Defenders of Wildlife asked for voices and donations to join their stalwart opposition to Big Oil in the Arctic. I said:
"The non-destroyed parts of the earth are irreplaceable. It's an easy matter for humans to gauge, drill, set afire, flood, damage, violently extract from anywhere materials they wish to sell in order to make fortunes for themselves.
It is not easy -- and mostly is impossible -- for the earth to recover. While the destruction usually happens in a short time the recovery -- if possible -- would need eons.
There is a vision beyond that of individual men who wish to make themselves as rich as kings and emperors of former days.
No matter how much money they have it is unlikely that they or their descendants will be able to flee to another planet if this one is irrevocably ruined.
A new consciousness is arising. To continue to live -- and for our descendants to live -- humanity needs to reconsider the ideas of domination and endless "conquering" and begin to see the sense of another idea: taking care and become actual rather than sham stewards of the earth and of the web of life.
https://secure.defenders.org/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&page=UserAction&id=2295&autologin=true&s_src=3WDE1201A1B11&s_subsrc=enews_donors&JServSessionIdr004=qlefb0to24.app226a
Friday, October 7, 2011
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Revision of earlier post re elephants
This is another version of my post a few hours ago:
There was more news of poachers seizing elephants and scarcely minding whether they were dead before they began gouging their tusks from their faces. On Aug 9, 2011 I thought: If we continue to murder this world we murder our dreams, our future and our souls. Elephants are among the most visible exemplars of our co-inhabitants in our planetary home. Because we can kill them, we think they rank below us in life.
We human beings have rarely "seen" the lives of the infinitely variable non-humans, from microscopic to large. It is typical for each human to spend one hundred per cent of his energy and consciousness in providing for himself. Trillions of volumes, oceans of words collectively and individually spew continually out of our production facilities as we focus on our major goal: to understand ourselves. Alongside that, rare and random thoughts for them, our co-inhabitant non-humans. How strange that we have always thought of them as nothing more than food and use, to be murdered, tamed for work, or imprisoned for "study" and entertainment.
We look outward into space and think the "new" worlds lie there. The true new worlds lie around us, beneath and alongside us. We want to go "into the stars" when we have never except in rare cases traveled "In To" the world in which we live. We kill, label, capture, and experiment upon the other beings alive with us. We have never yet imagined the opportunity for what we could know, for how far we could reach, if we looked at the world of life outside of man as a great and sacred university, larger and deeper than our minds can grasp. There is no entry into that world unless we go there in a different approach than dominion, a different approach than domination.
The richness of knowledge and consciousness that we can learn from them can be described as infinite because we in our limited thoughts are stuck with denigrating and caricaturing them, stuck in our own concept of our "superiority." It is a commonplace in the world of science fiction and most other "fantastical" thought that we humans will "use up" this earth and flee "into the stars," leaving a lifeless toxic planet behind.
Rather than understanding, we will kill it. Nothing except dominion. Question: Will we remain the species we are, all matters solved by bringing death?
In the world of usual human life as it is now lived, the richness in the world we refuse to see can never come to us, the human animal, unless we make such an evolutionary turn as we have never made before. Unless we seek with intention and courage to see how to find pathways to the undiscovered richness of the world of the non-humans, the pathways to a communication that has never existed. Who can say what it would be like if we were able to look with truly new eyes upon them, our co-inhabitants, who share the brief days of life with us? Who can say that therein does not lie the chance we never yet imagined?
Francis Bacon said we should consider all questions in term of the "uses of life." He did not specify or mean "human life." He meant life itself. Life in the greater meaning that we see, if at all, in glimmers flickering from peripheral vision. The microbe, the elephant. We declaim and declare as if our much-vaunted intellects were bullhorns, louder and louder, as if to obliterate any slightest sound from where we have never been. Indeed our intellects are more like half-broken chimes on the porch of an abandoned house. We need to look outward far beyond our human eyes, our human brains, our cultures, to look outward from our bone-bound brains to life, to the parallel lives, to the lives we think of "other" and "below," to life as we have not seen it. There is more than we have ever known, worlds of wonder and wisdom so far away and separated from us by the tangle, crash and noise of egos and cultures that most of us doubt their existence.
We do not need to go there, to the unknown worlds, for sensation or distraction. We need to go there because we are lost.
Elephants Killed for Their Tusks
There was more news of poachers seizing elephants and scarcely minding whether they were dead before they began gouging their tusks from their faces. On Aug 9, 2011 I thought: If we continue to murder this world we murder our dreams, our future and our souls. Elephants are among the most visible exemplars of our co-inhabitants in our planetary home. Because we can kill them, we think they rank below us in life.
We human beings have rarely "seen" the lives of the infinitely variable non-humans, from microscopic to large. It is typical for each human to spend one hundred per cent of his energy and consciousness in providing for himself. Trillions of volumes, oceans of words collectively and individually spew continually out of our production facilities as we focus on our major goal: to understand ourselves. Alongside that, rare and random thoughts for them, our co-inhabitant non-humans. How strange that we have always thought of them as nothing more than food and use, to be murdered, tamed for work, or imprisoned for "study" and entertainment.
We look outward into space and think the "new" worlds lie there. The true new worlds lie around us, beneath and alongside us. We want to go "into the stars" when we have never except in rare cases traveled "In To" the world in which we live. We kill, label, capture, and experiment upon the other beings alive with us. We have never yet imagined the opportunity for what we could know, for how far we could reach, if we looked at the world of life outside of man as a great and sacred university, larger and deeper than our minds can grasp. There is no entry into that world unless we go there in a different approach than dominion, a different approach than domination.
The richness of knowledge and consciousness that we can learn from them can be described as infinite because we in our limited thoughts are stuck with denigrating and caricaturing them, stuck in our own concept of our "superiority." It is a commonplace in the world of science fiction and most other "fantastical" thought that we humans will "use up" this earth and flee "into the stars," leaving a lifeless toxic planet behind.
Rather than understanding, we will kill it. Nothing except dominion. Question: Will we remain the species we are, all matters solved by bringing death?
In the world of usual human life as it is now lived, the richness in the world we refuse to see can never come to us, the human animal, unless we make an evolutionary turn. Unless we can seek with intention and courage to see how to find pathways to the undiscovered richness of the world of the non-humans, the pathways to a communication that has never existed. Who can say what it would be like if we were able to look with truly new eyes upon them, our co-inhabitants, who share the brief days of life with us? Who can say that therein does not lie the chance we never yet imagined?
Francis Bacon said we should consider all questions in term of the "uses of life." He did not specify or mean "human life." He meant life itself. We need to look outward far beyond our human eyes, our human brains, our cultures, to look outward from our bone-bound brains to life, to the other parallel lives, to the lives we think of "other" and "below." Referring to the playwright, there are more things than we have ever known, worlds of wonder and wisdom we have never imagined. We do not need to go there for sensation or distraction. We need to go there because we are lost.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
I Wrote Obama Again
Dear President Obama,
In many parts of the world our power as a nation is connected to a perception of us as killers, a perception that some of our policies re-enforce. When does the time come to step up to an actual morality in stead of the high-flown language?
Conducting war with its unthinkable killing is an activity that humanity in its most enlightened thinking has moved beyond. The question is in the air: Why stay in that primitive past? Have you thought about what it actually means that we conduct and encourage wholesale massacre of the “animals” that live on our American lands?
First, consider the other man-decided deaths, the ongoing decision to kill those who have no voice: the “animals” who are our co-inhabitants in America and on the earth. American representatives work in many parts of the world to encourage local peoples to stop killing local “animals” because such short-sightedness blocks their opportunity for tourism, one of the most effective forms of infusing money into their economies. In our country we think different rules apply. "They" should stop killing "wild" animals -- not us.
We, including you -- President Obama -- speak continually of our high ideals and our humanity. How can you reconcile these ideals with allowing the Interior Secretary to sit motionless during the murders of an entire wolf pack in one of our revered places, Yellowstone and the Northern Rockies? What was the wolves’ undoing? They ate a sheep. What is the cost of a sheep compared to killing an entire pack which had become known throughout our country and the world? One of the pack’s mothers was radio-collared. The wolf cubs have been left to die.
Who can say humanity is not now in its transition time of life on the planet -- live, die or stay as a remnant? That transition time is not arriving or coming in a distant future. It is here. Will we decide to live differently in the transition or cement our feet into the unknowing past? How do we measure, for instance, the interests of emperor-rich ranchers with those of our disastrously dwindling fellow creatures, such as wolves? According to a god, to science or to mysteries the planet exists as a living organism with its own life, necessities and essential patterns. Wiser ones talk about the tipping point for the planet and therefore for humanity. Why would we think the killing of fellow “animal” inhabitants does not figure into the question? Why would be think the web, the interconnectedness of all life, is not important?
Will we eventually use means other than killing to figure out how to exist with our fellow human beings? In as much as that is an honorable and perhaps necessary aspiration why would not the same thinking be used for our fellow inhabitants, “animals”? Why is it the case that all land on the globe is owned by humans or human-sourced entities that act, elementarily, with the power of long ago emperors or kings?
Does anyone think the planet can exist denuded of “animals” except for those imprisoned for food, those in laboratories, and those in places such as zoos and circuses as a source of commercial entertainment?
Is it the destiny of humanity to kill all life because the human mind can not do other than consider “animals” as a momentary or permanent obstacle to human power and aspiration?
Please.
In many parts of the world our power as a nation is connected to a perception of us as killers, a perception that some of our policies re-enforce. When does the time come to step up to an actual morality in stead of the high-flown language?
Conducting war with its unthinkable killing is an activity that humanity in its most enlightened thinking has moved beyond. The question is in the air: Why stay in that primitive past? Have you thought about what it actually means that we conduct and encourage wholesale massacre of the “animals” that live on our American lands?
First, consider the other man-decided deaths, the ongoing decision to kill those who have no voice: the “animals” who are our co-inhabitants in America and on the earth. American representatives work in many parts of the world to encourage local peoples to stop killing local “animals” because such short-sightedness blocks their opportunity for tourism, one of the most effective forms of infusing money into their economies. In our country we think different rules apply. "They" should stop killing "wild" animals -- not us.
We, including you -- President Obama -- speak continually of our high ideals and our humanity. How can you reconcile these ideals with allowing the Interior Secretary to sit motionless during the murders of an entire wolf pack in one of our revered places, Yellowstone and the Northern Rockies? What was the wolves’ undoing? They ate a sheep. What is the cost of a sheep compared to killing an entire pack which had become known throughout our country and the world? One of the pack’s mothers was radio-collared. The wolf cubs have been left to die.
Who can say humanity is not now in its transition time of life on the planet -- live, die or stay as a remnant? That transition time is not arriving or coming in a distant future. It is here. Will we decide to live differently in the transition or cement our feet into the unknowing past? How do we measure, for instance, the interests of emperor-rich ranchers with those of our disastrously dwindling fellow creatures, such as wolves? According to a god, to science or to mysteries the planet exists as a living organism with its own life, necessities and essential patterns. Wiser ones talk about the tipping point for the planet and therefore for humanity. Why would we think the killing of fellow “animal” inhabitants does not figure into the question? Why would be think the web, the interconnectedness of all life, is not important?
Will we eventually use means other than killing to figure out how to exist with our fellow human beings? In as much as that is an honorable and perhaps necessary aspiration why would not the same thinking be used for our fellow inhabitants, “animals”? Why is it the case that all land on the globe is owned by humans or human-sourced entities that act, elementarily, with the power of long ago emperors or kings?
Does anyone think the planet can exist denuded of “animals” except for those imprisoned for food, those in laboratories, and those in places such as zoos and circuses as a source of commercial entertainment?
Is it the destiny of humanity to kill all life because the human mind can not do other than consider “animals” as a momentary or permanent obstacle to human power and aspiration?
Please.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
UPSET BY UNENDING AMERICAN WAR
SHAME SHAME SHAME -- The Afghanistan war has disappointed me more than all your other missteps.
“You can’t just convince them through projects and goodwill,” a Marine officer said. “You have to show up at their door with two companies of Marines and start killing people. That’s how you start convincing them.” Comment by a Marine officer to the Washington Post for its April 16 story about “signs of progress” for President Obama’s surge strategy in southern Afghanistan.
“We started stacking bodies like cordwood,” said an officer in Sangin, who like other Marines asked for anonymity to speak frankly. “And they came to a point where they said, ‘Holy [expletive], there aren’t that many of us left.’ ”
SHAME. Though I still support you, it has changed to a position of "least worse of the worst." Your actions in Aghanistan are as disgraceful as anything by George Bush. I can think of no lower thing to say. Examine your conscience. Leave your "cool" for an hour or so and get a backbone and a renewed grip on morality.
“You can’t just convince them through projects and goodwill,” a Marine officer said. “You have to show up at their door with two companies of Marines and start killing people. That’s how you start convincing them.” Comment by a Marine officer to the Washington Post for its April 16 story about “signs of progress” for President Obama’s surge strategy in southern Afghanistan.
“We started stacking bodies like cordwood,” said an officer in Sangin, who like other Marines asked for anonymity to speak frankly. “And they came to a point where they said, ‘Holy [expletive], there aren’t that many of us left.’ ”
SHAME. Though I still support you, it has changed to a position of "least worse of the worst." Your actions in Aghanistan are as disgraceful as anything by George Bush. I can think of no lower thing to say. Examine your conscience. Leave your "cool" for an hour or so and get a backbone and a renewed grip on morality.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
River Monsters
I sent this to the Animal Planet channel about the River Monsters show.
"I am distressed about "River Monsters." First, no animals or living creatures are monsters. That is a sensationalized and ignorant term to allure the general public, already conditioned to be attracted to fear and anxiety. River Monsters represents an atavistic and primitive approach to other-than-human life as something to be captured, exploited and killed. I expect a more enlightened approach from Animal Planet. Thank you."
"I am distressed about "River Monsters." First, no animals or living creatures are monsters. That is a sensationalized and ignorant term to allure the general public, already conditioned to be attracted to fear and anxiety. River Monsters represents an atavistic and primitive approach to other-than-human life as something to be captured, exploited and killed. I expect a more enlightened approach from Animal Planet. Thank you."
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