Christopher Phipps | Mankind: Architects of destruction

IF WE are to believe the scientists and the history books, eons ago, Mother Earth was as supple and radiant as baroque depictions of a virginal Mary. Terrestrial greens harmoniously fought in equal measure with crystal waters for supremacy. The purity of these lands was tactile and Edenic. All was peace.

Behind this blissful balance, though, was a set of machinations that ensured the maintenance of said equilibrium. There was ALWAYS a system of giving back to the land from which one had taken, IN EQUAL MEASURE to which one had received. If an animal ate of a tree, the dispersion of seeds from the initial point of access would propagate the genesis of new floral life.

Even the most savage predator, devoid of a highly developed frontal lobe, would give back to the earth, even if its offering was a posthumous contribution of its decaying corpse as fertilizer. That same system holds true to this day, EXCEPT WITH MAN.

Whether your belief system concerning the human origin story is rooted in Adam, Homo sapiens’ precursors, or one of the host of others that exist, a universal truth is man’s destructive footprints throughout the pages of history. Ever since the discovery of fire or the invention of the wheel, mankind has serially and progressively barrelled down a path towards his ultimate destruction. If left unchecked, does order truly come from chaos, or were we given an ordered world, and by our stewardship and ‘developments’ we have wrought disaster?

Mankind generally tends towards avarice, egocentrism, and uncaringness. The deaf have a better chance of hearing the prophetic rebukes of earth’s preservation advocates than do even many a great intellectual with all faculties intact. World leaders discuss to no purposeful ends, the economic ramifications of making the uncomfortable but necessary changes required to combat occurrences like: global disease and hunger inequalities, rampant deforestation, the use of natural earthly resources as our personal chemical cesspools, and, of course, aggressive climate change.

NATURAL SELECTION

We have spent our years focusing only on specific aspects of our industrial revolutions; as is evident by increasingly sophisticated military technologies and vicious mechanisms for driving biological and chemical warfare. Most nations spend a greater percentage of their gross domestic products on developing means to potentially destroy their enemies than on more pressing matters, such as healthcare developments or on ways to address Mother Nature’s cries.

Well, in any functional system, there are always checks and balances in place, and these quality-control measures exist whether or not we deem them to be convenient.

One such earthly mechanism is natural selection, where survival requires that an organism uses all the tools at its disposal to circumvent an event or entity that is geared towards its destruction. So with regard to the sudden chain of events we find ourselves faced with, maybe it isn’t just about all that’s happening with us.

Maybe WE have threatened earth’s existence to the point where she is forced to employ a ‘Thanos-like’ virus to secure her preservation; or maybe all this will pass in a few months and then it will just be us back to our destructive, business-as-usual selves.

However, maybe this is a wake-up call, letting us know that the things we do on this earth can be done in better ways. You be the judge.

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