living in an oasis
Nov. 23rd, 2006 07:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eI saw a large bearded lizard in front of the house this morning. He (I think it was a 'he' -- was doing the territorial head bobbing thing)... he was a bit more than a meter long from nose to tail-tip. It is hard to see that there would be enough room here for more than one beardy. This oasis is so small. It is just several acres surrounded on all sides by pastureland where cattle graze. It continually astonishes me how much life there is here.
It is hard to imagine how much there would have been before my white ancestors invaded and stole the land, obliterating most of the country in a swathe of destruction that continues today. It is even harder to imagine how much life would have been here before the earlier dark-skinned inhabitants invaded and destroyed the megafauna (4 meter tall kangaroos, wombats the size of volkswagons, marsupial lions...) and ruined the ground cover with annual burning, preventing soil buildup and encouraging fire-loving species like eucalypts.
Yesterday I was talking to Julie (my ex- from many years back). She spoke depressingly of England, where she now lives. There is no wildlife at all, just a handful of species. People proudly take her to what they call a forest, and she is horrified, because it is just a scrap of regrowth almost devoid of life. Oh sure, there are things living there, but the bulk of species were wiped out hundreds, thousands of years ago. There used to be bears, elk, and wolves in England. Nowadays the largest "wildlife" are some deer who remain only because they were cultivated as sport for people to murder for fun. The next biggest are badgers, and goes rapidly downhill from there.
This is what we will do -- are doing -- to Australia if we're not careful. In our relentless drive to build and pave over and "develop" everything we will destroy the most precious thing of all. We will end up with boring, filthy, McCity that looks exactly the same as every other city on the planet... where from cradle to grave you pay others for every breath you take and call that deprived slavery a "normal life".
Oh crap. I didn't want to start my day like this. Sorry.
It is hard to imagine how much there would have been before my white ancestors invaded and stole the land, obliterating most of the country in a swathe of destruction that continues today. It is even harder to imagine how much life would have been here before the earlier dark-skinned inhabitants invaded and destroyed the megafauna (4 meter tall kangaroos, wombats the size of volkswagons, marsupial lions...) and ruined the ground cover with annual burning, preventing soil buildup and encouraging fire-loving species like eucalypts.
Yesterday I was talking to Julie (my ex- from many years back). She spoke depressingly of England, where she now lives. There is no wildlife at all, just a handful of species. People proudly take her to what they call a forest, and she is horrified, because it is just a scrap of regrowth almost devoid of life. Oh sure, there are things living there, but the bulk of species were wiped out hundreds, thousands of years ago. There used to be bears, elk, and wolves in England. Nowadays the largest "wildlife" are some deer who remain only because they were cultivated as sport for people to murder for fun. The next biggest are badgers, and goes rapidly downhill from there.
This is what we will do -- are doing -- to Australia if we're not careful. In our relentless drive to build and pave over and "develop" everything we will destroy the most precious thing of all. We will end up with boring, filthy, McCity that looks exactly the same as every other city on the planet... where from cradle to grave you pay others for every breath you take and call that deprived slavery a "normal life".
Oh crap. I didn't want to start my day like this. Sorry.
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no subject
Date: 2006-11-22 10:33 pm (UTC)Do you know what I mean?
Perhaps a lesson wont be learned, at all, because no one will live long enough to talk about wildlife and beautiful terrain. Who would know or remember the difference. Future generations will just accept the newer concrete jungles as normal.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-23 10:44 pm (UTC)The good possibility is that we learn really soon how to control our destructiveness and become custodians of the planet for future generations. Sadly I don't think this are looking good for that one.
One bad possibility is that we screw badly with the planet and don't really wake up to ourselves until almost all the other species are wiped out, leaving us with some garden plants, a small number of standard tree species, dogs, cats, sparrows, pigeons, and livestock. And we'll have a real battle to balance this artificial ecology in some kind of stable way. Monocultures are incredibly vulnerable so we will have put ourselves in an extremely dangerous position.
The last possibility is one I hardly want to even consider. It is the answer to the Fermi Paradox. Given the vast numbers of stars in the universe, there must be countless civilisations of intelligent beings. So why can't we detect any at all? The answer may be that intelligence is too unstable. We all destroy ourselves when we become powerful enough.
Given the gleeful abandon with which our (Australian) politicians want to mine radioactive material for nuclear weapons, the future doesn't look great.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-23 01:57 am (UTC)show me your Gizzard...
We have lots of little lizards here but nothing close to a meter long.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-23 10:45 pm (UTC)Adolescence
Date: 2006-11-23 04:43 am (UTC)The human race is in its adolescent phase - learning slowly to curb the unrestrained outbursts of its child phases, but not yet having the wisdom which will come in its adult phase.
It is a painful time, as adolescence is - learning to curb destructive impulses, and learning to use new power with responsibility.
It is a scary time, as adolescence is - learning how good we can be and how evil, having to face the horrors we create, and trying to learn how to be better and wiser persons.
It is a wonderful time, as adolesence is - practising being grown up in increasingly large arenas, gradually taking on more and more responsibility, learning how to get on and manage a planet.
I am not without hope. We will grow up as a race, because ultimately there is no alternative.
Cheers, MFG.
Re: Adolescence
Date: 2006-11-23 11:31 pm (UTC)- We need to stop destroying the ecosystems that support us. We need to get rid of religion, nationalism, racism, and all the other generators of xenophobia.
- We need to find a political system that actually works, and get rid of politicians that lie and rig elections.
- We need to disassemble the war machine.
- We need to abandon the clearly unworkable "greed is good" ethos.
And we need to do all this in the space of just a few decades before technological advances make us so powerful that a few people could end it for all of us. The curve of technological progress grows ever faster tending upward steeper and steeper. It is conservatively projected that the curve will go almost vertical sometime over the next 60 years. I feel it will be considerably before that. That point is sometimes called the "spike" or the "singularity". After that point, every day we will awake to a whole new set of potentials. We will have truly godlike powers.
We had better know how to act like adults before then.
Normally I'm an optimist. But I have to admit that the desire to mine uranium instead of using renewable power is depressing. Religion is in decline, but it will have to dwindle at a much greater rate to make the world safe. The military still have more than enough nuclear weapons to incinerate every many, woman, child, and goldfish on the planet... and they're still poised on hair-triggers waiting for an accident to set them off (they weren't decommissioned after the cold war ended). There is insane opposition to curbing global warming. The richest 10% are destroying even more of the world's limited resources while everybody else gets even less. People still ferociously fight against sharing even things that don't cost anything to share, like knowledge (though thankfully that is starting to change faster -- opensource, Project Gutenberg, Wikipedia...). Various corporate and government interests are trying to cripple our greatest hope yet, the internet.
[sigh] Sorry.
Deer o deer
Date: 2006-11-24 01:57 am (UTC)Btw, a Renault 11 takes a surprisingly long time to slow down from 100 MPH. ;-)