The Environment – My Thoughts And Associated Ramblings

I remember when I was younger – much younger – and organizations such as Greenpeace were in the news thinking what a bunch of crazy hippies they were.

Of course, now that I’m older – much older – I realize that this depiction was probably carefully crafted by the media and the people who own those companies.

And a lot has changed during the past few decades.

It appears as though humans are indeed having a massive effect on the planet and all of the life-forms that inhabit it – both animal and plant.

We are still killing each other for no good reason – such as, for example, believing in different gods, or no gods at all, or even different interpretations of the same god.

We are still arguing over man-made artificial borders between what we know as countries.

We are still stealing resources from each other.

These do not sound, to me, like the actions of an intelligent species.

Yes, we may have invented all sorts of gadgets and technologies, but we seem to have lost sight of our roots – survival through cooperation.

Perhaps life has changed from those early days.

Back then, maybe day-to-day survival was dependent on people in relatively small communities, of maybe a couple of hundred people or fewer, but today, for people in countries such as the USA and UK, we are not, for the most part, struggling to stay alive each and every day.

Note that I’m not saying there aren’t people living in dire circumstances, wondering where their next meal is coming from. I know there are people like this – far too many people in countries that are generally considered to be so wealthy – but it’s simply not how most people live.

Yes, some families may need to have several jobs to pay the bills, but the risk of being eaten by wildlife or killed by invading nearby tribes is no longer our reality.

If there’s one thing that we have learned of late, it’s that the entire planet is one gigantic interconnected ecosystem.

You’ve probably heard the saying, arising from chaos theory, that if a butterfly flaps its wings in China, a hurricane might result in Florida.

It sounds far-fetched, but what it’s getting at is that tiny changes to an initial starting point can have profound and currently unpredictable effects elsewhere.

Humans have discovered time and time again, when they have tried to manipulate nature, that things did not turn out as expected.

Examples include:

• The introduction of European rabbits into Australia
• The eradication of grey wolves from Yellowstone Park
• The removal and disturbance of the natural habitats of many animals (e.g. coyotes, raccoons, tigers)

In each case, humans have changed the natural balance with unexpected results.

We may know more now than we did in the 18h century, but this additional knowledge still hasn’t stopped us from causing devastation all over the planet with little thought or care for the effects that will have.

Deforestation is still a thing in various continents, for example, with often devastating results.

So while there are those who would argue that humans, as the dominant species (which is debatable), can do whatever they please, a stance that is also put forward in the Bible, I think it means we are the ones who should be responsible stewards of all life.

Humans seem to think their lives are more important than those of other animals, but why?

I get there is a food chain, but when other animals kill, then for the most part, it’s because they need the food to survive.

With few exceptions, only humans kill “for sport” – hunting, bullfighting, and so on.

To me, the food chain is evidence that there is no intelligent design – if I were an omnipotent being, creating a world (or even an entire universe), I would not design it so that creatures needed to eat each other to survive. But maybe that’s just me.

The older I become, the more I try to behave as though all lives matter – and I’m not only talking about humans here.

If species are driven to procreate, as appears to be the case for the most part, then who are we to decide which individuals, or species, should die off?

And yes, if our own lives are actually threatened, then self-defence is reasonable.

But most of us are not faced with predators on a daily basis.

I’ve seen a woman in England stamp on a spider that was simply walking on the floor, minding its own business. (The UK does have a few venomous spiders, but they are far from common, and this person didn’t even stop to look what type of spider it was.)

The creature had done nothing to her, but she felt she had the right, perhaps even the duty, to extinguish its life – and the smile on her face afterward implied she thought she’d done something good.

For me, where I find this difficult, is with species that appear to have no real benefit, such as wasps – but they are alive and generally don’t cause serious problems, so their lives should matter too.

Having travelled to many different countries when I was younger – from my 20s through to my early 40s, I’ve seen many of the wonders of nature and the various customs of the people who live in those places, and it made me realize that people the world over are not that different.

Most people simply want to live their lives with as little risk and difficulty as possible – they want a family, they want a roof over their heads, and they want to put food on the table.

And they expect to have to put in some effort to achieve those benefits.

Yet those who think they are in charge do everything they can to divide us – based on skin colour (not race, because humans are all one race), on beliefs, on gender, etc.

By keeping us fighting amongst each other, over non-issues, they distract us from the fact that these puppet masters even exist, never mind what they are doing.

Remember that young children don’t care who they play or socialize with. Hatred for people who are different is taught to them, and because they are young and impressionable, this prejudice sinks in and lo and behold, the next generation of racists or sexists is created.

Humans are, in theory, smart – or, at least, they have the potential to be – and yet so many people waste that capability, on stuff that really doesn’t matter.

There’s one final point I’d like to make, and that’s regarding what is commonly known as the Law Of Attraction, which I’ve touched on here.

Here’s what we do know:

• Humans, as well as other life-forms, are electrical beings.
• That means we do have an energy and/or magnetic field that surrounds us, however, small or faint that may be.
• Since this can be detected, it is reasonable that other life forms might be able to detect those energy fields too.
• Our world is awash with electromagnetic waves, which has largely occurred over the past century and a bit since we started electrifying the planet. (The book The Invisible Rainbow by Arthur Firstenberg is a fascinating read on this subject.)
• These electromagnetic waves do interact with each other.

This means that all life is truly interconnected – at some level – so what we do can and does affect others (and again, I include all animal and plant life).

Maybe the effects of this were once minuscule, but they are increasing as we launch yet more satellites and introduce more and more networks and other technologies here on earth.

What I have an issue with in terms of the Law Of Attraction is those who claim “the universe” has anything to do with this, as though it were a conscious entity with intent, something for which I am not convinced there is any evidence (yet).

Like it or not, we share this planet with an unimaginably large number and variety of life forms, and we already know that things do not happen in isolation – as I said above, we’ve tried many times in the past to “fix” one problem only to create yet more.

So making what seems like one small change may have repercussions our best models cannot yet predict.

The key, then, to me, is to try to live our lives in balance, on a planetary-wide scale, and not just in terms of our own little microcosms.

This has been a bit of a random ramble and rant, but I make no apologies for that – if I didn’t feel strongly about this, I wouldn’t have written this article.