They say it takes a shock, a startle, something painful to enact change. Is this really true? Can humans not be driven by logic to change their lifestyles? Particularly Americans, must we wait until we make the planet so sick that it shows the late-onset symptoms, raising sea levels 25 feet, drying rivers and hiking food prices for drought and pollution and riots? Wait, that’s already here. So what if we procure a glorious presentation to illustrate it through the best media to re-sensitize people enough that they buy less, recycle more, walk and bike and take transit, or work at home and trade at the market!? These idiots and blind consumers, apathetic pigs I’m not allowed to kill, are going to make the next few years tough, but gradually until *WHAM* forcefully they’re going to have regulations imposed on them, or some of us smart people will get under their skin, into their heads, and affect the change we wish to see. We will have to make changes to the way we get things, what we get here, what is the most easy to attain--This can take place by dissolving borders, slowly adding pressure via legislation
What about biological diversity? How do we illustrate its imperative struggle? [People are like sheep: tell them they’re walking into a trap, and they’ll be critical; show them another getting ensared in all the wolf’s glory and gore, they’ll run like hell with no second thought to you.]
I had two reactions on two separate nights of researching and developing my persuasive presentation on the need for swift, immediate, bold reform regarding destruction of our living home, Earth. First night, I remembered the thought, which I can’t believe I had neglected when it first formed on my brain, that humans are most resembling of cancer, of pathogenic organisms that infect and plague their host until it dies. This sickened me, drove a knot to my stomach, and instilled me with force to find an alternative, something that proved it wrong, some justification (while still maintaining logic & objectivity). But I couldn’t escape the solidarity and validity of the correlation. The most stressful aspect of that concept was that there was no cure, that it would be impossible to remedy a population of organisms that has pervaded its own history as being ultimately predictable and already predicted. Of having no sentient thought on the higher organizational level of society and culture, but simply being a vast diffuse beast. Primarily, I thought of American history, in which we trampled the natives, and slaughtered buffalo and other great species, in pursuit of “manifest destiny.” And of Rome, and its own example of the cycle of life as an empire which expanded quickly, grew too large, and collapsed in on itself. I thought of the Holocaust, and the social factors that had horrifyingly escaped a society and allowed it to be primal and horrify the rest of the world in how disturbingly natural we truly are.
I remembered also when the thought had occurred to me, and why I hadn’t had such an intense reaction and broad application already: Upon entering Wichita, KS, after an extended period of distance and of developing my education and self, and having studied biology, my eyes were opened and I DID feel disgust, and it was directed at what I would later be informed was urban sprawl; the way the city had these appendages that grew outward to consume small towns, everybody knew it was happening, I’d been overhearing conversations about “a couple more years and the city will probably reach all the way to Goddard.” The same patterns present everywhere you looked, a great, oblivious, greedy homogenous mass of cells of people, that had expanded instead of advancing and developing in the correct, positive, living sense; they had not replaced the faulty businesses internally, they had just left them empty because they wanted their very own to accompany the very own cheap houses of people living out farther from the city because gas is cheap and so is spacious privacy. Cancer.
At this point I didn’t think I would ever be able to look humanity in the face and speak as though there were nothing wrong. I was going to have to email Ms. Cole and implore her to allow me to switch to the satirical presentation on time travel, because this project had stirred up such grave emotion in me that I would never be able to tone it down enough for a class presentation. I really don’t want to become the beheaded messenger, a scapegoat criticized and scrutinized, because that would really ruin my potential for achieving any social ends in the future.
The second night I worked on this, I returned to another ghost of my independent research past, the biology in a bottle experiment from high school. I started to use this visualization in high school for portrayal of the impending ecological crisis as well, but I was paralyzed in development of how to present it because of short attention and lack of external motivation: neither peer assistance nor mentor facilitation to develop this urgent message. This image provoked the solution I sought, finally the reconciliation I needed to the first night’s revelation: that these bacteria, unconscious and not sentient as far as I could tell, with no signs of advanced structure development, one of our oldest evolutionary stages, had been demonstrated to explode in population followed by mass die-off, yes…. But it was the growth curve! They had also been able to reach a very low but stable population level just as another organism had entered their wasteland and transformed the material into useable material again, thus beginning the formation of a healthy, complex ecosystem. Oh no, hold on. When I worked it out in my head, the organisms first followed the growth curve where, upon achieving a peak, they were able to either achieve a stable level just below it or fall off the cliff and drastically fall in numbers.
So, there is really not much comfort in the growth curve. Simply, that our future is very tentative. The probability that we are setting the stage for complete extinction is low, since we’ve already caught ourselves. But we also are not highly likely to escape unscathed. Mostly, I’m thinking behind my great social concern, about my personal future, and I’d really like to determine the safest place in the world.
Following that thought process, I also hit a crossroads: do I continue my campaign for awareness, throwing myself at preserving the planet the way it is (futilely) where less noble souls will immediately think of self-preservation and not the greater social good, and whereas I’ll be caught up in my crusade, which, yes, will hopefully raise the survival rate, perhaps I don’t want even this; maybe I should just shut up and move to where all the other smart people will move, and keep quiet, allowing “natural selection” to take course over the close-minded, less motivated, or less capable. For survivors would include those with knowledge and physical ability, and the wealthy, with just the few who lived there before…. I’m sure you’ll understand that I am not so noble as to be able to say immediately that I would not leave the people… It is, you see,… they who have brought it upon themselves…. I have reconciled my own existence with nature, you see………
