I remember the first time my little son caused me excruciating pain. I was laying on the floor on my back, dozing off while my son watched cartoons on the TV. As he watched he bounced on the couch. I was feeling that restful, content Sunday Morning sort of feeling with my eyes closed when my four year old son made one herculean bounce on the couch, leaped up high and came right down, cannon-ball style, onto my soft relaxed stomach. I swear to god, I think he made it all the way to my spine. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't speak, all I could do was writhe in agony feeling like something was ruptured.
My poor little boy. He was horrified. His pupils dilated in terror. He had no idea he was capable of causing me so much pain. He danced around flapping his arms nervously and he hugged me saying "sorry! sorry, daddy!" until I could get my breath back and tell him I was okay.
His whole life, he was this tiny thing, and I was this huge thing able to pick him up and toss him around. That he could cause me serious harm was at best an academic notion to him.
Not that it stopped him from jumping on me in the future. There's a learning curve, I guess.
Every few million years or so, along comes some cataclysmic, destructive event that radically rearranges life on this planet. Meteor impact, severe glaciation, volcanic eruptions. They come along and blacken the skies or freeze the world over, culling plants and animal species by the tens of thousands.
This time around, it seems, even as we watch the skies and fret about some Civilization Destroying asteroid from above, we are the force of nature that is to bring about the next epoch.
As it turns out, we are the Grim Reaper this time around.
And like most of the earth's crisis events, we come from the earth itself. We're the volcanic eruption, the tectonic shift, the massive glaciation, the virulent virus all rolled into one.
We now understand that the majority of life on Earth has never been - and will never be - known to us. In a staggering forecast, Wilson predicts that our present course will lead to the extinction of half of all plant and animal species by 2100.
--article
With the disappearance of wetlands the degradation of shorelines, the immune system of the Great Lakes is breaking down and the ecosystem is in danger of collapse, according to a report released on Dec. 8.
--article
How did this all happen?
When did we get so powerful?
It seems like only yesterday we were in our tiny village, regaled by Homer's stories of sea monsters and cyclopses and all the ways the world is going to eat us or swallow us. The world seemed endless then. Venturing too far from the village could get you mauled by a bear. Even today in parts of the world, you dare not leave your child where chimpanzees might see it.
Once, the Earth's fury was something to be protected from and natural forces something to take shelter against.
When did the tables turn? When did we become the earth's fury?
When did this notion that we could physically permanently harm the earth move from the academic realm, into the real realm, as we watch the earth writhing at our tiny feet, and many of us run terrified around the room yelling "sorry! sorry! I'm so sorry!"
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THANKS to DAR NIRRON for bringing Byron into this
CLXXXII
Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee -- 1630
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters washed them power while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts: -- not so thou,
Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play --
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow --
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now..