But let’s return to the bird vs. human comparison. There isn’t a vast difference between us. The goal of the human species is also survival. Currently, we’re incredibly successful, likely reaching a population of eight billion, and nine billion isn’t impossible. However, at this number, the biosphere's collapse is inevitable. Some even suggest that modern "algae grazing" can support eleven billion people on this planet... NO. Because, in the meantime, the burning of hydrocarbons that enabled our population explosion has released too much carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere, reaching levels from three million years ago when the planet was much warmer, and palm trees grew at the South Pole. A warming atmosphere brings extreme changes. Yes, there have always been fluctuations, but there’s a well-documented continuous warming! Many believe we’re merely exiting the previous ice age... But in just two hundred years?!? Are you out of your mind, human?!? This pace makes me soil my pants. Because the process is accelerating! Our carbon dioxide emissions aren’t decreasing. In the foreseeable future, a series of crises will shake our civilization, presenting significant challenges for all of us.
Unfortunately, as living beings, we are driven by short-term goals: self-preservation to be fit for raising our offspring. These are so strong that they absolutely override the long-term interest of our species, which is survival. Naturally, nearly eight billion individuals might seem like a solid foundation against any catastrophe. However, climate change fundamentally alters environmental conditions. Hello, Mad Max world! The survival skills of the highly specialized modern human are not very robust. We are ridiculously soft. As soon as tropical nights occur in summer, where the temperature doesn’t drop below 25 degrees Celsius, we won’t be able to rest, and many will install air conditioners. As if that would solve our fundamental problem of not being able to endure heat. Not to mention that within a few years, due to too many cooling systems, the power supply will collapse... right in the middle of a severe heatwave. It won’t be enjoyable. So we’re responding completely wrong to every problem we generate. While chasing our short-term goals, we’re destroying our world.
My dark green philosophical construct is growing, and it won’t fit into a single post. I’m sure the word “poverty” in the title made your stomach turn, and you think I’m an idiot. Deprivation is always so frightening... Do you know what you should never be deprived of? Your common sense, your body’s strength, your right to make decisions, the ability to shape your destiny, and of course, your loved ones. Everything else, all the junk surrounding you, is irrelevant, replaceable, and can be substituted with more environmentally friendly tools. Or do you really identify yourself with your belongings, your status symbols? Don’t be foolish. Please. I always observe the living being, not deceived by the trash that surrounds it. In fact, with all our stuff, we’re just like the garbage bug that covers itself in dirt to camouflage. What are you hiding from? Does the uncomfortable truth bother you that, for instance, you have surprisingly little control over shaping your life? That security is merely an illusion. And everything, absolutely everything, is horribly unpredictable and dangerous? Welcome to reality! And everything is much worse than even I see it.
What’s also very important is to realize that as living beings, we are responsible for life, for preserving life on the planet. According to our current knowledge, Earth is the only place in the unimaginably vast universe where life exists. So what’s more important? For you as a living being. I’ve written it so many times... Be surrounded by a living environment!
Another thing is those comforting little lies with which the mind, terrified of annihilation, soothes itself that everything will be wonderful in the afterlife, the next life, the resurrection, etc. I’ll tell you that consciousness is merely an illusion generated by the brain. It’s not real. Yes, however incredible it may sound, the one writing this post is a temporary entity. Unfortunately, I know for sure that I’m not the same as, for example, my seven-year-old self. That being is long dead. And the current one is gradually deteriorating, transforming into my future self. Of course, some memories and impressions remain from my previous phases, as the accumulated information is stored in my long-term memory for a long time, but when Alzheimer’s or any other dementia sets in, everything will be erased. So, what am I, or what are you? What do you think we call a soul? Something that doesn’t exist, merely a desired miasma. I’ve seen animals and humans dying. The same process, and at the end of neither did I feel a miasma floating into an ethereal space from the lifeless body. Which of your Selves do you think moves on?
Let’s leave fairy tales and comforting self-deceptions aside; factually, we have a single task: to preserve life on Earth. Everything else is useless time-wasting. And currently, we are dismantling life on Earth. In other words, we’re acting against life. Well, I somehow don’t feel proud to be supposedly intelligent. Just an animal that accepted the system it was born into, and although it recognized the paradoxical situation that it’s unnatural, what could it do? Besides not starting a family and keeping its consumption very low. Oh, damn, I’m a nail in the coffin of the biosphere too!
Note: I first published this in Hungarian in 2020. You can read it here.
Nincsenek megjegyzések:
Megjegyzés küldése