EARTHDAY

Today is Earthday. I don’t remember when that became a day of significance in this country, but it wasn’t all that long ago.

When a culture does its level best to sever any relationship at all to nature, it is very hard to get its people to do an about face. But the fact is that no matter how many glass faced buildings they build; no matter how few of its citizens realize that their food comes from the ground or the animals that live off the earth and its waters; no matter how well their conditioned air protects them from having to go outside, and; no matter how entertaining their little black boxes are the world still exists outside their little hermetically sealed sphere and they are under its power.

Western culture has done its best to “conquer” nature. The end result is that western culture has darn near conquered itself and the rest of the world with it. The small minded notion that we could dump our pollutants into the rivers and hence the sea was an “out of sight out of mind” construct.

If the universe operated justly and Dante’s system of direct punishment in accord with one’s actions, Americans would all be dying with gullets stuffed full of everything from hydrocarbons to raw sewage. Instead, we who have most heavily raped the planet are the most protected from the devastations of our actions.

It’s the third world who must live with raw sewers running through what should be their yards, while we pour our sewage into the oceans. It’s the Africans who must starve while we burn corn in our cars. It’s the Marshall Islanders who must drown as their homes disappear into the sea while we build another coal fired power plant in Springfield. It’s the Iraqis who must suffer while we play out our political games in Washington, D.C.

The western world, and particularly America, has long functioned with the wages of war as a central factor driving the economy. We have long been accustomed to being told who the enemy is and getting in line to sacrifice our lives to keep them from upsetting our economic applecart.

It is high time that we identified a new enemy; some enemy other than the citizens of another nations. Patriotism, after all, is nothing more than being convinced that ours is the best country on earth just because we were born there.

Mother Earth has a marvelous way of maintaining herself in spite of gargantuan efforts to destroy her. She has survived many bouts of global warming. Fifty five million years ago (Yes, Virginia, the earth is more than 6,000 years old.) 95% of all life forms on earth were destroyed by a massive series of volcanic eruptions in Siberia that covered an area the size of Texas more than one mile deep in viscous, molten lava. The upshot was that the earth was little more than one big desert with tropical zones at its poles. It was those temperate poles that saved life on the planet.

Given that it was able to survive that mess, I suppose it will survive us too, but unless we change our ways, chances are it will survive only by destroying us.

Hmmm. Do you suppose we ought to stop and think about that?

Maybe it is time that we recognized that everyone is a citizen of EARTH. Maybe it is time that we declared ourselves the enemy and seriously began to clean up our act.

What do you suppose that YOU could do about that?

I hope I’ll see you today at the Lake Springfield clean-up. Or maybe at Mama Jean’s Natural Food Store where I’ll be playing for an hour before going out to the lake. Or maybe on my way out there, I’ll see you on the corner protesting the new power plant. Or maybe some other time we’ll meet at a city council meeting where we’ll try and get them to pass an ordinance against the use of plastic bags in stores. Or maybe we’ll pass one another at the recycling center. Or maybe . . . .??

It’s up to us.



Be the change you wish to see in the world. -- M. K. Gandhi

Individually we have little voice. Collectively we cannot be ignored.
But in silence we surrender our power. Yours in Peace -- BR

The reason for going was to keep the crude flowing and raise a false flag abroad. – from a poem by Jack Evans titled 3500 Souls - http://www.myspace.com/paralegal_eagle