Friday, June 10, 2011

Let Nature be.

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Letting Nature be

I'm convinced we humans (self included) haven't a clue what we're doing. Some of us talk about what happened millions and even billions of years ago (and what will happen that far into the future), while others say time is an illusion. Science makes stunning advances, such as years ago correctly predicting massive snowstorms such as the Great Blizzard of 2010 - a global warming/climate change scenario caused by our emissions of co2. But the same scientists are often unable to predict local weather events just a day ahead.

Part of me has become frustrated and frightened that what seems to be happening on Earth is not at all what I think should be happening, while another part (maybe the wiser) says things will be fine as long as we respond to any problem as a challenge to make an even better world.

There are so many different ways of seeing things; we are nowhere near agreement as to what is actually happening. I personally, for instance, see the ongoing crisis and suffering in Japan as part of a long tragic history of the health impoverishment of the whole planet by the profit-driven suppression of better alternative energy developments. But others take the fact that the leakage of pollution from Fukushima has declined indicates that the situation has been controlled safely, thus proving nuclear power's cleanness relative to the huge amount of pollution from natural gas, for instance. The cost/benefit analysis is so enormously complex - with no one able to get a good hold on the big picture.

The only thing that seems clear to me is that we going on 7 billion human inhabitants are as a whole blindly bumbling to a quite drastic near future, helplessly. But with the mushrooming progress in technology, maybe that will be a drastically better near future - if we submit every single decision we make to the question of whether this will hurt or help life as a whole.

It would be nice to just say "We're destroying life on Earth, let's stop it" and then everybody get together and stop doing all the unnecessarily destructive things we're doing. But few so far have more than an inkling at what a dramatic crossroad we've come to, let alone know what to do about it.

My personal opinion is that what should take priority in everything we do is nurturing variety and quantity of life. All life is valuable, and has it's service to provide in the ecosystem. An ancient Chinese proverb goes, "Cut a blade of grass and you shake the whole universe." We have at this moment in history to wake up to our connection with life as a whole. It's time to grow sufficient humility to Life that we make sacred every decision, down to daily judgments such as whether or not to mow the lawn.