Two Worlds

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OF WONDER AND SPLENDOR

Just like as in a nest of boxes round,
Degrees of sizes in each box are found:
So, in this world, may many others be
Thinner and less, and less still by degree:
Although they are not subject to our sense,
A world may be no bigger than two-pence.
Nature is curious, and such works may shape,
Which our dull senses easily escape.

Margaret Cavendish
Of Many Worlds in This World

There are a number of Earth’s animals, great and small, that care for each other. They seem to have feelings for the welfare of another. They demonstrate an innate behavior to protect their own as a whole rather than and possibly at the demise of themselves. In human terms this is called compassion, empathy, courage, altruism, love, and other inspiring virtues. In scientific terms it is known as eusociality and forms of superorganism behavior. In other words, the greater good of the whole is far greater than the one. Feel free to enjoy the accompanying music while viewing the slides of animal compassion, empathy, and selflessness and our planet’s sheer beauty:

  • 9/11 Lab Retrievers Salty and Roselle who refused to abandon their owners while evacuating the Twin Towers.

There is an enormous goldmine of virtues to be learned and modeled by these animals and how they treat each other and other species.

OF VANITY AND LOATHING

There is one species on Earth that often regards and treats its own atrociously, let’s say by a form of cannibalism, but also treats its environment, its one and only home, nay even its own kitchen table—their food/water sources, their limited medicine cabinet, and the very air they must breath—with astounding naivety. As such, they carelessly risk their own offspring’s and their future offspring’s very home too in spite of evolving to astonishing levels of intellect. This one species for decades, no, no… centuries has persisted blindly and stubbornly in insatiable consumption, neglecting and biting the hand that feeds it, and with a bottomless amount of vanity. It has too often chosen ignorance or denial, prejudice or violence, and a habit of lethargy to change little, if anything, about its direction. Judging by its historical record it would seem this “superior species” is the epitome of self-defeating obesity leading to self-inflicted extinction. My accompanying tune and tribute to this brilliant, yet endangered species and slideshow:

WARNING — Some images are graphic and disturbing. Discretion advised.

  • No masks?
  • “No Masks Result”
  • The body of 32-year-old Rubin Stacy hangs from a tree in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., as neighbors visit the site July 19, 1935. Stacy was lynched by a mob of masked men who seized him from the custody of sheriff’s deputies for allegedly attacking a white woman. (AP Photo)
  • No Masks?
  • No Masks Result — Photo by Anton Raharjo/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
  • Las Vegas Massacre 2017
  • No Masks?
  • No Masks Result
  • — Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images
  • No Masks Result

After some 100,000 years of human “civilization,” is it time our species rethink its priorities and values, perhaps overhaul them completely? Is it time we stop exploiting, trashing, destroying, and ignoring our living kitchen that sustains all life on Earth, let alone our own kind? When will it be too late? How much business as usual becomes bankrupt, no more business, ever?

Most likely that deadline is much sooner than you think. Agree? Disagree? Indifferent?

Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always — Love More

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25 thoughts on “Two Worlds”

  1. As Agent Smith said in The Matrix, “Humans are a virus, we are the cure….” And it’s true. We are the only species on this planet that will willingly destroy their own environment – and allow others to as well – without lifting a finger.

    I always apologize when I see a photo of one of or all of the Newtown Angels. We couldn’t save them, even just sending them off to school where I’m sure they wouldn’t have ever given a thought to their safety.

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  2. Humanity; one of our most paradoxical or ironic words, huh?

    On gun control I refuse to give up. I still haven recovered from Newtown or the fact that our GOP Congress could witness such a thing and not lift a finger in response. Even doing something marginally helpful or even a gesture would have been better than to declare there’s nothing we can do. This is still a democracy and the people’s voice should still amount for something. After Newtown 91% of Americans wanted some action taken; more rigorous background checks was the number one thing. Congress did nothing. 91% of Americans can’t agree on the colors of the flag let alone a gun control measure and still Congress did nothing. We must keep up the fight until these weapons of war are removed from our streets and we have more reasonable gun control laws.

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  3. Long but beautifully written…I think you’ll like it..lots of facts too. Enjoy.

    I think we have past the point of no return…too much hate, too much religion, too much selfishness, too much greed, too much destruction, too much wealth inequality and way too much apathy.
    Maybe it could have been no other way, due to our evolutionary nature.

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  4. Very well said, and yes, I fully agree. I’ve long said that the human species is the only one who judges others by such things as skin colour and the only one who felt a need to create that concept they call religion in order to somehow justify all their bigotries. This is a very timely and thoughtful post … thank you.

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    • Thank you Jill. I do so appreciate your thoughts, your feedback here. 🙂

      Our species is indeed a most brilliant yet most tragic genus on Earth isn’t it? An uncanny and so abundantly gifted species that so irresponsibly pisses away and trashes our own kitchen and the very colleagues and cousins who can always make our lives better, happier, more meaningful WHEN we collaborate and be all-inclusive rather than exclusive. The total brain-power and ingeniousness of human collaboration, rather than competitive cannibalism, would be such a monumental Coming of Age (again) for the human race that the risk of total extinction would be a historical novel on The New York Times Best Seller list, nothing else.

      But even though I am a practicing Optimist first, a Realist second, personally I have no qualms looking at the unpleasant facts, stats, data, and evidence that reveal or point to utter failure, total disaster, and never falling into the trap of Sugar-coating events to save face, to save image and your ass. That only makes the inevitable much worse, much more shameful. So… I write and publish this blog-post. 😦

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  5. Agree with all of it. I give humanity 100 years, max. I’m not necessarily saying full extinction – I’m sure some fats cats will find a way to survive – but I don’t think we would recognize the world in any way. We just don’t seem to have the collective fortitude to absorb problems of such incredible complexity and magnitude. We can’t even agree on climate change as many people just choose “not to believe in it” as if it’s some faith-based issue. Just because you can’t smell the smoke doesn’t mean the house isn’t on fire. The level of apathy is just insurmountable.

    I must say, as much as I hate to, that in my opinion the best thing that can happen to this planet will be the eradication of humanity.

    Here’s more good news:
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidbressan/2021/04/07/carbon-dioxide-spikes-to-record-level/?sh=6b9be577521f

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  6. The one tendency actually follows naturally from the other. Almost all environmental damage caused by humans is the result of efforts to produce more food or extract more resources for the benefit of human groups. On a deep level, it is the result of altruistic or at least social behavior. If humans were completely selfish and cared nothing about providing for each other, we would do very little damage to the environment.

    Serious efforts to take care of the environment emerge when societies grow rich enough that they can afford to divert resources to such endeavors which are, from the viewpoint of people in more desperate circumstances, a luxury. In general (and with the large exception of global warming), the global environment is in better shape now than fifty years ago, and steadily improving. This is especially true in the rich countries — just compare pictures of the levels of smog in major first-world cities fifty years ago with similar pictures today, for example. It’s not that people in rich countries are more moral or even necessarily more environmentally aware. It’s that rich countries can afford to divert resources to preserving the environment, enforcing regulations, and suchlike. Even with global warming, the transition to clean energy has been proceeding at a pace few would have expected a decade ago (the US for the last four years has been an exception, but the US is only a small part of the whole world).

    Most of the worst environmental damage now is happening in the tropics, much of it in areas that are not even densely populated. But those societies are mostly poor and less able to enforce protective regulations, and resource extraction which generates wealth for your community is a higher priority then the environment when the community has less wealth in the first place. When places like Brazil and India become as prosperous as the US and Europe, they will take care of the environment as well as the US and Europe do, because they’ll be able to.

    The images in your second montage depict human-on-human cruelty and callousness, which is a different problem from environmental damage, so I’m not sure exactly what point was intended. One can always use pictures selectively to give an impression. Animals of many species routinely attack, threaten, kill, etc other animals, even of their own kind. In most species, an animal would simply ignore the sight of another of its own kind lying injured or starving on the ground. It’s only in humans that we have come to expect compassion in such cases to be the norm, and are shocked when it is not shown. Humans generally show much more altruism and compassion than other species do, although again, I suspect a lot of that is a matter of having more resources available to “spend” on things other than dire necessity.

    No problem in history has ever been solved by people standing around wringing their hands and trying to out-cynic and out-gloom-and-doom each other — and scolding from a position of affected moral superiority is rarely helpful either. Problems are solved by achieving a dispassionate and accurate understanding of exactly what is wrong, how it happens, and how bad it really is, and by looking at what has worked or hasn’t worked to alleviate the problem in real-world cases. In this case, the problem is being solved by technology, which has vastly increased the global food supply (while using less land to produce it) and developed non-fossil-fuel sources of electricity, and by economic development which gives societies the means of implementing such improvements.

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    • Infidel, I generally agree whole-heartedly with your comments/opinions. But not this time. Perhaps at some level what you have written is true, but overall, I just don’t think so. In fact, I feel you’ve painted a picture of what “could be,” not “what is.”

      In your last paragraph, you began a sentence with “Problems are solved by …” and I agree totally with the rest of that sentence. Not so much the one that comes after.

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      • I might also posit that part of the reason for cleaner environments in “the west” is we have largely off-shored our heavier industries to places that impose fewer regulations. Our cleaner cities are at least partly the result of dirtier environments in China and Vietnam and Brazil. Our 99 cent hamburgers demand deforestation in the tropics. Our “artisan chocolates” and coffee need devastation in the Ivory Coast.

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        • BjB,

          I’m unsure how to respond to a result or consequence that is essentially merely a side-step, stalling, and denial of any serious problem—i.e. when the serious problem is simply moved somewhere else to continue the destruction of other ecosystems. 🤦‍♂️😔 That’s merely a band-aid effect for treating gangrene. Cover it up and spray lots of air-freshener to mask the stench. To me, that’s as stupid and afraid as not doing anything immediately.

          BjB, just to make sure—because my “geriatric-leaning memory” plays tricks on me—aren’t you the great chap from Ark’s blog, the Norwich Football fan, and therefore a Brit and/or Englander? Lol 🙂

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          • Not I. I am a Californian cyclist and minor municipal bureaucrat. 🙂 I used to own a basenji. Evil little dog, but I loved her. I mostly post on Random Thoughts, Nan’s blog, stderr, and a couple of others, including one that is considered “forbidden” by many woke people. 🙂 But I am a frequent lurker here. 🙂

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            • Oh my. Then apologies. I have another lad over at Ark’s blog—whose Username/identifier is very similar to yours. But I just realized his (I think) has “photo” within his Username. Grrrrr, my bad.

              Thank you so much for commenting and your feedback. “Lurk” here freely, to your heart’s content! Funny, as I read your contribution I actually did think of you in California! HAH! But I couldn’t convince myself why I thought that. 😄

              Then I’ve seen you over on Nan’s blog and yes… most likely on those “forbidden” woke peoples blogs! Anyone will find me in those sorts of heathenistic, liberally raw type of establishments. 😈 I’m sure we’ve crossed paths in those “Dark” places of sheer pleasure, stimulating discussion, laughter, and all types of delightful debauchery, huh? 😉 😛

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  7. Reblogged this on Filosofa's Word and commented:
    Of late … well, for the past decade or so … I have wondered how the human species could possibly survive to the end of this century, for we are destroying our home, our world, and each other at an alarming rate. Professor Taboo, aka PT, has written a post that I think should be required reading for every human alive … thoughtful and though-provoking. Thank you, Prof, for your words of wisdom and the eye-opening photos.

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    • Read the link I posted to the professor above. It is an awesome read. Truthful and poignant…you’ll like it.
      And yes this is a great post from the professor.

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      • Thanks Mary! I saw it last night and bookmarked it to read later, for it’s longer than I have the energy for at the moment. Not feeling too well right now, but I will read it in the next day or two!

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    • Oh Jill, thank you kindly for reblogging my post. You are wonderful Ma’am. I just want to be ONE person (of many?) to keep saying the same thing, the warning that if we do not take action, and take it immediately with regard to Climate Change, changing our lifestyle as Business as Usual with unfettered Hyper-Consumerism and no consideration for our carbon footprints… then there is only ONE outcome to this apathy and indifference. It probably won’t be in my lifetime, but I so hate the fact that it will be in my own children’s lifetime. That devastates me, crushes me. 😔

      It is a Mad World indeed, but not for too much longer.

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      • Your post deserves a wide audience, my friend, and I just had to share it, for it echoes my own thoughts, but does so far more eloquently than I ever could.

        I have been fighting this fight for nigh on a decade now, and tonight I feel more hopeless than I have in that time. People … a vast number of them anyway … are so greedy and self-focused. I have friends … well, they were once friends … who say such stupid things as “I’m not giving up my _____________ [fill in the blank] because I don’t believe it will make a difference and “god” wants me to be happy. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. As I’ve heard said many a time, the planet does not need humans, but humans darn sure need the planet. If we don’t wake up soon and change our lifestyle, I think I can easily predict the end. No, it won’t be in my lifetime, as I’m 70 now and don’t have many years left, but my children and grandchildren will suffer from our foolishness. Sigh.

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  8. The first image in the second montage was taken by a South African photographer. He was part of a small group of photographers called the bang bang club.

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    • I was unaware Ark he was SA. Goodness.

      However, I did read the very sad outcome of his Pulitzer Prize winning photo. Kevin Carter received so much hateful backlash for his shot—while haters wrongly assumed he never tried to help the little girl—that he later committed suicide. It was too much for him to handle. The little girl’s mother was just to the side of the photo nearby. The vulture was much further away from the girl than it appears, but Carter used a special telescopic lens, I believe. Anyway, the entire story of, behind, and after the photograph is such the epitome of the WORST of human behavior. 😔 Therefore, I thought it very appropriate to include in the montage.

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