THE DARK WITHIN WHICH WE WHISTLE

The population of any life form finds balance with its food supply. It is hard to speak of human population reduction without connotations of genocide. But … rather than further replacing the earth’s natural biodiversity by increased agribusiness production of the favorite foods of a population swollen beyond any natural food supply to feed the third of humanity that is always starving, we could face the music, and let them die. Or, more reasonably possible and surely more humanely, we could consider our too long ignored natural responsibily in the process of coitus, conception, gestation, birth and parenthood from a viewpoint based on the foregoing and seriously teach our young about the connection between the sex act and over population. God’s “go out and multiply” and Catholic contraception prohibition be damned. We could return to pregnant women their choice of abortion or motherhood. We could return to the aged a death that is the karma of their life rather than desperate clutching at prostheses and hope of new procedures until the doctors can no longer extract money and solemnly shake their head, “Another one got away.”
Humanity, once in symbiosis with the body of which it is a part, has become a bloated cancerous parasite draining the vitality of its host by changing its makeup to our favorite foods and us. No habitat can sustain with such a lack of biodiversity. A return to the ways of a symbiot is within our power as enlightened individuals. The enlightenment of the dark, within which our civilization has been whistling a tune begun 16,000 years ago with the advent of totalitarian agriculture and pretty shrilly since the industrial revolution, is dawning achingly slow. The ruining of our habitat is happening more gradually than the greedy need admit to the mindless masses, who don’t even notice; and everyone who warns them is taken as a doomsday alarmist.
The only natural limit to our accelerating destruction is the quantity of fossil fuel with which we’ve empowered ourselves to become so colossally heedless of the course our “stewardship” takes. No city has more than three days worth of food! Run out of gas; not only can you not drive to the market, whole fleets of truckers can’t either and the three percent of our population that still farms can’t even drive to their fields to harvest or plant their industrial produce. No fabled creator’s plague of locusts has devastated our world like that inevitability made more probable every day.
The president of the United States of America, the leading bully of the free world, accuses any local and world wide attempts to address ecological concerns of being detrimental to the sacred “American Way of Life”, ineptly admitting he knows where the guilt lies. The imperial policies enacted at home and abroad under the guise of national security parallel the effect of totalitarian agriculture by changing the world into us just to feel conveniently safe in it. His spit-in-your-face attitude expressed by ignoring the cliff we’re accelerating toward because it brings down the joy ride for the intoxicated passengers is too obvious for me to ignore. So, I guess my questions for all the recently rewarded Bush lovers are: Are you so contemptuous of what remains of the world for your children after you’re gone? Are you so drunk with the joyride that you’re planning to make more money off the crash insurance? Is your mind so small and greedy you think a stock market crash is worse? I’d like to hear from the smug “winners” in the latest pop poll as to how their mandate addresses the real, unspoken issue of our times.
These are the times. This is the dark within which we whistle. Consider yourself enlightened or me a doomsday alarmist who disturbed someone with more important things to think about.

I found the following quote amongst many inspirational ones offered here.
"I hear in patriotic utterances a slave of limited vision who justifies a master’s brutality and position. Geographic boundaries are naught but fences around hearts within. They better control and maintain riches and power of those who configured the lines and formulated repeated lies. One can break out by dreaming beyond a master’s litany and joining the universal quest for freedom. Are you ready to fight the master, or does love of lies, worship of toys, and hunger for crumbs hold you back?”

This is a page from a calendar I designed in 1997 in preparation for Y2K, the text is reproduced below it:

We should study how island cultures evolved - with total awareness of two undeniable realities at which continental cultures only sneer: finite space and finite resources in the face of a growing population. To imagine a future probable within the lifetimes of our grandchildren one need only picture the situation in which Japan would find herself tomorrow if she were to awaken to find she was the only land mass on earth - they can’t eat bucks’ skins and nickel knuckles - so much for the value of their money. At the present pace of the human race we will be just as unprepared - quantity over quality in a thing-a-thon called keeping up with the Joneses, no matter what they’re driving to no matter where - and the family values are found at the bottom/finish line.
None of earth raping, looting or pollution would amount to a hill of beans if we weren’t such a mountain of beings. By our sheer numbers, we’ve devolved from having been partners in a coevolutionary symbiosis with the planet to being host pilfering parasites in our rush for more of the last - and our leaders campaign on the “more growth” ticket - and win.