"it should be simple to be free, you know, but it's not." -peter
they argue, "yes, but if we didn't divide along racial lines, we would fine something else to place between us. eye color, hair color, height, weight, type of sneeze." they say, "yes, but we humans will always look for our differences and hold them up as boundaries."
well i'm saying, "as well we should."
you could empoy a clich� here: variety is the spice of life. except that without it, life is not only dull, it is delicate, vulnerable and unstable. every facet of natural history proves that diversity wins out over monotony. call it a manifestation of the law of entropy; call it common sense. a thousand niches will be better filled by a thousand species than any single one, and in exactly the same way, a thousand cultures will better survive than any single one.
we are not humanity.
we have created a culture, born of the twin snakes of salvationist religion and ruthless agriculture, that flaunts natural law at every point. we are seeing the effects of our blind enthusiasm: nuclear war, famine, global warming, massive erosion, species extinction, a gradual shattering of the ecological system which is accelerating at an exponential rate - one which mirrors our perverse population explosion. but we are not humanity.
we are only a single culture. not america, not even "the west." for all our opulence, we have no corner on this market. the vast rice paddies of china are no less destructive than our forest-razed grazing lands and endless fields of genetically engeneered potatoes. and the guilt and grotesque glory of christianity is joined by islam, judaism, buddhism, taoism, hinduism, all the branches and subsets thereof - every religion which teaches that it is only god's favorite creatures that are flawed, that the gulf between our lifestyle and one in keeping with reality can be filled by a redemption, whether internal or divine. we look at each other - peering across the ocean to jordan and taiwan and france, gazing down our nose at mexico or chile - and we declare that we are different. and we are, and we should be. but the most basic, fundemental mindset of our culture is identical, and therefore we are, at end, the same.
when details of cuisine and method of salvation and climate are stripped away, our culture boils down to this belief: the world is ours to populate and devastate - we are the highest expression of god's creation or natural selection, and, as such, not subject to the laws which regulate all other life on earth.
but look: we are not humanity. there are a thousand ways to live. there are a thousand ways to tend the earth - we've just found the one which breeds famine and instability and death. there are a thousand ways to commune with the gods - we have found one which separates us from each other while requiring that we are all the same.
i am not flawed; nor am i god's favorite. i am not exempt from the laws of nature any more than i am from the law of gravity - or entropy. my earth is sacred, and i am exactly as sacred and the spider i killed this morning and the redwoods i walked through holding his hand.
sigh.
again - read something by daniel quinn.
they argue, "yes, but if we didn't divide along racial lines, we would fine something else to place between us. eye color, hair color, height, weight, type of sneeze." they say, "yes, but we humans will always look for our differences and hold them up as boundaries."
well i'm saying, "as well we should."
you could empoy a clich� here: variety is the spice of life. except that without it, life is not only dull, it is delicate, vulnerable and unstable. every facet of natural history proves that diversity wins out over monotony. call it a manifestation of the law of entropy; call it common sense. a thousand niches will be better filled by a thousand species than any single one, and in exactly the same way, a thousand cultures will better survive than any single one.
we are not humanity.
we have created a culture, born of the twin snakes of salvationist religion and ruthless agriculture, that flaunts natural law at every point. we are seeing the effects of our blind enthusiasm: nuclear war, famine, global warming, massive erosion, species extinction, a gradual shattering of the ecological system which is accelerating at an exponential rate - one which mirrors our perverse population explosion. but we are not humanity.
we are only a single culture. not america, not even "the west." for all our opulence, we have no corner on this market. the vast rice paddies of china are no less destructive than our forest-razed grazing lands and endless fields of genetically engeneered potatoes. and the guilt and grotesque glory of christianity is joined by islam, judaism, buddhism, taoism, hinduism, all the branches and subsets thereof - every religion which teaches that it is only god's favorite creatures that are flawed, that the gulf between our lifestyle and one in keeping with reality can be filled by a redemption, whether internal or divine. we look at each other - peering across the ocean to jordan and taiwan and france, gazing down our nose at mexico or chile - and we declare that we are different. and we are, and we should be. but the most basic, fundemental mindset of our culture is identical, and therefore we are, at end, the same.
when details of cuisine and method of salvation and climate are stripped away, our culture boils down to this belief: the world is ours to populate and devastate - we are the highest expression of god's creation or natural selection, and, as such, not subject to the laws which regulate all other life on earth.
but look: we are not humanity. there are a thousand ways to live. there are a thousand ways to tend the earth - we've just found the one which breeds famine and instability and death. there are a thousand ways to commune with the gods - we have found one which separates us from each other while requiring that we are all the same.
i am not flawed; nor am i god's favorite. i am not exempt from the laws of nature any more than i am from the law of gravity - or entropy. my earth is sacred, and i am exactly as sacred and the spider i killed this morning and the redwoods i walked through holding his hand.
sigh.
again - read something by daniel quinn.