Humankind's Plight at a Macro Level
I just returned from a ~7-mile hike I took by myself in preparation for next weekend’s far more strenuous Point Sal hike with a friend. Check out these images!
At the risk of appearing to be a weirdo, when I hike by myself I often contemplate the world’s situation at a macro level and what, if anything, I can do about it. This afternoon, I traversed a few of those miles thinking about the words of the eminent oceanographer Sylvia Earle, whose viewpoints I summarize as follows:
If you have a colony of bacteria in a petri dish, they multiply and eat, multiply and eat, multiply and eat, until they run out of food and room, and soon thereafter they’re all dead. They have no capacity for any other behavior; in particular, they have no sense that there could be consequences to unsustainable growth and runaway consumption of resources. People, on the other hand, most certainly have a sense of future, and recognize that there are consequences to right vs. wrong, to prudent vs. foolish actions.
But, I ask, given the outrageous rate at which we’re destroying our natural environment and chewing through our resources, will this capacity manifest itself in time to prevent us from the same fate as the bacteria? There certainly are a few factors that provide cause for alarm:
• Long-term planning is not our strong suit. Where many of the Native American tribes make decisions that contemplate the welfare of a minimum of five generations into the future, the “advanced” societies base their actions around far shorter time frames. For corporate decision-makers, that may mean the next quarter or perhaps a fiscal year; for our elected representatives, it means the next election cycle.
• We have little appetite for austerity, for postponing today’s pleasure for the sake of tomorrow, and we have even less appetite for foregoing our own pleasures for the sake of others, whether they’re living now, or the as-yet unborn.
• We tend to believe what we want to believe, and we elect leaders who re-enforce that, telling us what we want to hear.
So will humankind come together and deal with this problem before it kills us? I’m not sure. One thing’s clear: though I personally would love to have a wise and compassionate person like Sylvia Earle function as Queen of Earth, she (like I) could not get an elected position as our town’s local dog-catcher. The rhetoric behind strong and continuous economic growth, as driven by deregulation and free market economics is quite powerful. Add to that the bizarre concepts of nationalism that many of us harbor, for instance, Americans’ beliefs that God has gone out of His way to bless singularly the United States over all other nations. The attractive force of these factors summed together is so powerful that the chances of enlightened leadership seem, to me at least, fairly remote.
On next weekend’s hike, at least I’ll have a dialog with another human being, and maybe my conclusions will be more uplifting.
From the matrix spoken by “Agent Smith”.
Agent Smith: I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You’re a plague and we are the cure.
As far as “risk of appearing to be a weirdo”, you need not worry about that as long as I am around. I have officially been dubbed “Mr. Weirdo” by friends, coworkers and neighbors. In spite of laws and logic, my wife continues to insist that she is “not Mrs. Weirdo”. I am sure chances are good nobody looks across the street at your house and says “what is that weirdo doing now?”. The neighbor girl across the street, a professional photographer, takes pictures of the new fence her husband installed which she posts on Facebook. In the background is my house…..with a home made wooden rack of solar panels on my front porch. Like you I do think about the world situation and what I can do about it. Mostly all I can do is keep doing what I am doing, talk about it every chance I get and hope people see and become interested enough to do the same.
Craig, I can be found ‘front and center’ in your cheering section. Your writing style and content are consistently superb.
Thank you for planting seeds of substantive contemplation. May they eventually yield an abundance of solutions for us all. Your contributions are appreciated.
Perhaps their is a way of seeing this world differently if one wants to. Trying to teach a reluctant learner only increases resistance to learning. Bercause the ego reigns paramount as mind thought organizer, and ego relates to the body, people are reliant on believing form as reality. Most say they are Christian in mind, as a religion. Yet they have a simplistic or elementary idea of God. Many believe that God is “created in their image”, and never question what God “is” any further. They also believe that God created the world. Some imsist it was physically done in six consecutive days, working so hard, he rested on the seventh. Yet, as best we can find, this was established in the prime of Roman cultural dominance, being established by the Roman Catholic controllers to controll populations through biblical translations. Why is it that the last time man or woman was assumed to be peaceful enough to introspect plainly was 2000 plus years ago, and not since? Clearly,to me, most people use insane thinking and attempt to arrive at sane conclusions. Common benchmarks of absolute reason, or laws of mind, must first be established before anyone can “think” with accuracy and clairity. As much as madness and emotion controll the thoughts of people will peaceful reason escape the mind seeking to rise above the din and chaos of the world we think we see.
What’s so fascinating to me is the fact that here in Europe, especially in the northern part where I live, there seems to be an exact opposite approach; however quite unbalanced. Many people have this socialist – green philosophy that (probably) stems from an equally religious, however overly moralistic conviction; putting the blame on each and everyone for everything that’s wrong in the world. In this mindset, even BREATHING is wrong, because you’re emitting CO2. (Watch out for this kind of philosophy, as it often ends up concluding that there are too many of us, and we need to start reducing the numbers the brutal way!)
There should be a road somewhere between these two extremes, and that “road” should include responsibility and reasonable sacrifices; however without the moralism and love for taxes (which is the one and only answer that socialism has to any problem).
On a sidenote: I love driving my own car — however unacceptable that is to some people over here. (Don’t you know how much emissions that stem from the car industry – let alone the car itself??). I simply refuse to accept the notion that I should sacrifice personal freedom and efficient living on the altar of environmental moralism. If manufacturing+science has created a problem (pollution and emissions), manufacturing+science needs to come up with a solution (maybe with the help of reasonable, industry-wide regulations). Why not try to fix this by way of the engineering approach?
Per,
No culpability on your behalf? You can do whatever harm in the name of freedom, and then put the blame on the industry? This seems quite circular and irresponsible. It is true that some people just do not have empathy, and most of the time, it isn’t treatable. Might you have an idea as to fixing this problem, since you obviously have crucial input regarding its functions?
Rick
Let me summarize my reasoning in three sentences: If you have a philosophical problem at hand, you need a philosophical solution (hence the reference to moralistic convictions). If, on the other hand, you have a scientific problem, wishful thinking isn’t going to solve it. You’re going to need a scientific solution!
That’s why I’m not willing to join the sad choir of those singing about the demise of us all (moralism is known to cause personal demise, which certainly isn’t going to help anyone). I do, however, agree that regulations must be put in place, which will ultimately result in increased pricing for consumers when buying products that require “cleaning up” during manufacturing (which obviously has a cost attached to it).
I just don’t think that taxes on cars (aka. more government funding, which is already excessive in Northern Europe) will provide these solutions.
PS. In my country, there is a 100% import tax on cars, meaning that any car you can buy in Germany, we need to pay twice the price. (We don’t have a national car industry). At the same time, we have the oldest cars in Europe on average (go figure – too pricey?), increasing the pollution problem dramatically. Sales taxes DON’T solve scientific problems, they just FEED THE GOVERNMENT (which, in turn, increases its spending in other areas, such as healthcare)!
I never thought I’d be arguing against a pro-healthcare American 😉 (Does any such person really exist?)
If you have a colony of bacteria in a petri dish, they multiply and eat, multiply and eat, multiply and eat, until they run out of food and room, and soon thereafter they’re all dead. They have no capacity for any other behavior; in particular, they have no sense that there could be consequences to unsustainable growth and runaway consumption of resources. People, on the other hand, most certainly have a sense of future, and recognize that there are consequences to right vs. wrong, to prudent vs. foolish actions.
Very interesting! Our government and especially those in power at this time, have created and foster a portion of our population to live like the bacteria described above. I pray that they can be persuaded to understand that we live in a participatory universe that holds us personally responsible for our thoughts and action and that any form of big government and socialism are dehumanizing.
America works because its founding documents give its citizens Freedom and puts them in charge of their own destiny. Why dos this work? Because: we are self-governing beings that Live in a Participatory Universe that holds us Personally Responsible for our thoughts and actions. America does not work when its citizens don’t hold themselves and their government officials Personally Responsible for their actions. It is just that simple.
That was a really captivating picture of Santa Maria Estuary Craig! But seriously, at 7 billion and going, how do we stop ‘going forth and multiplying’? What the petri dish tells us is that Nature will call it quits when our dish is full. It’s that simple. And we are perilously close to that situation right now.
I look around and see the self importance of human beings every day in my little corner of Africa. Ponderous 4×4’s that will never see a dirt road, consumption that reflects in the size of people, waste that is so massive that once pristine aquifers are now poisonous conduits of acid mine drainage, settlements with no sewage, coal being consumed for power generation at a rate which won’t see out 20 more years. Driven by greed that is incomprehensible (Our president was narrowly retricted by public opinion before he could lavish a Boeng 777 (R2billion in our currency) on himself for official business) and a headlong devil-may-care attitude, I fear tyhat here in Africa, tomorrow surely is not given a moment’s thought.
Can we change? Can we marshal the massive resources needed to reverse the tide of consumption sweeping our world? I submit that we can – but only if we take this responsibility very seriously. And to do that we will need to help people, governments and businesses think differently.
To do just we will have to address our full energies to bringing about change where it matters most – in the collective consciousness of humankind. We will need to re-align our moral compass with that of Nature – and to look with hope and enthusiasm to a new world in which Earth comes first, and in which all living things can coexist.
And we have to do it quickly
Reg Wessels
Earth Corporation
Rule of thumb: always follow the money. At the root of the problem Craig is highlighting is a system by which money — a lot of money — is made through the control and exploitation of fossil fuels for energy, food and shelter. Nothing wrong with that . . . as long as the system works. But as Craig is pointing out, the current system no longer works and hasn’t for a number of years. The young people I read and write about for Earth Preservers, my environmental education site for kids, have brilliant ideas for sustainably meeting the energy needs of a rising global population without using fossil fuels. Hopefully their ideas will be discovered by leaders of cities and countries without access to fossil fuels and a new energy paradigm will emerge that allows the world to continue consuming without fear of resource depletion.
I fear that it is a generational cycle. One generation suffers the results of unrestrained consumption as children then they live more frugally and take steps to prepare for the future making life better for the next generations until the memory is lost and the cycle of consume and bust repeats. The WWII generation suffered through the depression and then built the robust economy and social safety net that nurtured the Baby Boom generation. We the baby boomers have failed to prepare for the future and have consumed the capital generated by that economy with either wasteful wars(Afghanistan, Iraq, Drugs) or allowing it to be sequestered by a small group of individuals. We have not prepared for the future needs of the nation through investment in education and infrastructure. We have perfected the throw away society further consuming resources from packaging to clothes to automobiles. Much of our nation’s wealth lays buried in landfills or on ships full of our junk headed to third world nations for reprocessing. Our children and our grandchildren will pay the price. And so the rise and fall of petrie dishes, I mean nations, continues.
Instinct with a crust of intelligence and a steering wheel of self-interest. It is very difficult to argue the straight line projection of us as mammals – thank you Agent Smith. It is very difficult to argue the straight line projections of history – the cycles we have been through before correctly advising us on the present and future. Uh-uh. Regardless of the number of communities who have embraced a harmonious existence with their surroundings, whatever the definition of that is, it is neither a model nor a harbinger of our future. The larger group of our 7B and growing will always overwhelm the visionaries.
Now, growing up in the 50s and 60s, I have a profound case of what I call the “federation of planets” disease. At an emotional level I love the idea of indefinite amounts of energy allowing humanity to abandon competition and we all become the greatest we can be – a bit of a paraphrase on poor old Jean Luc. Only problem is that it’s BS. Won’t happen. Our personal impulses are not modified by our context until all choice in the matter has been removed. In old school terms, we got kicked out of the garden and that’s the way its going to be. Hmmm.
So, what do we do? There does seem to be a basic pattern. Some, will choose to live by a different set of rules. Some will sneak slaves out of the south. Some will choose to undermine the genocide in nazi occupied europe. Some will choose to try to live as sustainably as is possible in their situation. When you think about it, doesn’t really change the big picture. Arguably, we have as much tribulation in 2012 as in prior times.
It is likely that most of us who read this blog live according to our own drummer. Are we making a difference? To ourselves we are.
In 1966, Ronald Reagan wrote in a personal letter, “Am an admirer of Ayn Rand.” Reagan’s fervent promotion of deregulation, and his history as a spokesman for corporate interests, is well-documented.
GOP Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin calls Atlas Shrugged his “foundation book.”
GOP Congressman Ron Paul of Texas says Ayn Rand had a major influence on him, and his son, GOP Senator Randall “Rand” Paul of Kentucky, is a fierce Ayn Rand admirer.
Ayn Rand’s novel “The Fountainhead” is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ favorite book – and he requires his clerks to read it. One poll places “Atlas Shrugged” as second in popularity only to the Christian bible.
GOP Congressman Paul Ryan has been much in the news with his efforts against organized workers in Wisconsin and his budget measures to eliminate Social Security and Medicare. This politician professes long familiarity with Ayn Rand’s texts, and he remains a proud proponent of judgment.
He has proclaimed, “Rand makes the best case for the morality of democratic capitalism.”
Yet Rand wrote, “Democracy, in short, is a form of collectivism, which denies individual rights: the majority can do whatever it wants with no restrictions. In principle, the democratic government is all-powerful. Democracy is a totalitarian manifestation; it is not a form of freedom.”
In “The Virtue of Selfishness” she wrote, “All public projects are mausoleums, not always in shape, but always in cost.”
However, we must remember instead that every major highway, most dams, most waterworks, every firehouse and police station, all military bases and nearly every library in our nation is a public project.
Are these tombs?
The public schools and public universities that once insured that education was no longer a privilege of the wealthy – to some extent still do – are all public works.
In the absence of these public works, private enterprise could never survive. More than that, many elements of our infrastructure that many people regard as private, such as power stations, energy firms, rail companies, all owe a significant part of their prosperity to substantial public subsidies.
George Monbiot observed that, “…she explained a philosophy she called Objectivism. This holds that the only moral course is pure self-interest. We owe nothing, she insists, to anyone, even to members of our own families. … Apart from the police, the courts and the armed forces, there should be no role for government: no social security, no public health or education, no public infrastructure or transport, no fire service, no regulations, no income tax.”
In his conclusion, George Monbiot remarks, with regard to average Tea Party followers, ”I wonder how many would continue to worship at the shrine of Ayn Rand if they knew that towards the end of her life she signed on for both Medicare and social security. She had railed furiously against both programs, as they represented everything she despised about the intrusive state. Her belief system was no match for the realities of age and ill health.
“But they have a still more powerful reason to reject her philosophy: as Adam Curtis’s BBC documentary showed last year, the most devoted member of her inner circle was Alan Greenspan, former head of the US Federal Reserve. Among the essays he wrote for Rand were those published in a book he co-edited with her called Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal.
“Here, starkly explained, you’ll find the philosophy he brought into government. There is no need for the regulation of business – even builders or Big Pharma – he argued, as ‘the ‘greed’ of the businessman or, more appropriately, his profit-seeking … is the unexcelled protector of the consumer’. As for bankers, their need to win the trust of their clients guarantees that they will act with honor and integrity. Unregulated capitalism, he maintains, is a ‘superlatively moral system’.
“Once in government, Greenspan applied his guru’s philosophy to the letter, cutting taxes for the rich, repealing the laws constraining banks, refusing to regulate the predatory lending and the derivatives trading which eventually brought the system down. Much of this is already documented, but Weiss shows that in the US, Greenspan has successfully airbrushed history.
“Despite the many years he spent at her side, despite his previous admission that it was Rand who persuaded him that ‘capitalism is not only efficient and practical but also moral’, he mentioned her in his memoirs only to suggest that it was a youthful indiscretion – and this, it seems, is now the official version. Weiss presents powerful evidence that even today Greenspan remains her loyal disciple, having renounced his partial admission of failure to Congress.
“Saturated in her philosophy, the new right on both sides of the Atlantic continues to demand the rollback of the state, even as the wreckage of that policy lies all around.”
Geoge notes quite a few interesting facts to consider.
So let’s compare… The very first words that open the founding document of our nation read as follows:
“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Indeed, the government – as it is conceived in America – is intended to be an arm of, by and for the whole people by which they may defend their liberties from all enemies, foreign and domestic, who would subjugate them in serfdom. We the people have no real alternative to defend our liberties against greater powers other than by the use and possession of our government. This value and worth of our government to the well-being of our population has been consistently assailed and undermined by those whose interests are solely in private gain.
As a species, we rose to prominence and succeeded in evolving from nomadic tribes of hunter-gatherers to prosperous agrarian villages through cooperation and the sharing of resources. Indeed, oral histories hold that members of those evolved societies who persistently refused to share and cooperate were shunned or banished. The basic human needs, as applied across the entire group, were the primary goals of the entire group, and beyond their satisfaction, individuals could still amass wealth while the rest thrived in cooperative harmony.
In contrast, consider the recent decisions by the “conservative” members of the US Supreme Court – first, defining money as free speech, and second, asserting that a corporation is a person under the Constitution, and that it may use its shareholders’ money without their consent to influence our selection of leadership.
Consider further, where the impact this woeful course is leading our nation – to a place where ExxonMobil alone, with ten percent of its profits, can buy all the elections in the US from now on (let alone Wal-Mart and the other mega-corps both foreign and domestic).
Historian and essayist Gore Vidal wrote in 1961, “Ayn Rand’s ‘philosophy’ is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society….To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.”
Ayn Rand’s books such as The Virtue of Selfishness and her philosophy that celebrates self-interest and disdains altruism may well be, as Vidal assessed, “nearly perfect in its immorality.” But is Vidal right about evil?
Charles Manson, who himself did not kill anyone, is the personification of evil for many of us because of his success at exploiting the psychological vulnerabilities of young people and inspiring them to murder.
What should we call Ayn Rand’s ability to exploit the psychological vulnerabilities of millions of young people so as to influence them to regard selfishness as a virtue?
It has long been observed that laws are made necessary by the inability of individuals to restrain their passions. This truth is exemplified in regulations ranging from our traffic laws, like speed limits and stop signs, to regulations on corporations that help to ensure our food is safe and our medicines our effective, and that our children aren’t ensnared in workhouses.
All of these regulatory structures were established because of long experience with the terrible abuses that result in their absence. Yet, in her book “The Virtue of Selfishness” she wrote that accepting government control of any sort is “delivering oneself into gradual enslavement.”
To illustrate the impact of the corporate mindset on human needs, witness this story from Yahoo News and Good Morning America…
“A Florida lifeguard has been booted from his lifeguard chair for running to save a man who was floundering in the surf.
“Tomas Lopez , 21, was fired by his supervisor for vacating his lifeguarding zone to save a man drowning in an unprotected area of the beach in Hallandale Beach, Fla., on Monday, reports the Sun Sentinel. Lopez’ employer is not paid to patrol the zone where the man had been in trouble.
“According to the Sun Sentinel, Lopez was approached by a beachgoer who pointed out a man struggling in the water nearly 1,500 feet south of his post. Instinctively, he ran down the beach to save him. By the time Lopez got to him, he had been pulled to shore by fellow beachgoers.
Following his rescue attempt, Lopez was let go for leaving the area he was supposed to be covering. Jeff Ellis and Associates, a private aquatic safety contractor, is hired by the city to patrol the beaches. The company is also in charge of hiring and training the city’s lifeguards.
That story as just one glaring example. Here are just a few among many more, from news stories that largely escaped mainstream attention in recent decades:
• Ocean-Spray was reportedly caught “cross-hauling” (using trucking contractors who were known to be filling up trailer containers with toxic chemicals and hauling them in one direction, and then filling the very same containers with juice ingredients to haul in the other direction – with merely a quick soap-and-warm-water rinse in between loads)…
• A whistleblower revealed that Beechnut was selling colored sugar-water labeled as apple juice for our infant children…
• A coal-mining firm in Tennessee had apparently figured it was cheaper to pay the EPA fines than to properly contain its vast pool of accumulated toxic sludge – the predictable impact was hideously disastrous…
• Evidence shows that our importers show little concern about the lead in the Chinese toys that they sell to our children…
• Texaco chose to use antiquated and lethally polluting processes and practices within the headlands of the globe’s largest river, thereby decimating wide swaths of virgin wilderness and poisoning thousands of local people – and then, just like Union Carbide in Bhopal, and so many other similarly guilty firms, it simply sold its local assets and walked away…
• Those fanatically publicized but mythical Obama “death-panels” have instead long existed in head offices of medical insurance firms – in the ghastly and ethereal shape of care denial strategies and coverage cancellation practices…
Note that not a single one of these organizations has ever had its charter revoked for its callous and willful assaults upon innocent life. Yet now our nation’s highest court is seriously considering allowing the filthy, grasping and rending claws of soulless and unreal creatures like these to simply buy our democratic republic out of hand, and out from under our feet.
An article in the September issue of Hightower’s Lowdown (edited by former Texas Secretary of Agriculture Jim Hightower) perceptively notes that the vast sums in America’s corporate treasuries do not belong to the heads of the corporations, and are therefore not theirs to pump into politicians’ palms.
This Hightower’s Lowdown publication also reminds us that, for about seventy years after our nation was founded, each corporation was granted its charter – on pain of dissolution for any violation – under the following criteria: To maintain and adhere to a genuine purpose of public benefit; To limit itself to its original business concern, abstain from purchasing other corporations, and amass only a specified maximum of wealth; To exist for a nominal term of 20 years before applying to the legislature for renewal; To deal equitably with trading partners and competition. And – pointedly – these companies were prohibited from lobbying, and from influencing any political campaigns. Our best founders were as wary of the power of corporations as they were of military ascendancy.
Additionally, Hightower’s Lowdown recalls the little-known fact that these fraudulent corporate attempts to demand the rights of persons under law all hearken back to a completely unauthorized entry in the summary of a single Supreme Court case, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad in 1886. A certain Mr. J. C. Bancroft Davis, a court reporter employed by a private publisher of legal documents, made a legally baseless assertion when he errantly opened his summary with this unfounded statement: “The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment…” (Back in 1868, the 14th Amendment had granted former slaves equal protection under the law.)
Although the railroad lawyers had attempted to persuade the court to create legal personhood for corporations, the justices resolutely excluded any such verdict on the subject by the court. Neither has any declaration by Congress ever established or recognized any merit to any firm’s claim to possess the legal rights of “natural persons”.
Yet it’s now in our nation’s history – after…
• The slow subversion of our once robust economy from one that fashions worthy products and develops widespread prosperity, to one that finagles worthless paper and discards our people as waste…
• Repeated grave insults and numerous radical onslaughts that have been leveled against our cherished Bill of Rights in the wake of that cruel and criminal tragedy we all suffered on September 11th 2001…
• The defrauding of our United States into two invasions and two occupations, and the saddling of our grandchildren with $3 trillion in resulting losses (not to mention the dead, and the physically and psychologically maimed, on all sides – or the little-remembered $2.3 trillion Donald Rumsfeld reported on September 10th was already “lost” by the Pentagon)…
• The wayward arrogance and the blind and covetous excesses of the Bush/Cheney White House, and its collusion with the GOP-dominated Congress to spend our short-lived Federal Surplus into a record-shattering Federal Debt…
• Mr. Bush’s fiscal helmsman, Mr. Hank Paulson, accomplished his well-timed knee-jerk draining of $12 trillion plus out of our tax-paid treasury and hastily pouring it into the sucking vaults of our nation’s most avaricious banksters…
• The remarkably parallel courses that have been charted thus far by the so-called “socialist” Obama administration…
• The refusal by HMO/Pharma-bankrolled public servants both Red and Blue to seriously consider, or even discuss, the internationally long-proven and economically rewarding national single-payer healthcare that the majority of doctors, nurses and the American People desperately want and need, and which our greatest global competitors already enjoy…
…It is at this very moment that the slim GOP-appointed majority of SCOTUS justices choose to coronate an obscure court reporter’s aberrant fantasy, and unleash corporate treasuries to even more directly manipulate all our elections.
We the People have endured too much to be silent, sacrificed too long to be still, and suffered far too much of this opulent corruption at the expense of our prosperity, our jobs, our homes, our health – our lives.
We must summon the courage and the righteous indignation and the outrage to say… forcefully, decisively, and continuously…
“WE’RE MAD AS HELL, AND WE’RE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!”
Anonymous says it for me. This is the way I see it. Craig said, “People, on the other hand, most certainly have a sense of future, and recognize that there are consequences….”
I no longer think so. I believe we humans are just like the bacteria in the petri dish and we will consume everything. The future looks more than bleak.