Did We Make Mistakes?

Did we make mistakes? The world today is dramatically showing adverse, life-threatening, effects of the application of some actions and products from man’s rapid expansion of knowledge and inventiveness – in other words man is doing what he’s designed to do, he is thinking, and oh boy, because he’s thinking, the world is hurting. The insatiable use of the worlds resources, without consideration for the residual effects from their use, has caused a detrimental imbalance of the very world’s environment that man needs for his existence – he’s killing himself with his own cleverness. Well, we are all fully aware of the problems and continually tut, tut, about it; the earth overheating, oceans and freshwater sources polluted, forests destroyed, and the list goes on. So what do we do, we change direction and start to use clean energy sources such as wind and sun. However, is this not another mistake? For now we are using precious resources to fabricate the means of collecting clean energy, a cost in resources that approaches, and may exceed, the value of the resource they are capturing, and when these devices breakdown and wear out they are abandoned to continue polluting the world they were designed to help. Here we go again.

In all fairness we have to acknowledge the great strides that man has taken; however, at what cost? And if he is so clever, and there’s no question about his cleverness, then why is the world in such a mess? Why do we make mistakes that endanger our very existence? What’s the point in inventing plastic that will maybe never breakdown, then when we have finished using it, discarding it where we stand, with worldwide horrific consequences – kinda stupid, right! The earth we live on is finite, it must sustain itself, and absorb and reuse its own waste to survive. However, along comes man who creates stuff that the earth cannot naturally absorb and reuse, and also creating an overabundance of waste it could absorb but beyond it’s ability to do so. Yet we have the knowledge and wherewithal to be benign agents of our own destiny. So why don’t we? And the answer to that is yet again an obvious and well-known one – a part of man’s mindset, perhaps a darker part, such as –

Greed, primarily, but other words come to mind to, like: ego, survival, competitiveness, pride, power, self-interest, and not to be forgotten, politics, an occupation that encapsulates all the other words and is an umbrella force that shields and nurtures all the greed and avarice related to the mistakes we are making. Now this opens a Pandora’s box of points of view, but it really boils down to a no-brainer, the answer is still greed. However, for our survival there may soon come a time when all the mistakes will have to be fixed and a new direction taken in how we use our resources. The alternative is what – to continue the way we are? As our resources become scarcer and the earth becomes uninhabitable, choking to death on our waste and degradation of the land, our species may disappear as we battle one another over the dwindling resources. Our track record throughout history indicates that this is the way we’re going, just look at recent history. The last couple of hundred years, as man’s knowledge increased by leaps and bounds, and whow, he has become very smart, what has happened? We’ve been pretty well continuously at war with one another using weaponry so lethal and complex that the ordinary mind can barely comprehend it, we’re destroying the oceans with plastic and waste, a lot of the world no longer has potable water, we have nuclear waste that we don’t know what to do with, we’re using fossil fuels that are warming the Earth’s atmosphere and polluting the very air we breathe, we’re destroying forests and natural habitation at an alarming rate; and here I am repeating myself about our mistakes as, in the same breath, mentioned that man has become very smart; or has he?

Yes and no, smart and maybe stupid. Probably more stupid than smart, because we don’t learn from history and continue to do the same thing over, and over again. For goodness sake by now our level of knowledge and intellect should have made our path of mistakes part of our history. But it hasn’t, instead, a force of nature, one we cannot see, cannot feel, cannot smell, in fact is invisible to us all has shut the world down, it is indiscriminately killing people. We are under attack from a new virus that, as yet, we don’t have the means to combat; in spite of our level of intellect and knowledge. Now we are on a new path, will it again be one of mistakes or will we take a path of change for the better? Unfortunately, when we eventually tame this virus, and tame it we surely will, we may hurtle blindly into a frenzy of catch-up activity, driven by our old friend greed. We must wait and see; however, in the meantime, as our world temporarily shuts down, take a breath of clean air, take a view of the scenery without smog, and listen to the birds without a background of industrial activity.

by J.M.M.S.

Swan Family