My perceived 'seeing' of the end of mankind at 13 (See my 'Hall of Time' post) has been a perceived remarkable gift. It also freaked my head for years, making it seem a curse, making my becoming depressive from knowing while living an inevitability. I lived through a period I was inexplicably dreaming about in the abstract. Then the dreamed sequence ended and I hit the unknown era of my life when I was thrown into the forge of change. Heated events, 'interesting times', is for me the state of flux and transition into new form. It is my time of becoming that me I'd been striving for before I hit the teens. It has also, inexplicably, been the era when I learned to understand exactly how that ending of mankind that I was given would become. I was surprised and disconcerted that I was going to live through that change in mankind itself that leads to its demise. It has been an experience of having tiny events driving that engine of final change thrust at me in each day's events.
Today I read something so definitive in that process of ending that I saw that solving it is no easy task. It is an ambition that is beyond human comprehension. I saw the massive momentum of motion in mankind's behavior that drives our specie's self-destruction. Stopping it now seems beyond my imagination. Here is the story I read today:
Killings of environmentalists appear to be on rise
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20120620/D9VGPCJ80.html
No doubt it will disappear from the Internet. Here are some quotations:
Around the world, sticking up for the environment can be deadly, and it appears to be getting deadlier.
People who track killings of environmental activists say the numbers have risen dramatically in the last three years. Improved reporting may be one reason, they caution, but they also believe the rising death toll is a consequence of intensifying battles over dwindling supplies of natural resources, particularly in Latin America and Asia.
Killings have occurred in at least 34 countries, from Brazil to Egypt, and in both developing and developed nations, according to an Associated Press review of data and interviews.
A report released Tuesday by the London-based Global Witness said more than 700 people - more than one a week - died in the decade ending 2011 "defending their human rights or the rights of others related to the environment, specifically land and forests." They were killed, the environmental investigation group says, during protests or investigations into mining, logging, intensive agriculture, hydropower dams, urban development and wildlife poaching
The death toll reached 96 in 2010 and 106 last year, said the report, which was released as world leaders gathered in Rio de Janeiro for a conference on sustainable development. The report's annual totals for the six prior years range from 37 in 2004 to 64 in 2008.
More than three-quarters of the killings Global Witness tallied were in three South American countries: Brazil, Colombia and Peru. Another 50 deaths occurred in the Philippines. All have bloody land-rights struggles between indigenous groups and powerful industries. . . .
What strikes me, reading this article, is the inevitability. I despise watching this happen. I despise knowing where it's going. I don't want this happening. I don't want to get to watch the details of a species unstoppably bent on self-destruction. Like anyone else, I don't want to read what I'm writing here. I want to go hide. I don't want to know. I don't want to suffer it.
Why do I have to be me and CARE? Yet I love being me. I have to face that blessing amidst all the grinding wheels of catastrophe roaring in my ears and blasting in my eyes every day never ending until that final fatal foolish motion by the hand of man. At least I have me and this something beyond faith that lets me experience and learn and grown and be joyful despite all the Other People horrors. THAT is a kindness, a consolation. I can take this ride through rising fires and know I am fine and well if only as a spirit. Thank you that which I call god.
Still in transition, ever in transition, I see only dimly compared to the full light of events. I can only report this one small thing I perceive, give only my limited insight. I am so much just another foolish human. Sometimes I think I have only the thoughts of some other source to share here. It is strange to think that my worse struggle with faith is that I believe in my own abilities to sense these things. Then I return to the correct balance and again realize that I am, we are, all collaborations. There is my contribution. There is "god's" contribution to make ME. I am a WE of these two, just as my mind is a WE of rational and emotional brain functions/services. I am, we are, a collective that contribute to a whole of US. (I a sooo glad I'm not schizophrenic! This collaborative, cooperative nature of the human being is complicated enough without that lunacy).
There are so many people who GIVE of themselves to help our species. THESE are the best of us. Altruism is the character of the most worthwhile of us all, the most grounded and insightful. It has been another of my blessings to have found such people around me during my crash course of learning lifetime. I am so grateful for them, for us, being here as that part of human diversity that PROTECTS and strives to save our species. We ARE HERE. Reading this, don't doubt that the wonder of mankind is here on our miracle planet. That great accomplishment of life does live. There are those of mankind who ARE GREAT for real. We are the quietest, when we are at our best. We are the humblest, when we are at our best. We are so easily overlooked by those lost in game playing. The most LOST of mankind consider the caretakers the weakest of our species. And yet we are the backbone that strives for us to survive, to surmount and overcome the horror of the massive momentum motion of our self-destruction as a form of life. We are those who suffer most because we SEE the LOST and mourn. We are also those most blessed because we know what is worthwhile in being alive, in being a life form made as part of our miracle planet. Insight hurts and insight ennobles. It is the hardest of paths with the kindest of heart, the most tangible of joys. That is how I perceive that situation for me at this moment.
There is more encouragement of others ahead in my life as I learn even more about how to be the elder brother, the caretaker who engenders the personal growing of others as part of my personality, my fate and karma as a protector. I mourn that role and yet I want nothing less and am so grateful to be me. I accept the meagerness of being one person and the minor efforts I can lend. It is simply so joyful to strive in that role. I love those who give of themselves to others and to be with them in whatever small assistance I can also give.
Back in the physical world: Today I have my very first toothache and have to find a dentist. We are wrapped in the physical world, being alive. I'm not looking forward to what I expect will be a root canal, thanks to a persistent gap between my molars. Another exorcise in putting aside my impatience, being alive.
:-Derek
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