A KEY

Let us make one assumption: that the Creator is giving everything for the enjoyment of mankind. The enjoyment of His children.

And as we enjoy we bring comfort and joy to the Creator; acknowledging His presence and His purpose. Is His beauty not obvious:  perfect balance in your gait; the colours and rich textures; muscles in motion; forest canopies; birdsong; and all those sounds we hear from the creatures of the world which are pleasant and endearing. The endless and ever-changing vistas: the roll of the ocean; the seventh cresting by the shore, and the thrashing of a lively river; the trickling of a radiant creek; the sunlight dappling the leaves of all the various windswept trees; the rising of a crescent moon; the hooting of a night owl; the growls and roars of wild beasts in the hunt hidden by the sway of the tall, yellow grasses. All these complex and diverse manifestations of the natural world given in its pristine state contribute to the possibility of our living in a utopian state.

 

And all of the wild  creatures are driven with an instinct to survive.

                                                             

Today, scientists witness their weird survival strategies: i.e. carpenter ants exploding toxins; the wood frog freezing itself during low temperatures having stored glucose in its liver, which gets released to  ‘play dead’; the electric eel using voltage discharges to keep predators away. All of these game plans and those myriad more even among the microbial populations can only be divined by man as he can appreciate the intelligence (and sometimes humor) of the Creator at work across every segment of the biodiverse universe. But allow me to suggest that man’s interest in survival is not instinctual as in being forced upon him but rather his appetite for life exists as a gift which may be denied. And it is this freedom to deny which marks man as a potential enjoyer of infinite capacity. He is imbued with desires; and may exercise choice.

The body of man facilitates joy. And may also facilitate continuity  of joy. And joy is the exclusive domain of man as his free will functions to receive a steady, intense peace, ascending to its mystic blissful dimension at wondrous moments.  This facility of freedom to receive or deny joy and knowing of self and the Creator is precisely what sets man apart from the rest of the animals of the world. It distinguishes us as more than animal. 

Only man is modest, compassionate, conversant, full of mirth at times and thoroughly unpredictable – a sure sign of freedom. And I have yet to hear an animal laugh.

And man is the only sentient entity which can communicate the ideas of his mind, his anxieties and his preoccupation with existential contemplations. And it is this unique mindfulness through which we may abide in knowing.      

These are the components which define man as a spiritual being. 

We will not re-establish Utopia on earth in our lifetime but it is critical that we witness the way Nature has configured the world, including the cosmic macrocosm and that intriguing microcosm so as to deliver a sense of wonder and awe and the thrill of being alive; included in a divine household. We need to allow nature to continue in its execution of Life as though this were a Utopian environment.

It would begin with our withdrawing from our interventions – even the well-intended restoration projects attempting to re-introduce species, in an attempt to return to a vaguely defined base line. (Ever see the face of someone who has undergone too much facial plastic surgery? Is that the face we want to plaster on our delicate earth?) Injecting into the environment our version of corrections to the ecological state (unbalanced or not) is foolhardy – the puzzle being far too complex. It is not for man to create. It is for man to participate with Creation.

Only the Creator can rectify the mess man has made. Man must

withdraw and stop all interventions – all the industrial activity driven by the mindsets of the wealth-addicted whose joyless version of wealth is a fraud.

Since when did any of us entitle the wealth-addicted to plunder our planet and put us all in peril? And now with the onset of the sixth extinction – the Anthropocene extinction (meaning as brought about by the activity of man) – we face a classic Hobson’s choice. Make the radical changes necessary now to avert planetary cataclysms before they are beyond our control or await  Nature’s correction. Fierce and merciless.  Welcome then to the dark side of the Doomsday Clock. 

Climate changes of a drastic nature are already upon us: the rising of sea levels with the melting of vast glaciers; the firestorms across the drylands we have fashioned; even earthquakes (overdue) are all easily foreseeable to any half-informed scientist.

As gloomy as it may seem, it is useless and self-serving to deny that we as a planetary guest have outlived our welcome. Having acted abusively to our host, we are being shown the door.  

The greed of the wealth-addicted is a virus and it is to that virus that we are all succumbing. The homeless are buying lottery tickets and the obscenely wealthy would still sell their grandmother on a pump and dump scheme. It pleases these one percenters to impose their skewed value system on the masses. The psychopathic behaviour of billionaire CEO’s must now be viewed as criminal where the environment is concerned.

The consequence of nature behind the wheels of the necessary drastic changes required to assure her survival on this planet, is the occasioning of such blights as to throttle the populations of continents and re-jig the whole layout. The rules of Nature aren’t necessarily changing. It’s just that they will manifest in such a way as to clear the board.  New dice.

It is time for a revolution of thought. The masses need to put themselves on a war footing. Outlaw the use of plastic shopping bags would be a start. People would comply once informed that they have been strangling the sea beasts with the residue of these non-biodegradable bags of convenience. There is a host of ways (listed later in this work) the masses can act upon so that each ordinary individual may begin to feel that he is making an extraordinary impact at a time of emergency. This dire circumstance of the dwindling wild habitat isn’t imminent. It is upon us.  Your role, dear reader, may enrich your life, bringing a thrilling meaningfulness to it. Otherwise, you can expect your grandchildren to wonder legitimately: "Why didn't you do something?"

'Occupying' space is a futile form of protest. You have the power to go beyond the role of protester to that of revolutionary.

And as importantly: would it not behoove us all to clean up our own act before we presume to tackle the house-cleaning of the planet? We need to bring to the table a robustness of our own physical and mental health to reflect then what we are hoping to achieve in the major tinkering of planet restoration. Start by eliminating those habits which limit your enjoyment of personal power.

Find a relationship with the personality of the Infinite and you will have found the philosopher’s key. Doors open. A clock stops ticking.  Then, with a clear-headed itinerary in hand, deal from the new deck.