Wednesday, March 23, 2011

We are a plague

Humanity has exceeded its natural place in the order of things and its population is unsustainable by any measure. Countless millions of square kilometres of virgin ground now lie suffocated under the paving and paint of our cities. Countless species have taken millions of years to evolve, only to be exterminated by the unthinking juggernaut we call progress.

It all has to end sometime. The crazy merry-go-round of civilisation is falling apart at the seams. Mad carnival music plays harder and spruikers shout their spiels louder in an attempt to drown out the cries of pain from our planet. As passengers on this insane carousel, many of us are becoming frightened by the blindness of those at the controls. Can't they see that we cannot keep going faster and faster without something breaking?

We are, of course, supporting the adventurers through our apathy as much as through any active agreement with their aims. We suppose that "they" know what "they" are doing. We suppose our own knowledge, experience and common sense are somehow inferior to those of the cabal at the controls. We sit back and let others do the work, as has been the case since the first cave-person sat back and watched another scribble on the walls. We conspire merely by failing to oppose.

Let them eat cake. Let them tidy up their own messes. Let them figure out how to shut down the damaged nuclear power plant in Japan. Let them solve the puzzle of how to rebuild towns and villages obliterated by the tsunami. Let them sort out the Libyan problem, the Afghan problem, the Palestinian problem. Let the unknown "them" develop a magical replacement for oil, now that Peak Oil has come and gone with hardly a headline. Let the overworked "someone else" keep our industrial technologies powering at full steam ahead, to keep food on our tables. Just don't expect "us" to do anything to help.

No threatened species were exterminated by this blog. Well, no interesting or cute ones, anyway.