Entry tags:
Dept. of The World Is Bigger Than We Are
What Once Was Wrong, the Inevitable Will Crown Right
When I was a little girl, I used to read comic strips in my daily newspaper. One of them was a would-be Buck Rogers strip called, if I remember correctly, Brick Bradford (which information I had to retrieve from Wikipedia. It certainly ran a long time.)
One of the adventures in that otherwise forgettable strip has stayed with me ever since. The hero sets down on a planet with a toxic atmosphere, with beings he at first thinks are unintelligent beasts. He and his colleagues eventually come to realize that this is a planet that was once like Earth, but which has become so polluted that it now has a completely different ecosystem, to which all those of the planets beings who survived have adapted. To them, Brick's obligatory scientist colleague narrates, Earth's atmosphere would be deadly.
The story fascinated me for two reasons: a) the idea that something we would consider absolutely wrong - an environment, say - would be absolutely natural to other beings, indeed necessary and non-toxic. I considered it compelling both environmentally (although I didn't think of it in those terms back in 1966 or 1967, which may have been when I read it) and philosophically; b) the idea that our world could end, that we would end, but that it might be OK, because something equally important or intelligent or what-have-you, might grow to take our place in a vastly changed world.
All of which leads me to this: Thanks to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ljgeoff for alerting me to this article. For all that I've just said, I'd much rather we managed, somehow against all logic, to stick around. I guess I'm not quite mature or enlightened enough to take the approach of the writer. And he's right, not me.
When I was a little girl, I used to read comic strips in my daily newspaper. One of them was a would-be Buck Rogers strip called, if I remember correctly, Brick Bradford (which information I had to retrieve from Wikipedia. It certainly ran a long time.)
One of the adventures in that otherwise forgettable strip has stayed with me ever since. The hero sets down on a planet with a toxic atmosphere, with beings he at first thinks are unintelligent beasts. He and his colleagues eventually come to realize that this is a planet that was once like Earth, but which has become so polluted that it now has a completely different ecosystem, to which all those of the planets beings who survived have adapted. To them, Brick's obligatory scientist colleague narrates, Earth's atmosphere would be deadly.
The story fascinated me for two reasons: a) the idea that something we would consider absolutely wrong - an environment, say - would be absolutely natural to other beings, indeed necessary and non-toxic. I considered it compelling both environmentally (although I didn't think of it in those terms back in 1966 or 1967, which may have been when I read it) and philosophically; b) the idea that our world could end, that we would end, but that it might be OK, because something equally important or intelligent or what-have-you, might grow to take our place in a vastly changed world.
All of which leads me to this: Thanks to
ljgeoff for alerting me to this article. For all that I've just said, I'd much rather we managed, somehow against all logic, to stick around. I guess I'm not quite mature or enlightened enough to take the approach of the writer. And he's right, not me.
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Lovely planet. Shiteful, incurably destructive species. We do belong dead. And the tone of the neighbourhood will go up when we're gone.
And no, I do not find this prospect in the least disturbing.
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We have a lovely planet. But we also are part of that planet, and we have a duty to this old globe to become better, to be part of the beauty. We aren't, most of us, born monsters. We can, most of us, learn to listen to the better angels of our natures. When I see the bad we do, I, too, despair ... but I see so much good within us, that I want to fight for it.
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No, we're not 'born monsters', but as a species we are born with a number of behavioural proclivities that, if expressed, can lead to monsterhood (note that I said can, not will). The sad and often heartbreaking part is that it takes only a small number of monsters to foul up systems, sometimes beyond repair. And so it goes. The best way to ameliorate that, to some degree at least, is to encourage every new generation to think - to think wide], to think realistically, and, yes, to think hopefully. Teach yer children well, y'know... :-)
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Now I accept that getting upset about species!fail! won't change the way we evolved,
You're right about that. I prefer to try and look to the future, though, because we are, as far as I know, the only species that has, theoretically at least, the brain power to actively make choices about that future. That's the intriguing possibility we have to pursue, because we may yet teach ourselves to be a credit and not a debit to the neighborhood. I'm quite realistic; I think it's an uphill and very possibly hopeless mission. But I can't stop volunteering for the mission; I was born here and I have a duty to make 'here' a better place, if I can.
The best way to ameliorate that, to some degree at least, is to encourage every new generation to think - to think wide], to think realistically, and, yes, to think hopefully.
Indeed. And since even if we disappear, we could really foul up the neighborhood to the point where a lot of other residents could be hurt, I think it's worthwhile to try to ameliorate whatever damage we've done to the extent we can. I think you and I may both be hopeful. We just express it a little differently.
So fighting to get better is a win-win thing. If we're successful, well, woo-hoo! If we're not successful, at least we tried.
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Which is to say, the message I got from that essay was that it's not that things will change, it's that things have changed. And that was an affirmation, a validation, not an epiphany.
Back in '06, I woke one morning from a very real dream. I was up high, in a plane, I think, looking down at a city on fire. A man was sitting next to me. "It wasn't the droughts and floods that killed everyone," he murmured. "It was the wars."
My tenth grandchild will be born next spring. He is a boy, a third Michael -- they'll call him Mac. By the time he is grown, it will be a new world. Quite literally. And though I am terrified, and his parents think I'm a little nuts, and I don't know if any of this will be good enough -- still, this is, it seems, my job.
Viam Invenio! Did I tell you that at our October Birthday Bash we got together and devised our House crest and motto?
On a field of blue, a central tower with ivy upon it, a rampant stag dexter and a rampant fox sinister. Beneath the tower is a line of marsh reeds (for Moser) and above the tower streaks a comet.
Viam Invenio: I find a way.
Four minutes? Bring me knitting! Really, though, I believe in us, in people. Yes we are stupid and crazy, but we are also so amazingly beautiful, clever and wise. We have a few years left of things staying pretty much the same. A decade, perhaps, maybe two. There will be disasters, heartbreaking disasters every year. There will be famines and floods. Here in the US, the poor will get poorer, and the middle class will get poorer and we will all be told that it's Our Fault.
And then, rather suddenly, things will be much, much worse.
I will be up north by then. Think of me.
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