If One Takes God

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Science and politics

Out of the picture

One can get

A different view

Of the environment as

The earth our home is

Our cosmic convertible

Top down wind in our hair

Racing through space

As Gaia

• : the hypothesis that the living and  nonliving components of earth  function as a single system in such a way that the living component regulates and maintains conditions (such as the temperature of the  ocean or composition of the  atmosphere) so as to be suitable for  life

also : this system regarded as a  single organism

– M-W.com

Consider that if no humans were on the planet, it goes through phases regardless of us being here. It has been around or what we have been told for around 4.5 billion years. Give or take 50 million years. It takes 230 million years just to circumvent the Milky Way.

Which is quite a while, yet hardly relatable in the scope of time, compared with our time on it. If the amount of “time” was / is 500 years, it would not be any more comprehensible. I’ve only been the sun some 50 years plus. Give or take, makes me……. Jack Benny’s age…..39.

“The earliest evidence of Homo sapiens (that’s us) comes from fossils dated to just over 300,000 years ago excavated from a cave in Morocco. The bones of at least five people were found alongside tools, gazelle bones, and lumps of charcoal.”

– theguardian.com


Instead, the din of screams that shout out we must save the environment, quell the voices that suggest we ought all get along and enjoy the ride on our magnificent spaceship and appreciate what is essentially our non existent time spent on it.

There is nothing we can do. Therefore, the environment is basically the latest bogeyman in a string of distraction bogeyman hidden under our mind bed to be fearful of. To keep the masses fighting and dying amongst themselves while someone goes to the bank.

While we puppet ourselves, on a Shakespearian world stage, pulled by invisible strings, better known as the economy. What we eat, where we live, and worst of all, how we treat other people. All those “others” riding in the same insane convertible.

The un-pinpoint-able bogeyman just gets a name change. Previous to the environment, it was “terrorism” or “communism.” Anything vague, portions of the collective can wiggle their finger at to eliminate or protect or protect themselves from does the trick.


“The Planet Is Fine”

“We’re so self-important, so self-important. Everybody’s gonna save something now: “Save the trees! Save the bees! Save the whales! Save those snails!” and the greatest arrogance of all:

“Save the planet!”

What?!

Are these fucking people kidding me?!

Save the planet?!

We don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet!

We haven’t learned how to care for one another and we’re gonna save the fucking planet?! I’m getting tired of that shit! I’m getting tired of that shit! I’m tired of fucking Earth Day! I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists; these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren’t enough bicycle paths! People trying to make the world safe for their Volvo’s!

Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. They don’t care about the planet; not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live; their own habitat. They’re worried that someday in the future, they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.

Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet… nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine… the people are fucked! Difference! The planet is fine! Compared to the people, THE PLANET IS DOING GREAT: Been here four and a half billion years! Do you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years, we’ve been here what? 100,000? Maybe 200,000?

And we’ve only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over 200 years. 200 years versus four and a half billion and we have the conceit to think that somehow, we’re a threat? That somehow, we’re going to put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that’s just a-floatin’ around the sun?

The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us: been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drifts, solar flares, sunspots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles, hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages, and we think…………. some plastic bags and aluminum cans, are going to make a difference?

The planet isn’t going anywhere… we are! We’re going away! Pack your shit folks! We’re going away and we won’t leave much of a trace either, thank God for that… maybe a little styrofoam… maybe… little styrofoam. The planet will be here, we’ll be long gone; just another failed mutation; just another closed-end biological mistake; an evolutionary cul-de-sac.

The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas, a surface nuisance.

You wanna know how the planet’s doing? Ask those people in Pompeii who are frozen into position from volcanic ash how the planet’s doing. Wanna know if the planet’s all right? Ask those people in Mexico City or Armenia or a hundred other places buried under thousands of tons of earthquake rubble if they feel like a threat to the planet this week. How about those people in Kilauea, Hawaii who build their homes right next to an active volcano and then wonder why they have lava in the living room?

The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm:

The Earth plus Plastic. The Earth doesn’t share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the Earth! The Earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the Earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place: it wanted plastic for itself, didn’t know how to make it, needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old philosophical question:

“Why are we here?”

PLASTIC!!!……….. ASSHOLES!!!


So the plastic is here, our job is done, we can be phased out now, and I think that’s really started already, don’t you? I mean, to be fair, the planet probably sees us as a mild threat; something to be dealt with, and I’m sure the planet will defend itself in the manner of a large organism. Like a beehive or an ant colony can muster a defence, I’m sure the planet will think of something. What would you do if you were the planet trying to defend against this pesky, troublesome species?

Let’s see… what might… hmm… viruses! Viruses might be good. They seem vulnerable to viruses. And uh… viruses are tricky; always mutating and forming new strains whenever a vaccine is developed. Perhaps this first virus could be one that-that compromises the immune system of these creatures. Perhaps a human immunodeficiency virus making them vulnerable to all sorts of other diseases and infections that might come along and maybe it could be spread sexually, making them a little reluctant to engage in the act of reproduction.

Well that’s a poetic note and it’s a start and I can dream can I? See, I don’t worry about the little things… bees, trees, whales, snails.

I think we’re part of a greater wisdom that we won’t ever understand, a higher order. Call it what you want. You know what I call it? The big electron… the big electron. [Imitates electronic hum] It doesn’t punish, it doesn’t reward, it doesn’t judge at all. It just is and so are we… for a little while…

“Take care of yourself and take care of somebody else.”

– George Carlin


“My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral,” he wrote, “It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness.”

“Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong, I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.”

“When I looked … into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold… all I saw was death.”

– William Shatner