A Heartfelt Letter from Mother Earth to Humanity

Hello everyone, this is your home planet Earth, also known as “Mother Earth,” reaching out to you. As you may have noticed, things aren’t going so well for me (and us) — and we need to talk.

I’ve got to say, first off … you humans are a very peculiar and ungrateful bunch. Here I’ve given you an amazing and almost infinite variety of plants, animals, foods, insects, birds, colors, etc. to enjoy and interact with — and you usually react with indifference or contempt, rather than love and gratitude. It really hurts me to see and feel your arrogant, disdainful attitudes toward the living world around you.

I have always provided a vast cornucopia of abundance to support your evolution and growth — but you got it into your heads, somehow, that you’re ‘above’ nature and superior to the rest of life, and utterly ‘separate’ from nature as well.

This absurd conceit sometimes makes me chuckle, and other times makes me weep — because this is the most ridiculous, harmful idea in the history of human ideas.

You see, we are quite literally all in this together. My global biosphere encompasses everything that you call ‘life on Earth,’ and all these life forms and processes are completely intertwined and interdependent — everywhere and always. So your idea that you are effectively ‘separate’ from and ‘above’ nature is both terrifying and laughably nonsensical.

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But what disturbs me the most is that you’ve based your entire ‘modern civilization’ on these absurd ideas — and your technology, your industries, and your economies all grow directly out of your desire, as supposedly ‘superior’ beings, to dominate and subjugate nature and the entire planet (that is, me) and bend it (me) to your will.

I have to say, I dislike and resent this deeply. And I further must inform you: your incessant meddling and manipulations are really messing with my overall functioning and with my entire ecosphere.

You seem to be afflicted with severe tunnel vision, so you only see and pay attention to what is good for you in the moment, or what appeals to you in the moment — while you ignore or bypass the long-term effects of your actions on everything and everyone else … including me.

What I’ve been observing over the past several centuries is this: Your so-called ‘progress’ is based solely on scientific, technological, and industrial advances which have cemented your sense of ‘above-it-all-ness’ and led you to feel ever more separate from life and from me, your Earth mother. This is a painful and terrible state of affairs — one that’s totally insane and unsustainable.

It’s insane because your separateness-inducing models of ‘progress’ have led you to despise, attack, and despoil your planet home and try to aggressively ‘remodel’ nature.

But you don’t get it: you can’t just ‘remodel’ nature, willy-nilly. You don’t see the whole picture, and thus don’t see how every change, manipulation, or act of destruction interacts with the whole — or how, taken all together, these changes and destructive activities are wrecking the biosphere and my planet-wide climatic patterns.

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I’m very disappointed in you. You showed such promise, and were my most wondrous creation — but you cling stubbornly to ancient, outdated ways of thinking and behaving, and meanwhile you’ve developed such powerful technologies and weapons that you are endangering all humanity and all of life.

Stop it! I and the myriad life forms I support and nurture beg you … please grow up and stop all this madness and myopic destruction! You have pushed me and my precious biosphere to the edge of collapse, and you have very little time left to start turning things around.

I don’t mean to scare you … then again, maybe I do: for the results of your ignorant attitudes and actions are now ‘coming home to roost,’ as you say. You are wrecking your only home, and violating and abusing me, your Earth mother. This is nasty, abhorrent behavior, and it needs to stop.

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Humanity, you simply have to change now. You have to finally grow up — or you will abuse and wreck me to the point that I become uninhabitable for humanity and many other species. Yet I myself will still always … exist.

See, what you really don’t get, at all, is that I am infinitely greater and more powerful than you tiny humans.

Think about a hurricane, for instance: there’s a huge one right now, swirling in the Atlantic and kicking up winds over 140 mph. When these huge storms head toward one of your coastlines, all you can do is make a few preparations, hunker down, and wait it out. You have no control whatever over its intensity, duration, or direction … and are completely at its mercy, really.

But that’s also true of almost every aspect of life. Most of the so-called ‘control’ you think you have is a total illusion. And today, your industries and lifestyles have created such widespread, damaging effects that the very climate, the all-enveloping global climate, is changing and deteriorating fast. You think you’re in control? What nonsense!

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You blew it, humanity — and I’m afraid for you. I’m resorting to this letter because nothing else has worked to shake you and wake you out of your stupor.

At this point, I and all living things need you to wake up and change direction. But don’t worry about me too much — I’ll always be fine, ultimately. Like I said, I am infinitely greater and more powerful than you humans. I’m totally resilient, and I will always survive no matter what (short of a direct hit from another planet or our Sun going supernova).

The plants and animals that abound throughout my lands, oceans, and atmosphere will change drastically, of course, and keep changing over time — that’s just the way evolution works — but I myself will always survive and always be here.

But you, my human friends, may not be so lucky — unless you grow up and change direction.

I love you and cherish you — but I can’t allow your abuse to continue.

Try to wrap your minds around this: I will always win in the end, because my global processes and the world-wide results of all your polluting, meddling ways end up combining forces, so to speak, and work together to bring down all your rigid, abusive methods and patterns.

Put differently: the cumulative, dangerous results of your destructive ‘progress’ are now showing up all over the world, more and more each year. They are combining, multiplying, and intensifying everywhere.

The time has come to change course … and fast.

Please consider this ‘tough love’ message and plea to be your final warning.

Much love,

Mother Earth

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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From The Good Men Project on Medium

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