Knowledge is useless if it is only applied to destroy our planet.
Like any other neighbour’s daughter, I have a mixed origin of European roots with Indian roots, cosmopolitan culture, dilettante’s arrests, expensive tastes but small-time needs. And like me there are thousands, millions of human beings who believe they are unique and unrepeatable and act accordingly as if the sun shines on them exclusively.
What is difficult to accept is the simple and stark reality of being just another number among the billions of polluting entities on this small and fragile planet that we were given to be born, to live and to recycle. From the cradle we have received the false message of human dominion over the elements, over the earth, the sea and the firmament, over the moon and the planets; in fact, the scene of the moon landing was repeated ad nauseam to engrave in our minds this notion of divine superiority that governs consciousness.
And we have bought into it wholeheartedly, rejecting anything that limits our undisputed power over the space we occupy and of which we believe ourselves to be the absolute masters. And so, flaunting our right to property, we have littered the seas, turned orchards into arid and inhospitable deserts, crowned with laurels and honours the worst predators of natural wealth with the dubious merit of generating economic development, depleted water reserves, cut down forests and exterminated insects, birds, fish, reptiles and mammals – for sport, with viciousness and just because – as if our lives depended on it.
Today we see with desolation that apocalyptic warnings about environmental degradation, which we dismiss as unfounded exaggerations or the pure hysteria of a few idealists, have been transformed into hurricanes and floods, droughts, famine, misery, epidemics and a future charged with uncertainty.
Today we hold Earth Day parades over polluted and polluting cities, oblivious to our personal contribution to the certain death of a world that offered so much that, without us appreciating its wonderful and subtle balance, we decided to exploit it to extinction in an arrogant eagerness to transform everything into disposable objects. My love affair with the Earth – and yours too – consists of manifestations lacking in force, of idealistic thoughts of how we should act, but without sufficient conviction to make them real and contribute to the gigantic challenge of saving all this that surrounds us and in whose creation none of us has had the slightest influence.
Like me, many of us have strayed from the sacred rule of human egocentricity. Therefore, I personally do not believe one iota in the tale of human superiority over other species, but neither do I have the power to change such anthropocentric thinking among those around me. Over the years I have become convinced, with evidence in hand, that the human being in its current version and in its most common average, is nothing more than a disease capable of threatening and extinguishing the survival of many other wonderful species and not the engine of development that the industry of thought has sold us so dearly. The only species considered intelligent is also the only one capable of destroying its own habitat and thus denying life to its own progeny. My love affair with the Earth, therefore, smacks of falsehood every time I contribute an ounce of pollutants.
We are a destructive, polluting species, and unable to come to terms with it.
elquintopatio@gmail.com @carvasar
