Tuesday, August 29, 2006

the drain of what we knew

"our habit of self-destruction helps cut through arguments over whether ‘technology’ is good, bad, inert, whatever. technology is not a mythical beast over which we have no control, but an object of our creation - the embodiment of everything we covet and fear. clearly not every culture is stupid enough to roast itself. even in our own cultural past we have not always been this stupid."

Read more as heretic fig serves up an excellent helping of thoughtful commentary on our foolish attempt to impose our will upon the world. For thousands of years human beings lived in relative harmony with the environmnet around them. Now those of us in "developed" countries have discovered shortcuts around the cyclic processes that organized life before fossil fuels were exploited. When we began to view ourselves as apart from nature and then as the masters of nature we took a wrong turn that has led to the incredible wealth of a few and the extraordinary destruction of much of the rest of this planet's creatures and systems. Only now, as our mistaken direction is threatening our own human lives are we waking up to the potientially devestating effects of our actions. But now I'm bleeding over into my next post...

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