In these latter days of our life as a species, there is little that shocks or dismays me. Instead, I find my predominant emotion now is one of disappointment:
Disappointment that we never realized our potential as a species.
Disappointment that our headlong plunge into oblivion is done with eyes wide open, getting and spending, using and abusing, directed mostly by our petty and shortsighted impulses and preoccupations.
We could have been so much more.
There will be no apotheosis, and there certainly will be no deus ex machina to bring us back from the brink. That is surely the stuff of fantasy, the hope of the benighted.
Probably George Carlin said it best in a 1996 interview. Thanks to the salamander horde for posting this on Twitter:
I barfed out a similar sentiment yesterday, but not nearly so succinctly! Carlin's stance of acting without expectation is a wise move - likely the healthiest move we can take right now.
ReplyDeleteGeorge Carlin, I believe, said that cynics, deep down, are disappointed idealists. Whether idealistic or not, it is increasingly hard these days not to be cynical, Marie. A certain detachment seems the only way to get through life with at least a modicum of sanity, in my view.
DeletePlease do not mistake my skepticism and realism for pessimism and cynicism
ReplyDeleteThat having been said
Humans are showing few redeeming traits
Who would have guessed that ingenuity and inventive intelligence were not survival traits?
I think part of the problem resides in the fact that wisdom did not develop in tandem with ingenuity and inventive intelligence, lunta.
DeleteI haven't posted much lately, my time occupied with taking stock. When a prominent climate scientist, asked for an assessment of global progress to avert climate catastrophe responded by telling me to watch DiCaprio's "Don't Look Up" it took me to a place I've tried to avoid for a long time.
ReplyDeleteAntonio Guterres warns that our leaders are committing "self harm." - climate change, it's not just for the next generation any more.
Last week, author and military correspondent, Michael Klare, looked at the newly launched Cold War that pits the US and NATO against Russia and China and opined that it could derail essential cooperation on the environment for another two decades - time we obviously haven't got.
George Soros lamented that the war in Ukraine, even if it doesn't result in an outright major power shooting war has derailed action on existential threats such as the climate emergency.
“Other issues that concern all of humanity -- fighting pandemics and climate change, avoiding nuclear war, maintaining global institutions -- have had to take a back seat to that struggle,” Soros, 91, said Tuesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “That’s why I say our civilization may not survive.”
In The Guardian's Sunday paper, the Observer, put it plainly: "...international environmental action is in clear need of reinvigoration. Hopes this might happen were raised after the Glasgow Cop26 meeting. Omicron, the fuel crisis and the Ukraine war put paid to those notions, however."
Immediate self-interest rules
https://tomdispatch.com/the-ukraine-wars-collateral-damage/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/29/observer-view-70-years-warnings-environment
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-24/george-soros-warns-civilization-may-not-survive-putin-s-war
Good to hear from you, Mound. I noticed your absence but figured you were taking a break. The forces arrayed against saving our world are substantial and, I have concluded, insurmountable. The short-sighted corporate forces and our own inertia/indifference are quickly sealing our fate.
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