I’m not sure that I’m the person to talk to about this, but I think we’re screwed. All of us. The heroes of the past are dead, the virtues that once made us a worthwhile species are now the ashes of a once-great book, flowing on the winds of an unforgiving timeline.
I wonder how weird our thoughts will be when we look at our home planet from another in our solar system, dreaming of the life we once had. Although by then, the way we live now will have survived only in recordings, photos and verbal tales passed down through generations. Will we look down at our once green earth and see our home? Or will we see a mythical planet of dust, ash and rubble, along the lines of sitting on the steps of Greece and gazing at the Parthenon. Will we give as much of a shit about our long deceased culture as we currently give about the cult of Pallas Athena that once graced the pillars of the Parthenon?
Or will we learn nothing fro the lessons of the past and continue to pollute planet after planet?
Or, even worse … Will we not even survive long enough to be able to populate another planet and perpetuate our species? Will we simply go the way of the dinosaurs, melted to acidic rain, due to our own caused greenhouse effect, not even to leave a trace of our existence to explorers of the universe to happen across?
When human beings are left to their own devices, for the most part, we are capable of the most amazing things.
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Any reputable scientist, or climatologist will tell you the same thing, “we’ve already passed the threshold and we’re on our way to a runaway greenhouse effect that will make this planet uninhabitable in about a hundred years give or take.” Unless of course, something is done quickly to minimize its effects.
It’s the romanticist in me that says that we’ll colonize other worlds and look back on our denuded homeworld fondly like Princess Leia frm Star Wars after her home planet of Alderaan was destroyed by the first Death Star. (Rest in Peace, Carrie Fisher and I love you.) But, the cynic and the pragmatist within me says that we’ll be too busy screwing with the carefully constructed biospheres we’ll invade to give too much of a crap about our distant motherland.
I always have this tendency to go to science fiction to explain things to myself because in reality, science fiction has been pretty accurate (for the most part about the excesses of the human race.) There was a race of people from the TV series Stargate SG-1 that gave a sister planet a machine that produced unlimited energy, and instead of using it for the betterment of their society, they used it to make war on each other. I can’t help but think that the episode (as melodramatic and shoddily produced as it was) isn’t an allegory for our current search for cold fusion and other alternative forms of energy that isn’t reliant on the sun and winds.
When human beings are left to their own devices, for the most part, we are capable of the most amazing things. It’s when the politicians and the people with ulterior motives get involved that everything goes south. Like Boromir with the One Ring, we are all destined by our own impulses to do what is in our nature to do, destroy, and fight, and die. I wish I could be more optimistic, but I simply can’t.
I look at the latest studies and I weep for my daughter’s future, because I am not strong enough to affect change to give her a decent future worth living in. All I’m giving her is a world of hate, anger, guns, global warming, exclusive politics and nuclear Armageddon. Instead of the arts of the mind, foremost in the American mind are the arts of War.
When we should be talking, we’re screaming. When we should be embracing, we’re hurting each other.
Be good to each other, there’s too much at stake not to.
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I wish this article could be more positive. Right now, I just can’t bring myself to be very positive. Maybe it’s the environment I’m currently in with its negativity and its bickering. But, right now, I simply can’t see past our impulses to focus on our virtues. Or, more precisely, I’m not sure if those virtues are enough to save us.
I’ve been making more of an effort to savor the experiences I have with people, to hug them more often, to say “I love you” more often, to make sure that everyone who I value knows that I care about them and if I die tomorrow, that I at least enjoyed my time here with them, before not being able to enjoy anything.
This is essentially me thinking out loud, screaming out loud and just being worried for the future. I couldn’t care any less about money, because money can’t buy anything on a dead planet.
I can only try my best to be as good as I can for as long as I can, love as much as I can, and put as much good into the world as I can. Even if we weren’t all universally screwed, I would do that. It’s who I am. But, lately I feel like this entire planet is the punchline of a joke that too few people are hearing.
Be good to each other, there’s too much at stake not to.
Much love to all.
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Photo: Getty Images