September 20, 2011
For years I've talked about how if you
think of the planet, Earth, as a living being, and all the different
species as the differentiated 'cells' that make up the organism, then
what do you call a type of cell that reproduces without anything else
to keep it in check and creates great scabs of concrete, glass and
steel on the skin of the organism that exude poisonous fumes and
extend long tendrils of concrete and asphalt endlessly out from scab
to scab? In my mind this is a fair description of cancer.
But this analogy is not perfect. It
fails in two ways. The first is that if indeed we, the human
species, are a cancer on the living planet, we are different from
cancers in ourselves in that we are simultaneously capable of being
this cancer and of being aware of ourselves as such and therefore
potentially capable of doing something about it. In other words, we
have a choice, to continue being so or not.
The other difference is that in the
case of a cancer in us, if even with all our high tech medicine we
are unable to cure ourselves of this cancer, then we, the host, will
die. In the case of the planet, on the other hand, if we don't
succeed in 'curing' ourselves of this cancerous attitude, then the
victim of the disease will eventually be us, the human species. The
planet will not miss us. She will happily go on to repopulate
herself with newly evolved species and quickly, given a cosmic scale
of time, reach a new balance.
So, we had better get it right and do
it soon. Not like the 'heads of state' that gather for worldwide
environmental conferences who in spite of giving lip service to the
problem, rather than really striving for a solution spend their time
jockeying for position in order to take advantage
of the situation, most likely not even for the 'sake' of the
countries they represent but for their own personal career gain. For
this reason, it is no surprise when they can come to no agreement,
and we continue in our headlong rush, like lemmings over a cliff, to
self extinction.
April 24, 2011
November 5, 2009
So here we are, humanity, the only species ever to evolve on this
planet with the ability to destroy itself (and many others along with
it) on the verge of doing exactly that. And watching ourselves do it,
commenting on it and debating it. But will we change our
self-destructive ways in time to survive the disaster we are in the
midst of creating? That's your homework! Six hundred word essay due
monday.
March 4, 2008
For the moment, this page is dedicated to peace and tranquility. Glad
you got here. Hope you enjoy it. The picture above is of Popocatepetl
and Ixtaccihuatl the volcanoes that used to dominate the view toward
the east from Mexico City, now almost always obscured by the smog. It
was taken from the window of an airliner on the way from Mexico City to
Puerto Vallarta. Artifacts produced by imperfections in the airliners'
triple windows were removed using Photoshop.
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