The Silence of the Lambs

You can see where it happens: the deep ecologist goes fruity and sabotages heavy equipment, frustrated patriots rage against people who have immigrated instead of unsustainable immigration policies, long time activists throw up their hands and hide away in the forests or mountains.

Unfortunately, in the context of a planet with 6.9 billion humans on its surface, the beautiful music of a peaceable, sustainable future becomes a siren song that drives many onto the rocks of ruin and despair. There is such a cacophony of worldviews, priorities, ideologies, and -- yes -- realities, that there comes a time when we realize there can be no future such as we desire.

There are too many idiots, malcontents, myopic fools and careless vagabonds running about, living their lives with unbridled abandon. We are, in large part, doomed to live out the skipping record of human history with war, pestilence and all other such scourges. Once this becomes so depressingly clear, we sit down -- humbled, frustrated, angry and agnostic.

We begin to see enemies everywhere: fisherman, loggers, conventional farmers, our neighbors, the banks, the WTO, the Federal Reserve, main-stream media, the telephone pole crew cutting overhanging trees back from the wires. The inertia of the complex-dynamic systems, embedded into each other layer after layer, begins to echo in our ears -- just like tinnitus.

Another several species extinctions, a few more collapsed fisheries, 50 football fields of Amazon downed in a few hours, another hideous McMansion development, some moron driving a Hummer, a military budget beyond any sort of human understanding, racism, wars of aggression, snowless mountain tops, drowning polar bears... on and on it goes.

Meanwhile, we are left to wave our raggedy flags of hope with an almost complete assurance of our complete and utter long-term failure. Think of a populationist who started their career back in the 1950's (and seen human population increase by 176%), or those who started warning about global warming in the 1970's (and subsequently watched emissions of 300 trillion pounds of carbon into the atmosphere).

Past performance may not be a guarantee of future results, but come on -- our future is not bright folks. Not all of it anyway. We are going to see plenty of idiocy, lethargy and misguided thinking in our future: then we'll have to put away the toothbrush, clean off the mirror and head out the door to work.

Vain and pompous we can not afford to be. Our tasks are too real, our urgency too authentic. Our hopes too precious to renege.

Because, in the end, even though we know our chances are infinitesimally small, no matter how many times we do the calculations -- or look out at a group of playing seals, watch the circling hawk, see a child smile -- the answer keeps coming up the same:

Do it. Get up. Hold onto that vision. That feeling. That emotion. That inner goodness that you want to hand to the star-fields above you, the companion by your side and the future unfolding around you.

The scrum is going to continue, for better or worse. Like Bugs Bunny liked to say, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em". In our case, it's probably more like, "We can't probably beat 'em, but we'll dang sure try something." That light inside you is the conscious of the Earth, no more or no less authentic than the next gal's or the next bloke's.

And the final value of that gift is yours to determine -- because you are, in every sense, the final arbiter of our collective future. You really are the steward of the planet's spirit and health. Without your own Earth-bound efforts to tell the world what's inside you, the truth you see, the hopes you have -- well then, the future is incomplete. Incoherent. And ultimately impoverished.

So, go about your work even in the face of all obstacles. Stay focused and do not let unavoidable failures divide your attention, do not let unavoidable resistances make you hide. Your struggle is a currency most authentic -- one that proves its worth both in its circulation and in its accumulation as a cherished reserve for others struggling with their own labors of hope and love.

The lambs will chew their cud, contemplating the horizon, and they will need no words. The whales will breach and blow, and fold back into the ocean. Your light was born and it will flicker and eventually fade, joining other lights along the way. Who can say what is to be and what is not?

Only you.

Only you.

Only you.