On the 08 February 1975, I was inspired one sleepless night in Winlaw, BC to write this poem-thing, the title of which is half as long as the poem:

 

Late one night last week,

I got the Rachel Carson blues

 

     Oh silent Spring,

     where are you going?

 

     We had so many questions

     to ask of one another.

 

Granted, it's not much, but it meant something to me then, as it does now to all-too-many more of us. Dr Rachel Carson's warnings? were understood by people of all ages and class, and many modified their lives accordingly. When I graduated High School in 1960, I noticed that only a few of my cohort, however, went into the natural sciences as a career or profession.

 

I chose college prep classes in botany, biology, zoology, physics and chemistry, as well as geology [now known as the Earth Sciences, and far more comprehensive] in college, and majors in Comparative Literature and World History, because I believed these tell us how our planet functions, and how we are to live upon it.

 

The 'Green Revolution' was the great white hype back then, just as Genetically Modified Organisms [GMO] and GM seeds are today. I only recently learned that the green colour referred not to botany or horticulture, as we thought, but was part of a marketing strategy to pitch this approach against the rising Red Tides of Communism supposedly washing over South America and Asia.? Twenty years later [1980] we saw how well that worked! So it goes. And goes and goes. The War 'ginst Terra, as Bush 43 would say.

 

Each newly created crisis lasts about twenty years from onset to the first waterfalls of failure, then our rulers give us an equally synthetic "answer" in the form of a new crisis, while they create new addictions for the hoi polloi to pay and die for. You know, "Better living through chemistry!" as a leading firm was fond of reminding us way back then. It still does today; it's learned nothing and forgotten everything, and trusts that so have we useless eaters.?

 

Along with this, we were told the future would be the age of specialisation, so we'd better apply ourselves accordingly. The hard sciences, engineering, and technology [which, as Jacques Ellul first pointed out, really means the study of technique] would be the salvation of the world and its all-too-many people, and on and on and on, ad nauseam. Can you recall when ads promoted your future life as a programmer?

 

As the Green Revolution maxxed out and began to fade, Genetic Engineering was the next Great White Hype: molecular manipulation and bizarre insertions of foreign genetic matter, untested for long-term [say 20 generations] damages. We human critters were Gods and Goddesses now, who could remake the Creation --it was fatally flawed, don'tcha know?-- into our own far superior image.? Experts said the next generation could live to 120 years commonly; some scientists believe humans may yet live to 200, and live reasonably well!

 

Fast forward twenty years to 2000 and. Oh oh! New problems emerge: super weeds grow evermore resistant to herbicides; insects are stronger, appetites more voracious; super strains of disease descend upon hospitals, schools, military, and so many more. Today, 25th April 2009, CBC Radio One interviewed a world-famous pathologist on the sudden appearance of the latest swine flu. He seemed giddy as he went through the litany of this killer flu's "parentage": it has one or more elements from every human flu strain. Most bizarrely, it evolved at the end of the influenza season. The odds of this happening are unbelievably remote, yet there you are!

 

"The virus contains gene segments from 4 different influenza types: North Ameri-can swine, North American avian, human, and Eurasian swine," commented Dr Patricia Doyle, at http://www.rense.com/general85/update.htm. Almost a Biblical plague, eh? What to do, what to do? 

 

As I've told my students and audiences for many years, either we work with Nature or we work without, but when we do without, we are self-defeated on every front, in every way. The fact is that we live entirely dependent on a planet sustained by a long, extremely complex series upon series of finite closed systems of energy and information. This is our ultimate reality, and we'd better get used to it, because it's the only future we have to go back to, ASAP. ?

 

Nature can be excruciatingly beautiful, but also be exceedingly deadly, as Aldous Huxley elaborated in his essay, "Wordsworth in the Tropics". We must keep both realities in our consciousness at all times, if we wish to survive another day. For an excellent review of Huxley's very perceptive thoughts on a wide variety of subjects, I recommend this website, with its wonderful photos: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley

 

In spite of our manipulative techniques we're only one species of critter in the midst of countless other critters in the air, water, and land, most of whom we go through life completely unaware of, although it's finally become obvious that we do so at our immediate and fatal peril. 

 

But that's as it should be, for this is how systems interact, exchange information, then rebalance as best they can with what remains. This is God/dess, the logos of the Kosmos, under which all live and die. Do we believe we're somehow miraculously exempt from this overarching reality? If so, then please remember this: we are not, not at all. We are but one creature that lives and dies on a roll of the cosmic dice. You don't believe it? OK, what do you think this means?

 

A single mega-asteroid radically altered all planetary life on Earth in the past, and can do so again. Three major volcanic eruptions the size of Krakatoa would disrupt life so severely it would be many generations before normality returned, if ever.

 

A new article by Frosty Wooldridge 

http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Editorial-Page.htm?Info=0054865

perfectly denotes our fatal ways: "Predators starve as humans plunder oceans". He warns us that "Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson described the human race as 'The most devastating meteorite to hit the planet.' Humanity's arrogance cannot be quenched."  

 

Well, yes, it can. It's known as species extinction. We are not exempt.

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~o0o~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

Notes for further reading or background:

 

1. Dr Carson wrote several well-received books, the most well known and influential is "Silent Spring" [1962]. It appeared after her first three books had made her world famous as a marine biologist who was also a very insightful ecologist, although this word was rarely used at the time.  

2. The term "Green Revolution" was first used in 1968 by former "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAID" "USAID" USAID director "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_Gaud&action=edit&redlink=1" "William Gaud (page does not exist)" William Gaud, who noted the spread of the new technologies and said, "These and other developments in the field of agriculture contain the makings of a new revolu- tion. It is not a violent "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Revolution" "October Revolution" Red Revolution like that of the Soviets, nor is it a "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Revolution" "White Revolution" White Revolution like that of the "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shah_of_Iran" "Shah of Iran" Shah of Iran. I call it the Green Revolution." 

Most people are unaware USAID is not entirely what its mandate claims. USAID is the government agency supposed to provide U.S. economic assistance, but much of its budget is spent on quasi-military actions, intelligence gathering, propaganda of many kinds, and other activities not meant to benefit the receiver. "In "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimbabwe" "Zimbabwe" Zimbabwe recently several suspicious road accidents have resulted in the death of political figures. In March 2009 a truck registered to USAID swerved head on to Prime Minister "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan_Tsvangirai" "Morgan Tsvangirai" Morgan Tsvangirai's vehicle injuring him and killing his wife." Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_International_Development

3. The Phrase "Better Living through Chemistry" is a variant of a DuPont advertising slogan, "Better Things for Better LivingThrough Chemistry. DuPont adopted it in 1935 and was their slogan until 1982 when the "Through Chemistry" part was dropped. Since 1999, their slogan has been "The miracles of science". [This doesn't sound to me to be any improvement, mixing as it does science with miracles! JEF] Taken from the article at Wikipedia,  "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better Living Through Chemistry 

4. "Ideas Have Consequences" is Dr Richard Weaver's most famous and longest enduring book. Published in 1948 by the University of Chicago Press, it has never gone out of print since, a remarkable achievement for a small book that can be read in one evening, but will change the rest of your life. For an excellent review with wonderful long quotes from the book, see the website citation here: http:// www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/1200/  

5. My essay, "Lighting Out for the Territory Ahead" was published 21st October 2005 as the premiere essay in Randolph Buss's newly launched DINL News-letter from Berlin: "http://www.dinl.net/cafeDINL.php?id=61" http://www.dinl.net/cafeDINL.php?id=61. It summarises most of my think- ing and values, and asks three questions. All of and our lives must answer the three questions I put forward:

A. Can this be done? Generally, science and technique find it impossible to resist a challenge to their means. So then we must look at ends.

 

The second concerns consequences: Can we do it in ways that minimise negative impacts?

 

C. If not, we should not do it. As simple as this may sound, it is quite revolutionary.

 

Meanwhile, where have we made the needed changes to our lives and living?