A Man sat alone drenched deep in sadness and the animals came to him and said: "We do not like to see you so sad, ask for whatever you wish and you shall have it". The man said "I wish to have good sight". The Vulture replied: "You shall have mine". The Man said: "I want to be strong." The Jaguar then said "You shall be strong like me." Then the Man said: "I long to know the secrets of the earth." The Serpent replied: 'I will show them to you." And so it went with all the animals. And when the Man had all the gifts that they could give he left. Then the Owl, the wisest of all the animals, said to the others: "Now the man knows much and is able to do many things. Suddenly I am afraid." The Deer said: "The Man has all that he needs, now his sadness will stop." But the Owl replied: "No. I saw a hole in the Man, deep like a hunger he will never fill. It is what makes him sad and what makes him want. He will go on taking and taking. Until one day the World will say: "I am no more and I have nothing left to give." This is our problem, we turned our back on our the other beings on our planet and began to destroy it, for our own desires. We are supposed to protect the earth and its inhabitants, that's why humans are the dominant species instead we became drunk with power and began to abuse it. Before this prophecy is fulfilled we will have the ability to change it for the better, there is no other choice.
There's two sides of the story... The one you want to be a part of is that man is the most evolved species so he needs to take care of his environment to protect themselves and non-species alike. However, the way we've evolved is by using the most resources as possible so I'm pretty sure it's a consequence of how we evolved that we find ourselves in this position. There's a good quote from Lord of War that I enjoy... "You can fight a lot of enemies and survive. But, if you fight your biology, you will always lose." But on the other hand, nature gave us the ability to see/comprehend that we're destroying our planet so maybe that says something in itself.
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zyc12-neTjM]Joe Rogan's Theory on Life and People - YouTube[/ame]
My only rebuttal is we did not evolve using the most resources possible. Many ancient cultures, native americans for sure, are reputed for not having a throwaway society and the only they didnt flourish was because they were conquered by disease and a technologically superior civilization, and because (well they tribes of central america) participated in barbaric rituals that destroyed them from the inside out. Everything else though i agree with.
Unfortunately, we did evolve into an economic system of money. This system fails because we set classes such as lower, middle, and upper class which automatically sets people up to die off, while the rich get to survive for there greediness. The true humor in it is that economies very definition is suppose to mean efficiency in resources. Something I think our system fails to represent personally...
I have to ask you though, why did the technologically superior civilization arise (i imagine it had to do with it's distribution of resources)? Using resources for success (or denying them to your enemy) has been a great recipe for a long time. Native Americans might have had equal footing in America today had they had gunpowder, rifles, and durable swords upon colonization. But like I said in my original post, this probably shouldn't be excused even if it was a great benefit to us at the time - seeing as it'll possibly lead to our destruction in the future.
with power comes great responsibility, a wise man once said..... humans just have to take the old wise man's advice seriously...he knows what he's talking about.. Listen to the Bhudda
I first heard that from Apocalypto, beautiful story, really. ----- (my words) VVVVV Let us look and understand, that one man, is the collective, now this man, some parts of him says, we need to stop, the other parts of him says, we need to finish. Which is more stronger, the feel for the need to stop, or the feel for the need to finish? "Whatever a man truly desires, he will have." It looks like the collective doesn't desire it enough, because we don't, and probably never will, have.
It's not a literal saying, we use 'man' as a term for humanity, or mankind, we've done this for centuries. "It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks."
Truly so, I just figured I'd take the opportunity to add just one more drop to erode the boulder. But to the matter at hand; I think what now looks like destruction and desolation is a tumultuous start to what could be a very long and prosperous future for ourselves, our biosphere and future generations. My optimism may seem a little idealistic, but cynicism has proven to be quite useless to me.
Nothing good ever comes from negativity, other than to learn/grow/mature into positivity.. Afterall, life/humanity is all a learning process. Knowledge is power. (or so they say..)
OP, awesome post. I have often thought about this subject, but your post put it together so nicely. I've always agreed with the ancient native american ways, and why Avatar is my all time favorite movie. The moral is that humans are no better then any other animal, and we should never allow greed and temptation to power ourselves to the top. Instead we should use our great abilities to enhance the world around us, being a father of the land. How backwards we have come..
the beauty is some of us ARE willing to lend a hand to someone slipping i love this post, i just hope more people wake up and realize the err of our ways..