Reflections On Where We Are

 

I have seen this post multiple times, but I thought this version was particularly eloquent.

We watched a program on homo sapiens the other night and the archeologists were reporting on new findings that push the 'rise' of homo sapiens even further back than was thought.

Which means that we have been here, on this planet (with other branches of the human species, now defunct, with only slight traces in our DNA to show that they existed - other than their bones) for literally thousands and thousands of years.

And I thought about the 'evolution' of the homo sapiens species - if you can call it that.  Because so far as I can see, we have not so much evolved as just...continued to exist.

Quite frankly, the way we have 'improved' our lives over the past 300 or so years, it looks like we are set to wipe ourselves out of existence in the next 50 or so years.  Oh, it won't be a quick extinction, but a slow, agonizing, and quite likely, ugly one.

In the famous poem - this is how the world ends - not with a bang but a whimper.

Can we put the brakes on?

Can we stop killing each other?  The planet?

Biologists have been noticing for several decades the vast - and growing - number of extinctions of other animals.  When we rub out enough of the other animals, there will be little to nothing left for us to continue without the insects (pollinators), plants (food), etc.

Not to mention the human specialty - war.  Wholesale killing.

I expect to not live to see the outcome of our self-extinction efforts.  I'm old, not healthy, frail, even.  But I don't expect us to go quickly, so at some point my skills (such as they are) might be needed in the future.

There isn't much that I, personally, can do to stop the slip and slide to the alt right.  My best effort will be to help try to preserve what knowledge I have; encourage newer/younger weavers to learn.  And be sand in the gears of the alt right.  I may not be able to stop them, but maybe I can slow them down a little.  I certainly don't need to quickly and quietly acquiesce to their plans.

Another post I saw this week was regarding the fact that the opposite to depression was creation.  So I will continue to weave, teach, encourage, for as long as I can.  

And tend my tiny little plant of hope as best I can.

So now I'm going to head to the loom and weave.  Another tea towel.  Seems useless.  But it's an act of creation, not destruction.  And I'm in favour of creativity.