Hello everyone ---------------------------------------- > Date: Sun, 22 Mar 2009 19:10:41 -0400 > To: [email protected] > From: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [MD] The Brujo > > [Dan] > We have little chance of surviving as a species for even a few million years. > > [Arlo] > I used to ask my students if they believed mankind would be around in a > hundred > years. Nearly unanimous answer was yes. A thousand? About split. Five > thousand? > Nearly unanimous answer was no. > > Contrast this with certain dinosaur species, such as Apatosaurus, that spanned > nearly 10 million years in existence. Honestly, do you think mankind will > still > be around 10 million years from now? > > One things for sure, landmarks like "the year 2000" will seem quaint to any > people celebrating "the year 10,000,000". Hi Arlo Right. I guess what I'm saying is that the earth and human beings "live" on different time scales. While it saddens me to think that a plastic bottle is going to last 4 or 5 thousand years in a landfill, to the earth, that's nothing. Not even a blink of a figurative eye. On the other hand, does that give humanity license to rape and pillage the planet? No. We shit in our rivers and streams and dump acid in the oceans and call it progress. Then we bitch on account of the price of fish going up. Some scientists warn us on the perils of global warming but we're too accustomed to our air conditioning and gas guzzlers to pay any attention. So we rationalize it away by saying it ain't so. At the same time I am astounded at the beauty the human race is capable of producing. I can't help but think the earth is better off with us around than without us. Maybe our children and grandchildren will be wiser than we have been. After all, it'd be a shame if we fucked it all up just to stay cool in the summer. Wouldn't it? Thanks for writing, Dan
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