50th Anniversary

This year marks the 50^th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s seminal book, Silent Spring.  In re-reading it after all these years, I am shaken, jolted, struck, shocked, and disturbed, all over again.  Why?  Because although we congratulated ourselves at having cycled back half a notch, we have in reality changed no ethic at all.  Sure, there are some bright spots, some successes, and our air, water, and soil MIGHT overall be a bit better than they were then, and yes, certain chemicals are banned (in the US) and rivers are rarely on fire anymore.  But we have no true environmental ethic.  We have slowed down—maybe—our descent into environmental self-poisoning and self-degeneration.  But we haven’t stopped, let alone reversed course.  We produce poisons, and continue to diffuse them everywhere, and they come back to do us in, as individuals and civilization.  When she dedicated her book to Albert Schweitzer, and his quote,“Man has lost the capacity to foresee and forestall.  He will end by destroying the earth,” she hoped we would really wake up.  We merely cracked one eyelid—and, with a few notable exceptions, went right on as before. 

Extraterrestrial and other existence beings must look on us as the most bizarre and unwise supposedly sentient creatures anywhere.  It is bad enough that we are a species that preys upon itself, but we also consciously poison ourselves, our habitats, and our posterity, not to mention the life around us.

Where are you, homo sapiens sapiens (wise, wise, humans)?  Do you really think you are separate from nature? Our self-destructive path is evident, yet we choose to ignore, instead embracing denial, diversion, escapism, and illusion.  We are not stewards of creation, we are monsters—mindless, selfish, destructive monsters.

Something to think—remember that seldom used faculty?—about the next time we have to choose, in another false dichotomy, “between jobs/money/foreign dependence/etc. and the environment.”