What If...

  What IF...

There were a round ball replica of our earth in miniature hovering just above our heads? We could look up and marvel at its bumps and contours, rivers and oceans, the delicate layer of atmosphere, so thin we could move clouds across the surface with our breath. Whoa. Perfection. What Artist created this magic? 

Imagine wanting to change it. What hubris! Try damming a river with your thumb, flattening a mountain with a fist, spraying gasses that kill the greenery or taint the waters. Would the Artist be pleased? Would this masterpiece benefit from our tweaking it to better serve our species?

How long do you imagine this small and fragile globe can limp along with our so-called improvements? Will it survive? We’ve a history of disregarding our rightful place in the family of creatures put here on this beautiful mud ball spinning through inhospitable space. I don’t see another ball like it. Anywhere.

Scientists are saying we're rapidly heading toward a precipice. Like lemmings lurching off the cliff headlong into an abyss. We are hastening our own demise by disregarding the signs from the Mother:  She’s crying, 

“Enough is enough." 

Listen to the lament of the polar bear marooned on a tiny chunk of floating ice, too exhausted to swim back to broader expanses of tundra. It’s all melted. If that doesn’t get us to change our ways, what will?

If the current pandemic doesn't kill us or scare us silly and make us want to find real solutions now, then I fear we humans truly are the least intelligent of Earth's creatures. All the others know not to foul their nests. All the others know not to poison their mother. We haven’t yet learned the first principle: Do what's right for the survival of the whole. 

“Pity this busy monster, manunkind  not…" said e.e. Cummings, followed by, “… listen: there’s a hell of a good universe next door; let’s go”  

Here is Mr. Cummings' poem in its entirety:

‘pity this busy monster, manunkind’

pity this busy monster, manunkind

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:

your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness

——— electrons deify one razorblade

into a mountainrange; lenses extend

unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish

returns on its unself.

A world of made

is not a world of born ——— pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this

fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnimpotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if ——— listen: there’s a hell

of a good universe next door; let’s go

~~e.e. cummings