Reeling From Climates’ Change

Is it the whole world, or just me? I don’t know, but I certainly feel that there has been a sea change in people’s attitude towards each other; they’ve taken a huge step back from their once undeniable allegiance to authority; they’ve relinquished many of their long-held beliefs; and, they’ve abandoned some standards of behavior that were always perceived to be immutable, if not inviolable.

What, exactly, has caused such revolutionary trends? Is there anything dire happening here that should deeply concern us? After all, isn’t change, for better or worse, an inevitable part of our existence? These are important questions, but what with everyone busy Tweeting, Blogging, Posing, and Posting who really has the time to ask, never mind provide some feasible answers? Won't somebody out there take a stab at it? Anyone?

To deny the dangerous possibility that, as a civilization, we are spiraling into the great abyss appears to be as short-sighted and as self-defeating as refusing to accept the facts of the rapidly shrinking ice-caps and the rising tides and temperatures of our planetary home—but hasn’t mankind always had a penchant for flirting with disaster?

I suppose that as long as we see ourselves merely as observers of “others”—those multitudes who have been adversely affected by war, stupidity, cupidity, pestilence, and other “natural causes,”—rather than willing participants and forgers of our destiny, dire straits won’t be taken, much less dealt with, seriously. At least, not until they’re really felt in our pockebooks. If by then, of course, it’s not too late to reverse our engines, or at least alter our course.

Only a fool can doubt that both climate changes that we are currently undergoing are the result of human misbehavior; a misbehavior that if examined with even a cursory glance at history would indicate mankind’s culpability; unfortunately, however, in that slight glance one also must recognize the earth-shattering realization that nothing that can be done, will be done to correct our heading.

It’s ironic that the founder of our Marine Corps and the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, was also the pundit who remarked that he’d sooner trust a newspaper editor than a government administrator, and who noted that the price of freedom was eternal vigilance. Ironic, I think, because we’ve become too damn independent for our own good, too eager to trust uncorroborated reports, gossip, and innuendo; while discounting provable facts, and finally—at the cost of our very lives—we've become all but enslaved by a compulsion to make a fast buck.

E Unum Pluribus and no longer In Nobodaddy Do We Trust.