As we watch the ongoing, seemingly endless disaster of a poisoned water table and 300,000 Americans without water, we are troubled in some ancient place within us.
As we watch the degradation of water in the awful and unnecessary practice of fracking — the poisoning of underground reserves, of wells, of aquifers, the use of water as a tool of fracking, we are troubled deeply.
I realize that we have begun to destroy one of the resources that no society, village, clan, or any grouping of people can live without — sowing the seeds of our own potential destruction.
We remember the value of water throughout human history.
We remember that water is life giving and life sustaining.
We are sickened by the thoughtless and arrogant destruction by those who place their own greed above the lives of their fellow humans, and who arrogantly destroy the increasingly scarce resource that humanity has never and will never learn to live without.
We remember the reverence with which the ancients and indigenous people regarded water.
We even recall modern Americans beseeching the Almighty for water — Governor Sonny Perdue of Georgia declaring a day of prayer asking for relief from drought.
And we are reminded yet again what happens when the forces of humanity’s most base instincts — those of greed, arrogance, and hubris — are unleashed upon those resources that give life and sustain life for us all.
And we are reminded that humanity must control itself, that we have fundamental values as old as our species designed to keep us from destroying ourselves. It is past time we exercise those values, constrain our greed, and turn our eyes to those things that make us human.
Photo source: wfeiden on Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)