It’s incredibly difficult to make sense of this because, being animals, we don’t act through intelligence most of the time. We are driven by much that has nothing to do with intelligence, not least our biologically determined and driven sex drive. We are fantastically good at doing things which it’s painfully and ludicrously obvious are not in our best interests. Nuclear weapons instantly spring to mind. We have the intelligence to make them, but not the intelligence not to make them. That’s crazy.
I think my deepest regret in life is knowing I am going to die but being hideously constrained by a fear of living. I shall eventually be grasped by death, yet to die without really living and grasping life is the most god awful tragedy.
But here’s a thing. If I see anyone held back and restrained in life, or constrained, I am livid beyond words. I know that’s happened to me, but I lack the fury that engulfs me for others. And that’s fine, that’s the best I can manage. It’s like the whole bucket list thing and, indeed, I have cancer so a bucket list would be very appropriate for me, but I can’t think of anything to put on it that I am so avid for before death claims me.
I was 68 recently and I spent the day making cannabis oil as medication. I can’t think of anything I would rather have done. It pleases me no end to make this amazing stuff which even the hospital has called my ‘exciting experiment’ because what’s been happening in my body is not the typical, expected, behaviour of cancer. I feel like an alchemist, experimenting with my own body, being a living guinea pig, and why not?
We have had so much stolen from us, the land, wealth, natural resources, all stolen and owned by people who had no fucking right to help themselves to the world we live on.
Hunting is a popular sport, so called, but what arrogance to hunt other creatures as trophies. Is there anything about that that can remotely be called intelligent? We’re mighty grand at killing things, but really bad at living peaceably, mostly because of governments and despots. Just look at the state of the world. The absolute state of it.
The planet we live on, and are entirely constrained to continue to live on, is magnificent. It is the perfect planet for life as we know it to flourish, that’s why we’re here. Everything about it is a wonder, but humankind is destroying the planet’s ability to continue to support life. We are killing it off at a terrifying rate and still doing very little about solving the problems we are entirely responsible for creating.
If you Google ‘we will live on Mars’, you’ll discover that NASA scientists and many others are incredibly excited at the prospect of colonising Mars. But that excitement depends on a certain perspective, which is that there is an Earth which can supply all the needs of colonisation. Even if Mars is successfully colonised and becomes self-sustaining over who knows how long a period of time, there’s no way that several billion people can look to Mars as a new home if we destroy the ability of Earth to sustain life. Their excitement is for a very select group of people to pull off something that is still a pipe dream over an indeterminate period of time.
If we want a planet to live on, then intelligence dictates that we already have one and should use every resource at our disposal to look after it, not colonise a planet that is hostile to life and which can only be colonised in closed dwellings, which must be carefully maintained with door seals to keep the hostile environment of Mars out, which could kill the colonists in an unprotected instant. Meanwhile here on Earth, I can happily survive bollock naked for much of the time, suffering only the inconvenience of being arrested for indecent exposure. The penalty for indecent exposure on Mars is death.
Much of what goes on in life is conducted with extreme prejudice for life and, indeed, intelligence. Just because we popped up on the evolutionary scale with the ability to self determine, does not indicate anything of the superiority that we like to pretend to. For evidence just look at the Westminster bubble and the current crop of right-wing politicians who are busily raping the country. It makes me wonder, quite frequently, if intelligence, and perhaps life itself, isn’t wasted on those who think they rule life and the world.
For choice, I’d like to live peaceably and in harmony with the natural world of which I am an indivisible part, there is so much to enjoy and our time here is so brief. Why is that so difficult to grasp, understand and achieve?
Keith Ordinary Guy.
