I know I haven’t been posting for several months. I have been hard at work on my book, making revisions to the manuscript. I have been reading a very interesting book that has both solidified my arguments, but also forced me to do some serious editing. I will be discussing the book shortly as I plan to start my regular posting schedule again. I am very tempted everyday to write about the political situation, but there is very little to say that isn’t being said elsewhere. I do not think a lot of repetition is a good idea as, if others are like me, it begins to dull the senses.
I will make one comment tonight. I disagree with the many articles that carry a headline like, “We should be taking care of the Planet.” The Planet will do just fine, no matter how we treat her. She has been around for perhaps 4.5 billion years and will be here for several billion more. She has survived both very hot and very cold periods.
We should be concerned about all life on Earth, however. Life is a miracle and we should respect that extraordinary feature. Miracles do happen all by themselves in complex systems when conditions become such that qualities and processes emerge as if by magic.
We have a responsibility to understand the processes that bring forth miracles like life itself and to do as little as possible to interfere with them. To stop the efforts to understand them or ignore what we already know about them is immoral. To fail to act to the extent of our present knowledge is a crime as some life, human and non-human, is known to be in great danger of being wiped out. Each and every one of us humans, living today, owes his or her existence to that miracle that occurred several billion years ago. To the extent that we continue to act as if it never happened and that we have some sort of privilege to ignore it, we are all guilty of a crime that has yet to be named.