REMEMBER

Given what today is, the message is all on the Professor and Housewife side of this blog...

Pleading With Their Tormentors Because "Their" Servants and Protectors Are Neither

Want an indication that the environmental battle is being lost?  The National Resource Defense Council’s best answer (and Robert Redford’s) to strip mining on public land is to ask you the citizen to write a letter to the CEOs of the strip mining companies. They aren’t even bothering to ask you to write a letter to your Congressman, or to the President, or the Secretary of the Department of the Interior. 

Perhaps ownership of the country has become nakedly apparent.

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.”

General Dislike and General Despising

People think I’m easier on the Democrats because I like them.  Uhm, no, I don’t.  I just despise what their opponents do, and that tends to seem to let them off the hook, but only in comparison.  

Press On It

Anyone miss me? :)

The things we accept at face value often fall apart when we press on them even a little.  I thought about this in all the traveling I’ve done lately.  You see these little placards in hotel rooms about all the “Earth responsible water and detergent savings” initiatives at hotels.  How it will save so much if you hang your towels, etc. up so they can be used again.  In my experience, either the hotels don’t REALLY care, or they don’t do any follow up.  Because in what I’ve seen traveling to a lot of different places, it doesn’t work.  Your towel doesn’t get hung up.  It gets replaced with a fresh one, and the one you hung up gets washed.  Why?  I can only speculate that the (largely) immigrants who provide maid service at many hotels—immigrants who are poorly educated, maybe illiterate (at least for English)—are in any case a bit overworked.  So whether it’s can’t read, won’t read, don’t have time to read, or maybe wouldn’t care if could and did read, it’s easier to just replace the towel.  But my main feeling is that if it was REALLY important to the hotel and its management, the maids would be trained, with follow-up.

What did you think, that they just used the hair dryer to dry the towel so it wouldn’t feel wet when you touched it? :)

Spank Daddy

A prime reason the country is in bad shape because you, the citizen, probably know WAY more about:

Your favorite sports and sports teams

Your house and homes in general

Your car and cars in general

Shopping and bargains and stores

Clothes

Pets

Food

Grilling and barbecuing

Drama

Video games

TV, internet, social media, and entertainment and diversion in general

Making money

You get what you focus on, because that’s what you consider important.  And what you don’t focus on gets dictated to you.  And then you claim you are “powerless,” to do anything about it.  Which converges to be self-fulfilling prophecy, manufactured reality, and dictated result.

Absolutely Speaking

“I am done.”

“We are through, forever.”

“My biological father made his choice to not be a part of my life.  I don’t care about him anymore.”

“I’ll never be like that again.”

Oh, humans, and their funny words.  Spoken into the ether, into the universe, into eternity. 

The ether, the universe, and eternity all laugh back.

When it comes to relationships, nothing is so certain as uncertainty.  In fact, what becomes unusual is when someone actually fulfills, to the letter, what they say.

Because:

You probably aren’t done.  You might be momentarily frustrated, furious, hurt, or something else, but when you calm down, you’ll likely be back in (sometimes illogically or even incredibly) for another round.

Forever is so long your puny and time-bound consciousness can’t even adequately conceive it.  But it seems to make you feel better to thunder about finality, although disinterested observers probably only think it makes you look silly.

Of course you care about your father.  No matter how bad or absent he has been, he’s your father.   You would forgive him a thousand times for a chance at acceptance, at connection, at love.

Those who issue guarantees about the future spit in the wind, and often set themselves up to be liars. But we seem to have a desire for ourselves of the fortitude of futuristic pronouncements, and so the solitary, biological, limited-senses, mortal unit presumes to pronounce what he or she cannot even see, let alone have certainty of power to determine!

Ever get the feeling that otherworldly beings might somewhere be chuckling endlessly at us? :)