Friday, September 02, 2005
We do not live in a vacuum
Message to Bush and his apologists:
We do not live in a vacuum. Environmental disasters are products of an undiscriminating and ruthless nature. We have been screwing nature for decades, and one can only hope that this latest catastrophe acts as a reminder that we can no longer pretend our actions do not affect our surroundings. Nature is like a house of cards- everything is interconnected, from bird and tree to river and stone. And man, the creature you naively believe was put on a pedestal by an intelligent designer- man is part of that nature.
Because human beings are not better than other animals, because we're just a branch on the tree of life, if we don't wake up soon and realize that we shape our own fate through our actions and the actions of those before us, then we will all fall off the tree and die. It's called extinction.
Apply this to politics and foreign policy. This nation's past, current and future actions have great bearing on all of humanity. That's because our fates, like us, are interconnected. Pretending that what we do does not affect others is like saying we live in a vacuum. Blaming murder on vague and indefinable concepts such as evil, terrorism and so on is equivalent to pretending we've lived in a bubble for the past 100 years.
We are all responsible, and those of us in positions of power are even more responsible. I pray that Katrina has awakened you to the dangers of ignoring history, science and reason.
We do not live in a vacuum. Environmental disasters are products of an undiscriminating and ruthless nature. We have been screwing nature for decades, and one can only hope that this latest catastrophe acts as a reminder that we can no longer pretend our actions do not affect our surroundings. Nature is like a house of cards- everything is interconnected, from bird and tree to river and stone. And man, the creature you naively believe was put on a pedestal by an intelligent designer- man is part of that nature.
Because human beings are not better than other animals, because we're just a branch on the tree of life, if we don't wake up soon and realize that we shape our own fate through our actions and the actions of those before us, then we will all fall off the tree and die. It's called extinction.
Apply this to politics and foreign policy. This nation's past, current and future actions have great bearing on all of humanity. That's because our fates, like us, are interconnected. Pretending that what we do does not affect others is like saying we live in a vacuum. Blaming murder on vague and indefinable concepts such as evil, terrorism and so on is equivalent to pretending we've lived in a bubble for the past 100 years.
We are all responsible, and those of us in positions of power are even more responsible. I pray that Katrina has awakened you to the dangers of ignoring history, science and reason.
