Babies, babies everywhere ...
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I visited the birds nesting at the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary today and here's the beauty which I found ...
Bird Nursery - baby night herons, baby snowy egrets, baby pelicans, white pelicans and all active in the morning
Bird Fight - a long walk along the beach including shore birds and featuring an osprey involved in an aerial argument with two very bold smaller birds
Snowy Babies - baby pelicans, extremely active baby snowy egrets, and the birds of Boca Ciega Millennium Park (featuring an egg-laying turtle)
***
This world we happen to inhabit is infinitely beautiful. There's more than enough beauty here to fill many lifetimes. The beauty is so abundant that it is essentially inexhaustible within all time frames meaningful to humankind (that is, the species ).
So how do we spend our time?
Shopping. Watching television. Arguing. Fighting. Feeling horrible and making other people feel equally (or preferably) more horrible.
What is wrong with humankind? Why would humans destroy this living Earth and cover the land with sterile, ugly asphalt? Why would humankind transform the pristine atmosphere, oceans and land into a toxic stew of pollution? Why would humans destroy ecosystems and the planet? Why has humankind driven so many species extinct ... and why isn't humankind stopping?
The ultimate lost cause is saving humankind from itself. Who can reason with the species? How would the species reform itself and make peace with itself and Nature and God (however defined)?
Please do keep in mind that I am speaking about the species. Each individual human is a mixture of good and evil, no one absolutely good and no one absolutely evil. Each individual human, including my own self, is like a drop of rain in the flood. We are all "mostly harmless" and we all can deny responsibility for the mess that our species has caused.
Yet the reality remains: Humankind has trashed the Earth. Humans have made a mess of humankind's only home.
Such an act has consequences and these consequences aren't exactly obvious to the average human. Just as it is extremely unlikely that ants perceive that they are crawling on a planet moving through space it is equally unlikely that individual humans can perceive the larger context (in both space and time) in which they live.
No one knows the future. So it is easy to imagine that our species will keep "progressing" until it conquers space just as it has (deluded itself into thinking) it has conquered the Earth.
Yet Nature still remains in control of the Earth. Nature hasn't surrendered the Earth to humankind. Nor has Nature surrendered its ownership of humankind.
Nature will do to the Earth as it wishes. Nature will do to humankind as it wishes.
This is bad news indeed. Nature's allowed all of our ancestors to go extinct and there is every reason to believe that Nature will allow the Homo sapiens to go extinct. Nature doesn't owe any obligations to humankind regardless of all the trivial things which our species has accomplished.
Nature isn't impressed by science or technology or philosophy or politics or religion or walking on the moon or flying planes or building computers or creating civilization or learning to speak or inventing writing or building pyramids or creating art ... and so forth.
Nature can afford to lose all of these things. Nature can afford to lose the Homo sapiens, too.
The dinosaurs dominated the Earth for millions of years. Nature allowed the dinosaurs to go extinct.
Humans have thoroughly dominated the Earth for a handful of centuries. Nature will allow humankind to go extinct.
We really should have lived differently, shouldn't we?
David Mathews
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