Blog #86--Forgive Humans...We Just Can't Help Ourselves

Human beings are the most destructive carbon-based life form on Earth. Our combination of intelligence, greed, sense of superiority and ingenuity are a highly effective combination, making all other living species vulnerable to our daily activities. As someone who values all of Nature and knows without doubt humans are one with every other living species, it is hard to watch as Earth’s diversity is slowly but surely going the way of the dinosaur. But I must learn to forgive myself and all other humans because as a group, we simply lack the moral development and skill to prevent it.

If any species dares threaten our survival, we find ways of killing it. If we can make a profit from cutting down trees, poaching ivory from elephants and rhinoceroses, clear-cutting oxygen-producing forests to use for farming or grazing livestock, or many other behaviors, we do it with little more than token protests from a minority who oppose it.

We often over-harvest food-producing plants and trees with little interest in guaranteeing their long-term survival to aid future generations. We over-reproduce our own offspring and then steal the habitat of other species for our own use. We despoil the planet with our waste material, including nuclear waste that has a half-life into the thousands of years and plastics that are not biodegradable. We deplete water resources for purposes other than our own physical survival.

We create environmental pollution that acidifies oceans and destroys many species living there. We spew toxic agents into our atmosphere, onto the ground and into our precious water sources and then convince the general public we are not the cause of the resulting problems so we won’t have to clean up after ourselves.

If we have to choose between our own self-interests or survival needs of other species, we rarely if ever sacrifice ourselves for them. After all, we assume we are more important than them despite plenty of proof to the contrary.

War is popular these days, and there is rarely any concern about the damage done either to innocent civilians or the species living where we utilize our agents of destruction. We produce ultimate weapons that can literally wipe out the entire biosphere, and then we eagerly plan ways of using them.

We create poisons for use against our fellow man, which also destroy other species near the target zone. We create infectious agents for purposes of eugenics, many of which must use animal or insect vectors as part of their lifecycles. We probably use more creativity to destroy other life on Earth than for any other purpose.

At the same time, we prevent the introduction of ideas and inventions that might reduce threats to Earth’s species, including other humans. We resist the temptation to discover cheap means of food and water consumption, maintaining homes, travel and the like. We develop plans that will ultimately permit education only for the rich, preventing the rest of us from rising up and replacing false leaders with those whose aim is to preserve Earth and its many species. And we develop textbooks which teach inaccurate and propagandized information that limit understanding and discourage free thinking that might help true leaders replace the deceitful people who created them.

There are people today who speculate on which of the many human factors will lead to our own destruction in the relatively near future. I haven’t even mentioned the natural disasters that may arise at any time, such as pole shifts, massive volcanoes that can block out the sun’s rays and cause massive death and destruction all over the globe, earthquakes, hurricanes, meteors, climate change and many others. Earth has cleansed itself numerous times in the distant past, and it will someday start over again.

And yet we proceed on our merry way, reproducing more people than can possibly live together on our small outpost in the Milky Way galaxy. We refuse to look to our long-term future, pretending it doesn’t matter because we will likely be dead by then anyway. We claim to love our families, but we do little or nothing to preserve life for our own future generations, let alone the plant and animal life that offer us beauty to warm our hateful hearts while providing nourishment, medicines and other benefits for us.

We are marching arrogantly toward our own destruction, pretending someone will invent something that will save us before it is too late. All the while, the vast majority of us bury our heads in the sand so we can’t see what is happening. That way, we think we can avoid the pain we would feel once confronted with the facts.

It may already be too late. I used to believe the old canard that humans as a group will compensate for our mistakes with great discoveries and wonderful solutions, but those are almost always secondary to the destruction that motivates our responses. So instead of hoping for the impossible, I try to accept the reality of the situation. It isn’t easy.

If nothing else, human behavior is proving once and for all that we have no conscious control of our actions. If we did, we might allow our intelligence, morality and logic to overcome our destructiveness, for everyone’s long-term benefit. But no amount of consciousness and concern for our fellow life forms on Earth has been enough to reverse our present course, so it must not be the great equalizer we claim it is.

This is a hard lesson for us to learn, but we have no choice except to forgive ourselves and all others for our selfish behavior. We obviously can’t change it, so accepting and forgiving are our only other options. I just hope we catch on before total destruction prevents us from growing spiritually. We have much to learn, but it may occur only after we have destroyed everything we hold dear.

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