Yes, a miracle might happen. But it's not
what we should be planning for. We should be planning to do the work
ourselves and it starts by stopping. We have to stop making
things worse, day-in and day-out, before we can ever hope to make
things better. This planet is in sad, sad shape and only a
nearly-universal attitude adjustment can save it. When the best the
U.S. Government can do to save the planet is publish commemorative
endangered species stamps, something is seriously out of kilter.
What Hasn't Been Proven To Exist Might Still Exist.
And if it does, so what? What's the point? Do we base our own
behaviors on fears or dreams of what might exist, or on
what is a reality right in front of our faces, right now as we
speak to each other (or read this online)? Yes, a miracle might
solve all our problems. But it would have to be a pretty big miracle,
and it would have to happen mighty soon.
The Missing Miracle: Our Rational Behavior.
Human beings have the power to fix this planet. But we have to base our
behavior on the choices that are presented to us by Nature,
or by God, or by whatever means it has happened that we are here. We
cannot wait for a miracle: We have to be the miracle!
You mean me?
Each of us, on this tiny, fragile planet ... We are not really going
anywhere else, and we are not really here for very long. Each of us,
and even all of us as a species, are but a small speck in the cosmos.
But we are each a big piece of our own existence. We matter
to our family, and we matter to our friends. We matter to our children
most of all, and to our children's children and so on ad infinitum.
Or ad nauseum. Which will we provide for our decendents? A
future that is nauseating, or one that is nice? We control the
destiny of future generations. Our own children's children. That
is a responsibility one should not take lightly.
If there is a God and He is watching us, fine. More
power to us. I think that's wonderful. But whether there is or
there isn't, or He is or He isn't: What should we do next?
Let's all foul our little space around us and make everything yecchy
and stinky and disgusting and wretched and dangerous and poisonous
and radioactive.
Or better yet, let's not.
We own this planet -- we run it. We grease it, we oil it, we clean
it's spark plugs. We eliminate and eradicate the species we don't
like--even the peoples we don't like. We drive this poor little
planet as hard as we can.
But there's a limit to what it can take. We can, for example,
eliminate species with ease, but we are a long and torturous way from
being able to create them. We can observe evolution but we cannot
duplicate it, for it is a global experiment. And whether God is
watching us or not, He has not shown us a solution to the wretched
state we have made of this planet.
We have to find that solution ourselves. If it exists, it
is within us. It's within each of us to know the truth.
The Commies Got There First.
They tasted the foul odor of cover-ups and lies. They saw the
deformities, they lost their friends and family. They died. They
are still dying.
We are not far behind. We are a nation of polluters and we are vile
in the way we attack other species, and other peoples, and most
stunning of all -- our own decendents. While building Hoover Dam to
last 3,000 years as a working hydroelectric dam, we build nuclear
stockpiles to fight against an enemy that doesn't exist. We ply the
seas with giant megadeathships filled to the brim with poisons of all
sorts daring anyone to oppose us.
This is not the behavior of the
righteous, it is the behavior of the bully.
While Saddam Hussien's troops were burning
the oil fields of Kuwait in the biggest act of mass ecological terrorism
the world has seen, we were firing several million shells of
depleted uranium pellets into the same soil, pellets which are not
nearly as benign as they may sound. We were bombing their
infrastructure--dams, dikes, levees, power stations, bridges,
tunnel entrances, transmission lines--we knocked them back to
somewhere around the 16th century, in 90 days or so of intensive
"pinpoint" bombing.
We even bombed a nuclear power plant!
The health effects of that action will continue for many centuries.
Long after the sands of the desert have covered up Saddam's infernal
mess and Saddam himself, and all of us, are laid out in our graves,
the bombed-out reactor will be releasing it's toxins to the
environment. We did this. What have we to say for ourselves?
Or to the people whom even President Bush said at the time we have no
quarrel with (only with their leader)? What have we to say to
their children, or their children's children? We did this, when
we didn't even have a quarrel with them? Imagine what we might
have done, if we had been angry!
And we hardly bloodied our own noses. War
without blood, practically, we thought. A few deaths from friendly
fire, and a few skirmishes with the enemy, but really: Hardly anything.
We could go out and do it like this every year. War without
blood.
War without whose blood?
War without our blood, that is.
And we did this with our wizardry weaponry: With laser-guided, high-tech,
globally-positioned, fire-and-forget, over-the-horizon,
terrain-following, Hussien-seeking missiles. We blew up schools and
mosques (by accident, of course) and T.V. stations and apartment
buildings. Of course, we missed one little thing -- the madman in
the middle.
We have made war
imaginable again -- we imagine we can wage a war and not get hurt at
all. It's almost true! What will stop us from waging war when we
are sure that only the enemy, and not one American, will be killed?
Morality? Is that the only defense other people will have against an
attack from us? No. They will still have infiltration and terrorism
within our borders. And as an open nation, a nation of peoples from other
nations, we cannot close the borders. We cannot deport or jail all the
insurgents that could possibly try to hurt us. If we have learned nothing
else in the last few years, as terrorism hit home, we must have at
least learned that we are vulnerable from within. A free nation will
always be vulnerable from within. And for all our
weaponry, the best in the world, we have one stated goal--to live
as free people.
Let's stay on target.
We have to know what's really going on before we can change our
behavior. Each of us has a role to play in presenting these truths
to ourselves and to others. Only by admitting what is really happening
can we expect to change our behavior.
Be well-read, and be skeptical. The news is not the news. The free
society is not free. And the mess we've made, we will have to sleep
in until such time as we choose, as a people, to clean it up.