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| Elephant Odyssey at the San Diego Zoo |
Part Three of a Four-Part Post
A world without bees and butterflies,
dancing flower to flower? It's happening.
Big
Chem brews the dark magic that kills the weeds that kill the soil that kills
the blooms that feed these tiny grace-notes. This is the house
that Chem built.
Chemicals and escalating
diseases and pests―and God knows what else―are the death of them.
There is no compensation for
the demise of the honeybee. Or the Monarch, our king of butterflies, whose
milkweed staple has been largely eradicated. Or, indeed, the great striped cat,
pattern-perfect in its timeless life-rhythm. Or . . . in a lovely-strange,
impossible sense, the elegant "caprice" that is a dolphin―so peculiarly akin to the lumbering grace of its
brother, elephant. Immutable diversity, not a bone alike. But ah, such amazing tenderness;
such wisdom . . . such humanness.
So unbelievably akin to us. Our shadow selves.
A frenzy of bees gone
insane? A shark drowning in its own life-home-waters, fins hacked off for a few
bowls of soup? The horns of a rhino ground for a useless tonic? This is a real
insanity, a malignancy that metastasizes daily. The list goes on and on, swells
and feeds and breeds. Different rationales, varying methods, one over-arcing
mindset: Gain. Prospering. At any
cost to environment and ultimately, life on earth.
Most of us, in our
once-blessed LaLaLand, are not directly
guilty. But by neglect we harbor the unconscionable among us―say, ivory
dealers who, with virtual impunity (through native poachers) are steadily slaughtering
earth's timeless herds―nearly a hundred a
day, official estimate!* And what of those within our nation's boundaries who
willfully trade with or provide
transport for certain foreign fishing industries―despite their well-known
brutality. Supporting the agonizing deaths
of great fish―to stoke frivolous appetites far beyond our shores! Where is
the anger at such desecration?
A forfeiture that too often comes
with nothing more than a "Tsk!" or a woeful shake of head. The world
is dying of Tsk!.
All this, and
more―infinitely more―is transacted daily from our shores with our implied
"consent." With our consent―us, enlightened America? The land of the free and the brave?
Where are the brave hiding
out? God bless the burgeoning movements, the NGO's and enviro-activists, and others
who carry their placards and call out our spineless ways. But they are too few,
spread thin among the battlefields of this age's travesties.
We in the background of this
legacy of death-based greed go on with our undeniably busy lives with little
thought for such atrocities . . . offering little-to-no demand for reproach and
restriction. It simply doesn't fit into the needs, the mindsets of our already
complicated state of being. But by
this unawareness, or passivity, or disengagement, we allow evil to triumph. And
yes, our earth's historic die-off is largely that. A historic betrayal indeed.
Why
the disconnect? Because we do not care enough to see enough to do enough? To
say "STOP!"?
To
find a way to do "STOP!"?
to be continued...
