Attention Earthlings, we got some real sh++ to deal with and not this bulls++ y’all knocking around.
There are many things that we earthlings allow to divide us – location, vocation, education, enunciation, origination, and migration. There are many ways we justify these divisions through our various isms. None of this is really important – they’ve become props that we rest our biases on; tools to divide and distract; perhaps because some of us are too scared to face the real stuff we need to be dealing with.
What’s real is that planet earth is unhappy right now and showing it through earthbound sobs and upheavals all around the globe – hurricanes here, wildfires there, droughts, earthquakes, tsunamis, avalanches, permafrost thawing, and once-in-a-life time heat waves and other weather events that are happening much more than once-in-a-life-time.
What’s real is that the people are suffering – both the victims and perpetrators of crimes be they mass or personal murders conducted by individual madmen of our various tribes or by militaries and terrorists (domestic and international). Pick a country and there’s usually some violent, tortuous crap going on in it quite regularly.
What’s real is illnesses of our bodies, our souls and our minds: stress, trauma, cancers, diabetes, psychosis and bipolarity, and other maladies many affecting the young. even our babies.
What’s real is the disruption of natural order: the collapse of bee colonies, the severe reduction of the monarch butterfly population, and the declining bat population to name but a few. All of these impact our ability to grow food.
What’s real is an ocean of plastic, that man-made creation that goes against the basic tenet of nature – that everything degenerates and goes on to nurture new life. Plastic doesn’t. Check this out:
“9.1 billion tons of plastic produced by industry since 1950, nearly 8 billions no longer used. Only 9% got recycled and another 12% was incinerated, leaving 5.5 billion tons of plastic waste on land and in water.”
What’s real is: water crisis and scarcity. In Flint, Michigan and In South Africa, India, Venezuela and now Puerto Rico to name but a few places.
What’s real is the abundance of chemicals that threaten seeds, land, and animals and cause us to have to farm fish because less and less of oceans and rivers cannot sustain them any more. Fish used to be abundant everywhere.
What’s real is violence – incidents and categories too numerous to begin to list.
What’s real is scarcity in a planet that had (?), has (?) abundance enough for all of us to live and live well but for the distribution of wealth, wasted and unevenly shared resources, greed, etc.
And yet I know that there is more good going on in our world every day, millions of acts of goodness including positive science that has ended isolation and seeks to solve problems. However, the good doesn’t seem loud enough to drown out the devastatingly bad stuff that the planet is experiencing.. We are experiencing an increasing cacophony of near-extinction-level events.
What’s real is that we have demonic, ignorant and egotistical leaders who could blow up the planet in a flash. Where will we run, what will we do? None of these disasters will only kill some of us – they will fry all of us.
What’s real is that the places you might have gone to are not the places they were any more: not the same New Orleans, not the same Montserrat, not the same Puerto Rico, not the same Buddha of Bamiyan statues in the Hindu Kush mountains of central Afghanistan, not the same Napa Valley, and so on and so on and so on.
Whether you believe in God or nature or nothing, we are all connected and as earthlings we need to pay attention to the real sh** that’s going on and be as actively loving as we can. We must commit to making the sacrifices in our daily orgies of excess to restore, renew. replenish and redeem our beautiful planet.
Related:
Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology) by Marvin Gaye, What’s Going On album (1971)
Woo ah, mercy mercy me
Ah things ain’t what they used to be, no no
Where did all the blue skies go?
Poison is the wind that blows from the north and south and east
Woo mercy, mercy me, mercy father
Ah things ain’t what they used to be, no no
Oil wasted on the ocean and upon our seas, fish full of mercury
Ah oh mercy, mercy me
Ah things ain’t what they used to be, no no
Radiation under ground and in the sky
Animals and birds who live nearby are dying
Oh mercy, mercy me
Ah things ain’t what they used to be
What about this overcrowded land
How much more abuse from man can she stand?
Oh, na na…
My sweet Lord… No
My Lord… My sweet Lord
Related:
Whew. I thought it was just me who began questioning what the heck are we doing to our foundation! Mother Earth in connection to Sister Universe is crying and, how do we stop the tears when there is so much division?
You are not alone at all. Lots of people I know are questioning, wondering, taking action and running scared. Thanks for taking time to comment.