Surviving The Fall, 15

You know, Gentle Reader, we are often so inept at caring for one another, of caring even for ourselves, that is it any wonder that our world is going to hell so quickly and so inelegantly. There will be no noble sacrifices, no band playing "Nearer My God To Thee", just a bunch of dying, selfish less-than-humans scrabbling and clutching at whatever they can claim as their own while sputtering their final fetid breath on this planet that their wanton selfishness has helped kill. Well, it need not be so bad, I suppose, and I like to be optimistic. But this is the end-game if everything goes according to the formula of death culture capitalism as it has been set in motion. I still like to believe that we are better than that. I fail, we all fail, at taking proper care of each other, of ourselves, of things in general, and then before we know it we're suddenly all teetering towards the same abyss. I mentioned in yesterday's post my difficulties with a lot of my Latino friends, and there are likely things we all need to improve in. But I still hold that I have done my very best with people who simply do not care as much as I do. But for me to care less, is for me to become less than the person I am, the person that God has made me to be, so I might be doomed to forever looking for worthier swine for my pearls. But someone has to set the example. Or then everything is going to collapse. I am thinking of Jesus' famous words about being the salt of the earth and the light to the world and I take seriously this solemn calling. I keep wanting to hope that with even one person seeking to embody the highest virtues that this could become a kind of holy contagion. I think there is some evidence to suggest this, but time is of the essence and it is running out. Our species is both legendary for being destructive and for being resilient. We are destructive and self-destructive: whether the homeless beggar scrounging a lit cigarette but from the sidewalk, smoking it, catching a disease from the used filtre in his mouth, while affecting others with the toxic second hand smoke being exhaled; or the wealthy prime minister and his wealthy cabinet ministers doing everything they can to bully my province into accepting a new pipeline that will carry toxic death fuel to our coast, endanger our environment, so it can be shipped off to China, to foul the atmosphere even more and to be shipped back to us in finished products that will only help finish off our planet if we don't put an end to this death project of fossil fuel dependency. This same instinct of self-destruction, this instinct of Thanatos, hovers over our humanity and by extension over our planet like a gigantic black ugly rock suspended by a thread. We have to go on changing, growing, learning repentance, learning to take care of ourselves and one another, learning to care for the sake of caring itself and to keep doing everything in our power to slow to a halt this death march. Anyone know the words to Nearer my God To Thee?" How about I hum a few bars.