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Can repetition convince?

July 27, 2023   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

There is so much to talk about, and there is enough energy for the conversation. Much of it, as a necessity, is repetition, but there are so many conversations that must be repeated because there is – somehow – not universal accord on the matters, still – uncomprehendingly – still push back against the overwhelming facts.

We keep having children, our darlings, for whom – surely – nothing is too much to keep them safe and preserve their beautiful minds and bodies from harm.

A fool executive of an oil company recently remarked that the “Sahara desert was once an ocean,” as if that explains and excuses the excesses of climate change from which we and our planet are currently suffering. All will be swept away by heat and fires, and – he didn’t speculate – what will be left?

Dinosaurs roamed and dominated this planet for 175 million years and were only eliminated in an extremely abrupt and dramatic way – so the evidence indicates – by an asteroid crashing into the earth, changing the face and condition of the planet. It was 65 million years later when people began to evolve. What did we inherit from a home created in such a way? This amazing history of monster beings, including the huge mammals and marine life that lived in the once watery Sahara, 50 to 100 million years ago, the forebears of elephants and other large mammals of today left the developing human with endless possibilities to live and develop this paradise into the garden of Eden of mythical times.

Yet, right from the longest times ago and we are discovering how advanced we were from our very earliest stages, how our new brains and thumbs were endlessly creative. We reflected our world with pictures on our primitive cave home walls. We invented tools for hunting and, sadly, defence, for we were violent right away, so it seems.

What is the nut, the gear in our psyches that demands aggression from us, that dictates the need for one to stand on the head of another for the sake of possessions – of space, of food, of slaves, of…

Where did the understanding that family is what works, that equity among a species makes that species strong, that kindness and compassion are strengths, not weaknesses, that living in a place with respect for the environment is the only safe way to exist – where did all that get lost? If we know those things now, we must have known it early on, but it has never been the human way, except in rare pockets of humanity.

Our strengths of creativity, cultivation, intuition – the one thing we have in common with all of nature – our ability to love – have been dominated by our aggressiveness over each other, our determination to struggle with nature rather than blend with it, our discovery of greed, our dislike of one another’sanother’s differences.

All these failings go back thousands of years ago. They are the product of recorded thinking back as far in history as recording exists. And now here we are, inclined to go to war, but as we are so inventive, we have developed weapons that can kill us all off very quickly.

Look at Putin’sPutin’s war crimes in his invasion of Ukraine, to which he is adding a bit-by-bit incursion into Romania perhaps, with extended “security” wrapping Crimea; add to that the movement among defence ministers of Russia, China and North Korea (there’s a tea party for you) meeting in North Korea this week and who knows how really bad things will become? It was clear a year ago that Putin had to be stopped, but that same need has become much more complicated now. 

This is the moment when only deeply intelligent diplomacy is required, not our usual blunt-force method of dealing. Our frightened attempts at that are failing, and the risks of new alliances are real. 

This matches our overall philosophy, our power of destructiveness in a misguided path to how we fuel, preserve and coddle ourselves that have brought us all to this time to hot-tube warm waters in the oceans, killing off the coral, diminishing those ecosystems, soaring heat on land and poisoning the earth with chemicals, murdering bees without whom we may not be able to exist.

Ah, but we can figure that out by the sort of muck we cook up in our labs and feed to our beloved children.

Yes, maybe we can stop the absolute ruin of our precious planet. There are answers, but they are all about what is wrong with our emotional, creative and intellectual development so far after all these hundreds of thousands of years of existence. Can we, by dint of absolutely needing to change? Can we become wise, compassionate and only interested in healing?

Yes, the answers are there: the clean technology, the change in our approach to what we think is important and understanding what is not: everything, every thought is at our fingertips to save this beautiful world, to save ourselves and finally to love our children so much that we will stop, think clearly and act.

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