In the early 2000's I was looking death in the eye from cancer and ( strange as this seems) it struck me that if I died I would really miss this planet-- its beauty, seasons, animals, flowers. Reading the two Tom's I am right back in that anticipated mourning.....only this time its source is a human self- destruction ( "suicidal" as one …
In the early 2000's I was looking death in the eye from cancer and ( strange as this seems) it struck me that if I died I would really miss this planet-- its beauty, seasons, animals, flowers. Reading the two Tom's I am right back in that anticipated mourning.....only this time its source is a human self- destruction ( "suicidal" as one of them says) on a scale beyond imagining. And even if I am dead before the planet has its last gasp I mourn for the generations of grandchildren who will be left.
And I am angry beyond words that it is the egos and greed of madmen that keep bringing us , our children, our grandchildren to the nuclear brink. Zelensky is saying it, over and over: the anihilation of Ukraine and Ukrainians is just a microcosm of what can happen......
These were important pieces and I thank you because you are hammering away at the complexity of the crises facing us...but they leave me almost despondent!!
Consider that we got pushed out of the trees (we didn't jump - we were different from the others so they got rid of us) into the middle of a million-year drought, then we discovered our "higher powers" (art, spirituality etc.) in the middle of a quarter-million year ice age. I've long thought that we appear to be a "bad weather animal" - we do better in worse times, which brings out that thing that differentiates ourselves from our other fellow travelers on the planet. Call me crazy, but I remain optimistic. Perhaps for the same reason my old friend the late Dick Best told me his fellow fliers and sailors remained optimistic between Pearl Harbor and Midway: "the alternative was unthinkable."
Or did we recognize our difference and choose to leave that tree we had been marginalized to at the edge of the jungle, setting off to find what was beyond the horizon viewed from its branches?
In the early 2000's I was looking death in the eye from cancer and ( strange as this seems) it struck me that if I died I would really miss this planet-- its beauty, seasons, animals, flowers. Reading the two Tom's I am right back in that anticipated mourning.....only this time its source is a human self- destruction ( "suicidal" as one of them says) on a scale beyond imagining. And even if I am dead before the planet has its last gasp I mourn for the generations of grandchildren who will be left.
And I am angry beyond words that it is the egos and greed of madmen that keep bringing us , our children, our grandchildren to the nuclear brink. Zelensky is saying it, over and over: the anihilation of Ukraine and Ukrainians is just a microcosm of what can happen......
These were important pieces and I thank you because you are hammering away at the complexity of the crises facing us...but they leave me almost despondent!!
Consider that we got pushed out of the trees (we didn't jump - we were different from the others so they got rid of us) into the middle of a million-year drought, then we discovered our "higher powers" (art, spirituality etc.) in the middle of a quarter-million year ice age. I've long thought that we appear to be a "bad weather animal" - we do better in worse times, which brings out that thing that differentiates ourselves from our other fellow travelers on the planet. Call me crazy, but I remain optimistic. Perhaps for the same reason my old friend the late Dick Best told me his fellow fliers and sailors remained optimistic between Pearl Harbor and Midway: "the alternative was unthinkable."
Or did we recognize our difference and choose to leave that tree we had been marginalized to at the edge of the jungle, setting off to find what was beyond the horizon viewed from its branches?