Sunday, December 05, 2010

NATURE IS NOT VICARIOUS

Civilization morphs human beings into human doings. This morphology has advanced to the stage where, to experience the feeling of “just being” in our daily lives requires the doing of, not only getting chores out of the way to make room for it, but scheduling the time merely to do the sitting and observing the world from such a relatively inactive proximity to being … with purpose.

Squeezed as our leisure is between the purposeful doings of maintaining and advancing ourselves within civilization, it cannot be considered a waste of time. An overwhelming portion of human doings are devoted to providing the world's doings to be watched during the leisure allotment. An overwhelming portion of human leisuring is spent observing these artificial doings rather than first hand accounts of natural existence. It makes them feel relatively good to not think about what they do otherwise but not enough to quit doing it for good. The victorious, vicarious fan switches off TV and schlubbs back to a life of quiet desperation.

Two separate human doings have crossed paths in my attention in such a way that it evoked this post. One is the demonstrations of solidarity displayed by both fans of “350” and protesters of the BP oil spill. The other is an attempt to get all human faces off facebook to protest child abuse. When I noticed the second doing it hit me … some actually believe nature is as vicarious as they are if they think demonstrations affect the nature of the environment or the nature of the humans against whom they rail.

No matter how many people participate, no matter from how far out in space it can be seen, not one particle of pollution per million or one bad parent per 7 billion was removed from the natural environment by flying and driving to however many solidarity demonstrations we may ever dream up or childhood cartoon animals we post as our portrait. Exercising individual integrity and responsibility for the smallest footprint by being symbiotic with Gaia is the only doing that matters.

I am reminded of times when a show of hands is requested of an audience in response to questions of morality from the podium are posed. 

2 comments:

ETERNITY KIDZ said...

You're very right, sir. I think most people are slowly letting exercises in futility take over their lives.

Yodood said...

do go on…