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I awoke to the sound of wet tires on wet streets.
I crossed the street this morning, looking at my feet take wet steps between the white crosswalk lines as it rained. I noticed a rainbow patch of oil shining with a dozen colours. A noise brought my head up. It was the fat, stinky roar of a Harley blabbering away up the street, bass thudding out of its tailpipe. I looked up just in time to catch a woman light a cigarette as she walked past me in the opposite direction.
Oil, harley, cigarette. It occurred to me that we’re killing this place. Those three things in such rapid succession reminded me that from a personal level all the way up to a commercial and institutional level, we are taking and polluting, taking and polluting, taking and polluting. We are poison.
Suddenly all the Star Trek moments of “Yes, we may be destructive but we also possess love! That alone, despite our failings, justifies how beautiful and amazing the human race is.” seem like lies.
Love is a biological imperative designed to make more of us. I don’t think I’d really felt that as clearly as I did just then. I was repulsed by us a race in a way that I hadn’t experienced before.
I wondered if this was a common experience and I guessed it must be.
My mind did the math. We’re taking from the planet and putting only a token effort back. We are growing at an unprecedented rate. This is not a course of action that is sustainable. Very soon there will simply not be enough.
Of anything.
The inescapable logic of this sped up my heart. Every moment of fun I’ve had since then, every moment of entertainment, ecstasy, laughter, and joy has seemed forced. It’s seemed like a distraction in the face of this awful knowledge. I feel that it’s inevitable and horrifying.
I remember the Smith’s little diatribe in the Matrix about humans being a virus. I don’t exactly agree but it’s close. At a stroke, all of our striving for perfection, for family stability, for scholastic excellence, for financial success, for hitting a pinnacle in our careers, it all seemed completely superfluous.
We’re here to consume. The only way to survive as a race is to move onto other planets and burn them out as well. We are an infection poised for conquest. A living plague that thinks it has rights. We will gutter out here or spread to the stars.
Those are our options.
tags
I crossed the street this morning, looking at my feet take wet steps between the white crosswalk lines as it rained. I noticed a rainbow patch of oil shining with a dozen colours. A noise brought my head up. It was the fat, stinky roar of a Harley blabbering away up the street, bass thudding out of its tailpipe. I looked up just in time to catch a woman light a cigarette as she walked past me in the opposite direction.
Oil, harley, cigarette. It occurred to me that we’re killing this place. Those three things in such rapid succession reminded me that from a personal level all the way up to a commercial and institutional level, we are taking and polluting, taking and polluting, taking and polluting. We are poison.
Suddenly all the Star Trek moments of “Yes, we may be destructive but we also possess love! That alone, despite our failings, justifies how beautiful and amazing the human race is.” seem like lies.
Love is a biological imperative designed to make more of us. I don’t think I’d really felt that as clearly as I did just then. I was repulsed by us a race in a way that I hadn’t experienced before.
I wondered if this was a common experience and I guessed it must be.
My mind did the math. We’re taking from the planet and putting only a token effort back. We are growing at an unprecedented rate. This is not a course of action that is sustainable. Very soon there will simply not be enough.
Of anything.
The inescapable logic of this sped up my heart. Every moment of fun I’ve had since then, every moment of entertainment, ecstasy, laughter, and joy has seemed forced. It’s seemed like a distraction in the face of this awful knowledge. I feel that it’s inevitable and horrifying.
I remember the Smith’s little diatribe in the Matrix about humans being a virus. I don’t exactly agree but it’s close. At a stroke, all of our striving for perfection, for family stability, for scholastic excellence, for financial success, for hitting a pinnacle in our careers, it all seemed completely superfluous.
We’re here to consume. The only way to survive as a race is to move onto other planets and burn them out as well. We are an infection poised for conquest. A living plague that thinks it has rights. We will gutter out here or spread to the stars.
Those are our options.
tags