It is amazing just how comfortable we, in the fortunate minority of earth's population, can become with a way of taking for granted the most basic of life essentials.
We quibble about not having the right shirt, skirt, pants, shoes or whatever to wear. We chafe over the least little infraction of our personally imprinted mandate on time. Our fellow travelers on this road of impoverished awareness of the natural world and our tenuous - at best! - part in it, are no less complacent of their duty or complicit in their premeditated abdication of responsibility. And each one of us - barreling down this autobahn of destruction - is more likely than not to be clueless to the extremity of our minority value in this issue.
Yet, we certainly seem to be so morally bankrupt in this that we do not realize the extent to which we gorge our pursuit of pleasures at the incredulous expense of the rest of earth's citizenry; of which we are less than 5%. Yet, we control the use of 95% of the resources earth coughs up.
Could it be assessed - dare I say, assumed - that we just don't care? The evidence shows clearly there is no other choice of analysis. The bill for such a lapse in moral responsibility will come due and there will be no avoiding it at that time.
It will be a sad, sad day when this happens - and it's not likely that far off. On that day there will be many a lip uttering those damning lines from the morbid, but realistic, John Greenleaf Whittier poem, Maud Miller -
We have been warned.
We quibble about not having the right shirt, skirt, pants, shoes or whatever to wear. We chafe over the least little infraction of our personally imprinted mandate on time. Our fellow travelers on this road of impoverished awareness of the natural world and our tenuous - at best! - part in it, are no less complacent of their duty or complicit in their premeditated abdication of responsibility. And each one of us - barreling down this autobahn of destruction - is more likely than not to be clueless to the extremity of our minority value in this issue.
Yet, we certainly seem to be so morally bankrupt in this that we do not realize the extent to which we gorge our pursuit of pleasures at the incredulous expense of the rest of earth's citizenry; of which we are less than 5%. Yet, we control the use of 95% of the resources earth coughs up.
Could it be assessed - dare I say, assumed - that we just don't care? The evidence shows clearly there is no other choice of analysis. The bill for such a lapse in moral responsibility will come due and there will be no avoiding it at that time.
It will be a sad, sad day when this happens - and it's not likely that far off. On that day there will be many a lip uttering those damning lines from the morbid, but realistic, John Greenleaf Whittier poem, Maud Miller -
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
We have been warned.
