NATURALLY
Saturday, Oct. 5, 2019
Nature is nature.
When we refer to the earth, anything not human-made, we call it natural. Natural plants, animals, weather, and geology – all natural. Seasons, polar ice-caps and glaciers, spawning fish, waves crashing into continents, plates of the earth’s crust moving, and melting snow in spring. Lightning. Lightning bugs. Natural. Normal. Healthy functioning of planet earth.
We don’t get surprised when something happens in the natural world. Predators hunt prey, migratory birds fly south for the winter, plants and insects adapt to weather. When floods come, critters head for higher ground.
Why should we expect different, perhaps high minded, actions from humans?
Human behavior. Every day I see politicians in the muck, making more muck, and I keep waiting to see if they’ll head for higher ground. They don’t, because some people need (and want) to stay in the muck.
I love the ubiquity of the internet, many technology tentacles we use daily. Yet, I feel invaded more than safe around data issues, wonder when we’ll recognize technology as invasive – an invasive species we need to be wary of, like we would any other danger or predator.
If we want technology to envelop us without a fight, it will – not like a warm blanket, but more like being paved over and then steamrolled into place, permanently.
Some days I think, long before environmental disasters or colliding with an asteroid do us in, that Amazon, Google and many other behemoths – many of whom are seen as exciting start-ups, are poised to take away any semblance of free thought, free will, and freedom we thought we had left.
Big brother isn’t watching – he doesn’t have to. Big brother ate us all, long ago. We are – at best – paddling uphill in a fast-flowing river of shimmering shite, and anyone standing on a soapbox in any city square is an antiquity without a voice. So, what can we do?
I think we can do a lot.
First, realizing it is far worse than we thought, and there is little we can do. Even if we gain a following, millions of like-minded followers, there is likely nothing we can do. Which simply underscores how far we have to go, and how weak we are. Yes. Weak. Perhaps, but not silenced.
The other day I found this George Orwell quote: Political language … is designed to makes lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
Nature is nature, and we call it natural.
Humans and how we run our human-world is called humanity, and we call it human. Sometimes we call it other things not printable here. Are not the individual actions, and collective actions, of those who run our communities, corporations, NGOs, politics, and governments – simply, natural too?
The difference, obviously, is humans have over-sized brains; we think we can change the world. We can’t, but we think we can. We believe we, together with others, can make changes. Without arguing issue ad nauseum, for now I’ll simply state what I believe indisputable: the only person we can change is ourselves. Sorry ladies, you can’t change your man. Sorry fellas, you cannot change any woman.
Sorry parents, you cannot make your child do anything (just seems like it at the time).
Reader feedback:
Love this Mark - I believe your readers (and me) all have so much to learn and you are great ambassador / conduit to help us LEARN! Please continue instilling this trait in us. Hope you are well and have a great weekend, MK, Calgary, AB
Excellent! That is who we are... a change of venue comes in mind, lol, AG, Cancun, Mex.
