I used to have a little saying that “despair is a luxury”. What I meant was that people who were scrambling for the next meal, had to hope that they would find something to eat. I meant that they couldn’t waste time with despair. I meant that it was better to hope for a better world, and especially to work for it, than to sit home and wallow in despair.
But this morning, watching Amy Goodman marking the one year anniversary of the BP disaster; realizing that the oil had settled in and gone nowhere; that the claims for compensation were being denied; that dolphins, turtles, fish and bird were still washing ashore….realizing all of that I got a little overwhelmed. Despite the fact that we know that fossil fuels are ruining the environment, we just keep pumping them out.
Meanwhile, just as we watched the oil spill endlessly into the Gulf last year, this year the Fukushima nucleat plant endlessly spills it’s radioactivity. I love eating fish. I think it’s important for our health, but which fish should we eat? Despite the fact that nuclear disasters are so devastating, despite the fact that scientists have found no safe way to deal with nuclear waste, we keep commissioning new nuclear power plants. What’s going on?
I wonder what kind of world my grandchildren will inherit. Our civilization seems to be on a collision course with it’s own annihilation. Spring is finally coming. Things are starting to sprout and grow. There’s no need for this madness.
Having been to Bhopal, India, the site of the Union Carbide chemical spill more than twenty five years ago, and seeing first hand the third generation of health effects and still not a single mess cleaned up (just a lot of buck passing) I have little hope that there will be anything different done in the cases you mention above. Despair is out of the question, I agree. Spring issues from each heart. We take matters into our own hands, and move on from there. We do have the power to make the necessary changes. Each one of “us” is more potent that all of “them”…we just have to realize it. For the sake of our grandchildren and theirs also, positive choice is our mandate.
The civilization that is heading towards annihilation is the one that was human centric. I am not sure that human centric one has been in play for quite some time. To paraphrase Moondog.
” Machines were mice and men were lions once upon a time, but now that its the opposite its twice upon a time”
Future observers, be they men or AI will look back and see this time as one of the great bottle necks of evolution. One that is both cultural and biological.Where human centric civilization may fall to the cruel hands corporate-techno centric entities with the moral compass of slime mold. Neanderthals became extinct not because they were ill adapted to the natural world but because came up against a nasty bunch that could make a plan and use technology better. The nasty bunch would go to create several civilizations that came and went. Each one gnarled in inequality, acquiring knowledge, art, religion ,greed, conquest,and altruism. Common to all being that they saw themselves as the crowning glory of human achievement.
This common thread exists today but our version made the socio-techno break through of non bio life forms of great power that demonstrate the spark of life. They have the will to live, they repair themselves and reshape the environment to their needs. you just have be in a walmart parking lot to notice this.
Their needs are not the needs of a romantic vision of a biological humanity. We are at odds. I think this is their civilization now or at least they are the dominate players.
The great contest for the soul of the machine has begun. Vive la Guerre