Some types of humans, for what ever reason, do not live in harmony with the earth. Not all humans do this, some had until relatively recently in humanities history lived like other animals do, taking only enough to survive, plundering only enough to maintain their territories. They lived peaceful lives, free from war, free from injustice and free from pollution.
But some kinds of humans expand. They take all they can to feed the fire of industry, look out into the whole world to conquer it. They create astonishing machines and astonishing ways of using the earth. They take everything they can and despoil what they cannot. They invent ways to pierce the heavens, they send probes to distant planets. They map the trajectory of the stars and learn how to synthesize materials. They do impossible things.
Industrial humans know that they have defiled their earth. So they buy "organic" and "nature friendly" products.
In fact, it seems that stating that your product is "100% natural" is nearly as good as it having been blessed by the pope. Not all things, as I have said before, that are unnatural are un-good. What of morphine, hospitals and computers? Of antiviruses and vaccinations? None of these are natural, and none of them bad.
Why is it that we feel that the world can only be two things? That we can be only see the universe if we burn the forests? But thats what we've always done, seen the world as either black or white, good or evil.
How ironic is it that we build spaceships to send to mars, and probes to scout the infinite blackness, yet the industry that has made this possible produces the smoke that blocks the stars. In our biggest cities you can't see the stars at all.
Agreed, humans industrialise and fork out billions of dollars each year, sending these satellites, probes and signlas out into space so that they can discover how the world was first brought about, and that question is the big thing on all existentuists lips - how was the world/universe made. However when we find out how it was made (in however many hundreds of years) what comes next? Its the classic 'spending all your money at once' scenario, as opposed to saving for a bigger and better thing. We are so focused on this one task, that we are ripping up our only means of living to find it. But will it pay off? Will that knowledge provide us an endless energy source? Will it repair the wounds we have already made? Can every human sit back and relax for the rest of their lives? No. We humans have such craving to know EVERYTHING about the universe. Up til the late 1800's the common demographic believed that heaven was just past the clouds. But no, we took that away from them. That little hope that heaven was real might have been that brink between happiness and finding a will to live. The point is, leave a little mystery, it didn't hurt the previous generations, and i don't hink it will, us.
ReplyDelete-Lachlan