I was asked to re-post my thoughts about how we human beings should cope with the potential death of our planet, and our own potential demise, due to our lifestyle and the madness of greed among the rich. This was originally posted on August 28, 2007, as Comment #15 at
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x110398--and it seems particularly apt, given this DU post today, amidst a political debate that seems to be stark-raving mad...whether to bomb Iran or not, whether Obama is playing to the rightwing on gay issues, as our pResident shoves fire disaster evacuees aside to get a photo op....
"Earth is reaching the point of no return, says major UN environment report"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3043342I don't mean to pick on Obama. The entire political scene and all of its candidates seems inadequate to the danger we face, that is so little spoken of: the end of life on earth. The World Wildlife Fund gives us 50 years, at present levels of pollution and consumption--50 years to the death of the planet!
We may see the extirpation of all other species, before our own end comes. We will certainly see tremendous disruption and suffering, even if the human race survives. I was thinking about all this, and wrote the following.
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My August 28, 2007 comment:
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!" --FDR
This very Buddha-like pronouncement from a leader facing the Nazi war machine can give us comfort and courage now.
If we have done in our own species, by destroying our home, well then, that's what we've done. We, too, are part of nature. And everything we do IS nature. Nature creates. Nature destroys. Nature creates again. That's how it goes. We all die. We are all recycled. And it is a very, very, very, very, very, very (need I go on?), VERY big universe out there, where this destruction/creation cycle is constantly occurring on an unimaginably large scale. Amazing how our tiny little brains (teensy weensy ants crawling on a bit of dust in the vasty cosmos) try to stretch themselves around that big reality. This precious and amazing thing--human consciousness--is not likely rare at all, but we are the only instance of it that we know of (and maybe the dolphins, whales and elephants--intuition says yes). But some of our best survival skills--being able to store up grain for seven years, inventing refrigerators, our wanting to GO, our adventurousness, our desire to travel over the next hill, our fantastic organizational skills, our even more fantastic engineering skills--Christ, putting men on the moon!--may well be our demise.
And if it is, I hope we face it with dignity, heroism, courage, creativity and compassion.
I began sensing something in the rich elite of our own society--American society--in my work on environmental issues. Panic. Deep panic, leading to an orgy of greed and acquisitiveness. The disruption of planet earth's biosphere really began, in major intensity, during the 1960s. For instance, that is when the main part of the old growth redwood forest was finally destroyed in California--under a populist Democratic governor (Edumnd G. Brown, Sr.), in a mind-boggling expansion of middle class prosperity (and house building). But that was ALSO a time of growing middle-class awareness of the perils of environmental destruction, and the birth of the environmental movement. Ask the American people, do they want strong environmental protection?, and 80%, 90% of them will answer yes. Democracy, which is, in some sense, born of environmental destruction, is also the solution to environmental destruction. If the people had their druthers, we would have converted to solar energy and other alternatives a long time ago; the air would be clean; corporate pollution of air, water, food and everything else would be banned; remaining forests would be preserved, and alternative building materials would be produced, and trees would be planted everywhere; we would be living lighter (and happier) on the earth, in a "green" world, one that was fast healing from the damage of 100 years of the most devastating impacts on the planet since the great comet killed off the dinosaurs, but this time inflicted by conscious beings--us--who can't ever seem to get enough of "7 years of grain" security, and always want more, and have the intelligence and dexterity to seek it. More.
The damage to planet earth is felt in our guts. It is visceral. It is profound. It is related to our fear of our own deaths (particularly acute in American "youth" culture), but it is even worse, much worse, than this. It is like seeing your children die. It is a deep, DNA-driven fear of being cut off from the future. We have so many stories in our literature--and so many examples in reality--of old men being misers. Often old men with no children. No emotional ties to anyone; no one to deed their wealth to. It is an archetypal myth. As they age and death approaches, they become extremely greedy--to no purpose. They count and recount their gold, as if that could give them happiness or security. As if it could give them eternal life.
This is a description of our wealthy class--the super-rich, the corporate CEOs, the global corporate predators, the war profiteers, the ruiners of planets. They no longer CARE what it is FOR. They are not building anything (a good society); they are not promoting "freedom and democracy" (a cruel joke); they are not even happy in their wealth--they are frenzied and scared. They behave exactly like the greedy old misers of story and myth, counting and recounting their coins, in miserable isolation from the rest of humanity. Don't let their yachts and their multiple mansions and their private jets fool you. These people are suffering from a DISEASE. The disease of fear-driven, manic greed, which, in trying to preserve itself, destroys itself--and, with the power that their ungodly wealth gives them, is now destroying us all.
We need to cure them. That's one thing. To save ourselves and our planet, we need to save THEM from THEMSELVES. We need to tax them, regulate them, and altogether curtail them. Where they are organized into powerful, out-of-control global corporations, we need to pull their corporate charters, dismantle them, and seize their assets for the public good. Democracy is the key to solving global warming, and it is also the key to going out with dignity, heroism, courage, creativity and compassion, if our time in the universe is over.
If there are superior civilizations out there in the galaxy who are watching us, this is the only thing that will attract their help--our heroism, our dignity, in the face of calamity. And if there is no one who cares about us--no God, no superior beings--then we have our own nobility to consider, if the time of the human race is over. Do we go out in an orgy of greed--with the rich killing the poor for their oil, and the poor killing each other for bread crumbs, and chaos and savagery as our legacy--or do we stop being seized by fear and start acting like the noble beings that we know we have within us. The overwhelming majority of the human race has evolved into peace-loving, justice-loving, compassionate individuals, and caring communities, who RARELY become violent and greedy, and generally only when sorely provoked or in fear. It is only the few--the least evolved, the dumbest, those who think their riches will give them eternal life, and thus cut themselves off from true happiness--who are causing all the trouble--the greedy old misers of whatever age.
It is only by becoming the best human beings that we can be, that we will be able to live with ourselves, as we see our end approaching. And it is only through a calm sense of dignity and right action that our planet can be saved, if that is possible.
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The fear that our rich elite is exhibiting. Panic-driven greed. Their fear of us. You can smell it--in those corporate-run, "trade secret" electronic voting machines (fast-tracked across the country at the same time as the Iraq War Resolution), in their pervasive sneakiness (massive corporate/fascist spying, and off-the-books war budgets), in their corporate "news" lies and disinformation, and in many other foul-smelling methods of control and looting. You can smell it in their massive lying about South America, where real democracy is blossoming--the kind of democracy that enhances human life and can save the planet. You can smell it all over America--the terror that this emotionally vulnerable class, the rich, is feeling. They are afraid. They spread their fear to everyone. And THAT is what we need to resist--their fear, their terror, their projection of fear and terror onto us, and their consequent madness of greed--if we are to have any hope at all of saving ourselves and our only home, planet earth.
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