Butterfly Tactics

Summer days while away as butterflies gently, sporadically flap their wings in the soft breeze. Yet, there’s a certain urgency belying their apparent calm. These insects go dormant when the ambient temperature drops too low. Thus, for survival, they migrate thousands of kilometres to perpetuate their species. For example, with a lifespan sometimes as brief as two months, the monarch butterfly seems fated for extinction.

Yet, this fragile creature exists. Somehow, through two, three or four generations, this creature’s descendents retrace their ancestors’ path to return to their northern realms. Through evolution or instinct, each generation knows which direction in which to fly and what actions to take so as to ensure future generations.

Having a goal that extends across generations ensures the monarch butterfly’s existence. Can human beings, with a much grander mental capacity, beget similar goals that extend past an individual’s current needs and desires? Or, will we use the resources of Earth, energetic and other, to satisfy current whims and desires? If we choose the later, we will have already set a limit to civilization’s future.

  1. Monarch

Not a monarch


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