Gaia’s Grievances
I’ve got a lot of problems with you people!
In the 4.5 billion years since my formation, I haven’t seen a single species like you. You people are the most selfish, arrogant, and thoughtless species to tread my lands, sail my waterways, and fly in my air.
You are ungrateful. You don’t care about all that I have made possible for you, for all that I have given you, or even the fact that I (along with the sun) made your life and everything in it possible. At least, that is what your collective actions lead me to believe.
I have created the conditions for life to evolve in countless ways, to even evolve into what you call “homo sapiens,” the “wise men” as you describe yourselves in one of your extinct languages. But wise you are not. For the last few hundred years, you have ravaged nearly all parts of me, not merely for your own survival, but mostly for your own comfort, convenience, wealth, and social status. Most of you look at me as yours to have dominion over, to exploit, over which to spread yourselves and multiply to the point of threatening your own existence along with most other life forms that have evolved along with you, whose survival is intimately intertwined with yours. How do you see yourselves as so wise considering all of this?
It boggles my mind that you also have created a concept of humaneness. You act as if the essence of what it means to be human is to be humane or to have compassion or feelings of benevolence toward other beings. Do you fail to see the irony there? Everywhere you are, you have created societies that are rife with various types of inequality, conflict, cruelty, hate, exploitation. Where is this so-called humaneness? Maybe it is time for a more realistic self notion.
Do you ever think about the implications of your activities before you decide to undertake a massive project like clearing a forest to build some structure that will benefit a few of you? Some of you claim to believe in democracy, but who asks the trees and the other life forms who inhabit these forests what they think about these projects? They don’t count in your calculations, your estimations, your values. You don’t see their value because of your own myopia. Like me, they help to make you, your life, your society possible.
Even those of you who study me and the other life forms who inhabit me don’t really get it. You have created the term “invasive species” to describe species that somehow arrive in a new environment and cause all kinds of problems. Yet you fail to realize that you are the most invasive species by your own definition. And you are mostly responsible for the movement of non-native species across my many ecosystems that you then deem invasive and then often try to eradicate. Through your studies you have learned about the fragile balance of these ecosystems, and yet, you tinker with them while not realizing your incredible arrogance in so doing. You can’t fix things because you really have no idea of the complexity and interconnection in these ecosystems and how they function as a whole. Never mind that though. Just keep calm and carry on (and print that on your merchandise).
Your species evolved in a part of Africa some 200,000 years ago, and what have you done since? You spread to nearly every terrestrial ecosystem I have created, as if I had made them all for you. I do have to hand it to you for your incredible ability to adapt, and maybe that is my fault for helping you evolve that ability. But the upshot is that you are everywhere on my lands. And you have taken to the air and seas in recent years.
And what have you done in those places? You’ve decided to try to control plants and animals in order to have a convenient and reliable source of food. Ok, I could forgive that if you had stopped there. I understand your need for some sense of security. But you didn’t stop there. You devised ways to extend your life, to increase your numbers, and along with them your needs. You people used to just consume food, water, and oxygen. Now you consume energy derived from a variety of sources, some of it stored for millennia beneath the ground. All of that, in turn, has caused you to take more space, more vital habitat from your fellow beings you share me with, to tear me apart, to use more chemicals, to release more pollution. Eventually, that caused you to “industrialize,” and soon you were thinking more about profit than survival. You began using monocultures, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides to increase yields and prevent cross-species sharing without concern for the pollution that caused.
You had everything you needed, and yet you wanted more. It was never enough. And you just kept taking, because profits had to grow. Or, so you told yourselves. The shareholders wanted more dividends! And that even caused you to fight amongst yourselves, again with disastrous consequences for your fellow life forms who had no say in these petty conflicts. You continue to fight over land, religion, resources, and control over each other. How many wars is enough? If you are so wise, why haven’t you figured out a way to make war obsolete?
And in recent years, you’ve just become obsessed with stuff and status. You’ve come to a point where what it means to express your individual identity is to buy things that are “so you.” You often don’t even think about the environmental consequences of buying these (mostly useless) things, nor the social consequences.
Don’t even get me started about glitter. You created these tiny plastics to make things and people look glamorous. But it gets everywhere. And like all plastics, the glitter will never biodegrade. Even after you all have wiped yourselves out, your glitter and other plastics will remain because polymers are forever. Thanks a lot for that!
You release nearly a dump truck load of plastics and other garbage into my oceans each day. All the remnants of your disposable lifestyle. I mean, it is convenient. For YOU! Now there are massive garbage patches in my Pacific Ocean that are too large to be cleaned up. Your micro plastics have sunk to the depths of the Mariana Trench and floated into the air above the Pyrenees Mountains, and even fall in the rain. And that is not all that you have been up to.
In recent years you have altered the chemistry of my atmosphere and of my oceans. You’ve created dead zones all throughout coastal waterways from agricultural runoff. These are places where most aquatic life cannot live. You have destroyed habitat of countless creatures to “develop” places for the exponential increase of your population. You have a pro-growth mindset with no limitations despite the fact that you are approaching my carrying capacity. That is what you call the limit of how many humans I can sustain.
But it wasn’t always this way. There were humans who thought differently, who acted differently. They didn’t have a take-too-much mentality. They took what they needed and made sure to leave some resources for other humans or other living beings. What happened to them? Why did their ideas and ways of living not become the dominant culture? I guess it didn’t impress the shareholders. Or maybe it wasn’t “civilized” enough for some people.
There were indigenous people all over me that lived in a much more harmonious and sustainable way. Their philosophies were a form of ancient wisdom that understood that they could not comprehend everything about their environment, and that they needed to approach it with care and gratitude. They also understood their absolute dependence on that environment and the great interconnection between all beings. Some of these ideas remain in what you call religions — mostly Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Shintoism. And Native Americans other indigenous peoples also understood these things.
These ideas mostly came from observation, from living in natural settings, from understanding what it takes to survive because every day required effort to survive. And survival was dependent on that observation, on understanding the rhythms of nature and respecting them, rather than attempting to alter or control them.
But these ideas did not win out. Others ideas, mostly from what you call “Western Civilization” became dominant. (Although, I have to agree with that fellow named Gandhi. There’s an old story [I know you people like stories] that when he visited England, Winston Churchill asked him what he thought of Western Civilization, and Gandhi responded that he thought it would be a good idea. Of course the funny thing is that Churchill didn’t realize that Gandhi had studied law in England decades before. And that he and his countrymen in India had experienced the so-called “Western Civilization” through colonial oppression. And it did not make a great impression on Gandhi and his fellow Indians.) Instead, ideas about exploiting resources and people took hold. Other religions that taught that I was here for you people to use however you wanted, that you were supposed to go forth and multiply, became dominant. And now everything is about wealth, status, convenience, and taking selfies to show everyone you are living your best life no matter how wasteful and destructive that is to me and other living beings you share me with.
Most of you either forgot or discredited the ancient wisdom. Or, at best, some of you thought it was quaint. And in recent years your own modern scientific research has validated, corroborated, and bolstered many of the old ideas and ways of doing things. Sure, you may never have gotten iPhones, but do they really make your life better? Aren’t you just slaves to them and the silly things you look at on them? The antisocial media...I mean social media you constantly scroll through. Maybe spend more time observing nature. You might learn something.
I mean, how many floods, hurricanes, wildfires, and droughts do I need to send you for you to take me seriously? How many of you people do I need to kill to get your attention? Should I send you a feedback survey to see what you thought of the last natural disaster? Do we need to do a focus group? Were none of them cinematic enough for you to believe that this is all for real? That your actions have consequences? All that you see as real is whatever appears on your stupid little screens.
Perhaps it is time for you people to put down the iPhones and turn off the Netflix and really start thinking about whether you want to survive. Maybe it is time to end the partisan bickering and the senseless wars, come together and figure out how to solve the problems you all (well, most of you) have created. Maybe you need to relearn some of that ancient wisdom and see where it leads you. You’d be doing everyone a favor. But it seems as though you would prefer not to.
Ah, humanity!
Sorry if this comes off as a little angry.