating cement and asphalt surfaces with topsoil
plugs, and replacing entire avenues and city squares with soil-bound parks and
greenbelts. Economies of scale would
dictate that entire arterials, and ranks and files of city blocks be devoted to
this project, not mere median strips, sidewalks and roadsides. Isolated urban plantings – like a single row
of trees along a sidewalk – have a harder time surviving than plants clumped in
parks. This does not mean we should stop
planting roadside trees. On the
contrary, a single row of one variety should be blended with other species.
As transportation
costs increase and air quality improves, urban agriculture and rooftop
gardening will become attractive business propositions. Urban roofscapes will go under glass in
northern latitudes, and turn green with plant cover everywhere. Cities will whitewash their rooftops and
streets, and turn into daylight stars.
Greenbelts and greenswards will slash across urban areas. Highways will go underground or skirt urban
areas entirely. Underground automotive
exhausts will be collected and filtered.
Indeed, following
Seattle’s lead from the century before last, cities may pave over their entire
downtown ground levels. In so doing,
they could insulate pedestrian amenities from automotive congestion, accidents
and pollution.
An interim solution
might be lightweight elevated walkways.
These could stretch the length and breadth of each city, threading above
or below urban highways and spanning street intersections. Heavier and stronger elevated arterials might
accommodate bicycles, rickshaws and other lightweight conveyances.
In addition, seedbeds
might be planted where concrete foundations exist now. From these beds might grow re-architected
bamboo structures equivalent in tensile strength to the steel currently
on-site. By bamboo, I mean whatever
vegetation would adapt best to local engineering demands.
Ground cover will be replanted along eroding
mountainsides, hill slopes and leaching watersheds. Plant varieties will be systematically
multiplied in every biohabitat.
Diversified softwood plantations will be replanted along devastated
fringes between hardwood and softwood habitats.
Climax ecologies will be restored and protected wherever possible.
Specially tailored
oleophage (oil-eating) bacteria will attack every petroleum slick, from
driveway sheens to industrial and marine spills. Special trees and shrubs will soak up runoff
water and persistent toxins for subsequent harvest and recycling. Almost every watershed, wetland and beach on
Earth should be rendered pristine.
Thanks to Mr.
Harrison Ford and his rich and perceptive buddies, development-free belts are
being set aside between major wildlife habitats and the nearest pole. These set-asides permit forests and their
animal inhabitants to migrate towards more temperate latitudes, as global
warming cooks forest-edges fringing the equator. As these forests regrow, they will require
fewer and fewer protections and artificial supplements. These should be multiplied.
Climax ecosystems are
enormous natural pumps that collect water and inject it into the atmosphere as
purified rain. It is part of our task to
make sure that these natural sprinkler systems work the way nature intended
them to. We mustn’t allow them to dry
out and heat up much more, nor the seas to cool off too much, as a result of
glacier melt … and perhaps spin us into Weather Chaos if we fail.
Solar power is
another peace technology that weapon managers loathe because of its
decentralized, anarchic and anti-combat nature.
On a battlefield, it is unrealistic to expect to draw energy directly
from the sun. After all, any machine
caught out in the open would get bombed to bits.
Besides, solar power
is a one-shot deal. You buy the panels,
set them up and you’re in the energy business for yourself. It doesn’t require massive, stinking and/or
radioactive power plants, proprietary mineral rights and obsolete refineries
whose owners may impose spiraling rents on the rest of us. The same blanket sabotage applies to every
other energy technology that might loosen weapon managers’ death grip on
WeaponWorld.
Terra preta
on an industrial scale may offer us a means to decrease carbon dioxide production
and slow global warming before it cooks us off this planet. In addition, it could renew our exhausted
soils. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100810122030.htm
Trees capture carbon
as they grow. Large plantations of trees
absorb carbon dioxide and thus hold back greenhouse warming. As old growth biomass collects more water and
carbon on land, the oceans might recede, warm up and salinate.
Massive reforestation
projects may counter the immediate effects of industrial greenhouse gasses that
seem to generate glacial melt, marine cooling and desalination. This cooling may interrupt vast sub-sea
currents that spread out temperature variations and moderate the climate.
The CO2 of human
manufacture seems to be sucked into the seas, making them so acidic as to
become sterile. That must be stopped
ASAP.
Long-term effects
demand more study; however, far-reaching study must not delay evident and
immediate interventions.
We may need to
reforest Texas-, Europe-, Australia-sized areas of land. This project may show little impact until we
have buried mature trees in checkerboard acres and replanted that ground
immediately. That might not necessarily
be the wisest policy, as it might induce regional imbalances: too much effort
here and not enough there.
A better plan might
look something like this. Children will
go out on their birthdays and other holidays to plant trees and shrubs in their
neighborhood with their parents, as part of a religious ceremony. Like-scale projects will multiply among wise
Learners. Get planting!
As I write this text,
I bemoan my own hypocrisy. We cut down
two wild cherry trees on our small property.
We had replaced them, the year earlier, with fruit trees pruned much
smaller. Afterwards, we cut down almost
all the trees on our property—which action I will regret the rest of my life.
Our Emerald City
Seattle has less and less tree cover every year. Modern arborists replace big, old
trees with smaller ones that won’t interfere with overhead power and telephone
lines. Biomass, clean air and shade
suffer in proportion. Why don’t you
plant tall, proud trees and bury the damned power lines instead? We urbanites have lost our soul to concrete
and asphalt … when all our cities could be gardens!
That’s ironic, if you
think about it. The easiest and cheapest
way to cool a house or a city in summertime is to plant shade trees along its
sunny flanks. Deciduous shade trees are
ideal; they drop their leaves quite conveniently during winter and allow the
sun to shine through them when it’s coldest out.
Even if we do not
know exactly what to do next, we could start step-by-step back along the right
path. Gaia should see to the rest—and
perhaps to our long-term survival.
If, however, humanity
engineers its disappearance, we should hand down irrefutable proof of heroic
efforts to correct our worst errors; just as the vanished Minoans left us the
heart-rending testimonial of their magnificent artwork.
Whether or not we
kludge along in mediocrity is a matter of total indifference to the
universe. It is more important that we
unite in peace, act heroically and leave behind a brilliant record of our
finest achievements, no matter how fleeting or eternal.
If ancient peoples
thought about such things, I suppose they believed they belonged to the Land,
(Vietnamese Xa), the way nature
does. Later on, we ensnarled ourselves
among phantasms (artificial or truly sacred?
Who can honestly tell)—god(s), chain of ancestors, sovereign states,
ideologies, bureaucracies, Freudian or religious trinities, deconstructionist
simplifications, simplifying nihilisms, etc.
Of late, we belong to
nothing. On the contrary, everything and
everyone belongs to the most fear-driven among us, who may say and do as they
please, without regard to consequences.
The stupider and more vicious their endeavor, the worst the disaster
that unfolds from their idiocy with no corresponding punishment, the stronger
they think that makes them, by getting away with it. They act like six-year-olds who got hold of
the car keys: chortling their way through a horrifying smashup because their
car hasn’t stalled yet.
It is time we came
back to belonging, the way lost little children might be restored to the loving
arms of their parents. Time we made
ourselves wise and quietly competent, rather than panic-driven and in denial of
creative imagination, while frantically playing Russian roulette with the
world.
Global reforestation
may help repurify our sullied habitat, soothe disastrous weather patterns and
promote edenic diversity. Who
knows? Edenization might even moderate
tectonic disasters and sustain the ozone layer’s healing. This may be our last chance to make up for
our environmental abuse. At the same
time, we could bind our social, physical and psychic wounds. Imagine us soothing each other’s wounds,
instead of poking them with a stick!
Uruk, Babylon, Rome, Love Canal, the side street you live on: this list of
ecocides can stretch out real long, real fast.
LEARNERS: On the Move from WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld