Ho-hum, another speech - and an essay

Bush gave another speech. From the Oval Office. Big deal. Apparently he said we are winning the war in Iraq. As usual I didn't watch or listen. Quite frankly, the sight or sound of him makes me sick. I doubt we are winning. I don't even know what winning in Iraq might consist of unless being able to control their country and resources. I think the relatively large turnout indicates that the Iraqis think this is the only way they can get us out. Powell said earlier today (or yesterday) that America will have a presence in Iraq for years to come. Of course we will. That was/is the plan. Can't let all that oil go unguarded. No mention, of course, of Bush's illegal spying on American citizens. This will be ignored and just fade away like all the rest of his transgressions. As virtually nothing seems to be happening other than more lies here is another essay.

Save the…

Save the whales! Save the gorillas! Save the elephants! Save the bull trout! Save the caribou! Save the salmon! Save the pygmy rabbits! Save the prairie dogs! Save the orangutans! Save the wolves! Save the orcas! Save the chimpanzees! Save the baby seals! Save the wild horses! Save the sage hens! Save the grizzly bears! Save the puffins! Save the tigers! Save the Panda bears! Save the spotted owl! Save the wolverines, the lynx, and the bobcats! Save the Condor, the Brown Pelican and the Albatross! Need I mention the Borax Lake Chubb, the Bliss Rapids Snail, the Lost River Sucker and the Wyoming Toad? How about the thousands of other endangered species?
I can’t honestly say that I have been solicited for funds to save all of these creatures, but I certainly have been for many of them. In some cases I actually donated money for what I believe to be worthy causes. But it has made me think about it. Why should I, a mere individual, have to feel responsible for the potential disappearance of species? I pay taxes. Why didn’t/doesn’t the Government take care of this sort of thing? How is it they have been so irresponsible and allowed things to deteriorate so badly? Why haven’t they looked after the planet better than they have?
Consider what Europeans set about doing when they first arrived in the “New World.” They slaughtered the Passenger Pidgeon into extinction very quickly. They attempted to do the same thing to the Buffalo (and almost succeeded). They did away with the wolves so successfully we have recently had to reintroduce them from Canada. The Grizzly Bear, too, was virtually eliminated, as were coyotes, prairie dogs, wild turkeys, alligators, eagles, hawks, and virtually everything else that moved; gunned down and trapped with such unbridled mindlessness and savagery as to be almost impossible to understand. And it was not just the animals and birds and fishes that suffered this onslaught, the indigenous people did likewise. Whole Indian tribes were decimated, wiped out, if not by force of arms, by the use of smallpox and other diseases. In most cases the motive for this was, of course, to take over Indian lands and resources. But in many cases it was a question of “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.” Even the children were slaughtered, “nits make lice.”
Even now we are struggling with the effects of this unprecedented attack on the environment and everything in it. Save the Salmon! Save the Cod! Save the Burbot! Save the Forests! Save the Great Lakes! Everywhere we look we are being asked to help repair the sometimes irreparable damage we have done to our environment and the creatures that try to survive in it. How can one explain this apparently insatiable blood lust to destroy virtually everything with no concern for the future or the consequences?
I suggest this has been the case historically (and continues even now) because Europeans brought with them to the “New World” a totally unprecedented ethos. This ethos came about primarily because of two basic building blocks or developments in European thought. The first of these came from the bible: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” Notice here that man is not only to have dominion over the earth but also to subdue it.
The second building block, not entirely unrelated to the first, was the belief in a “Great Chain of Being.” That is, all creatures constituted a kind of ladder leading from the lowest to the highest, the highest, of course being white European males (unhappily this belief is still quite widespread).
The result of these two belief systems was the tendency by Europeans to hold the rest of nature, particular the flora and fauna, and, indeed, anything “below” themselves, relatively speaking, in contempt. There was such abundance in the New World they felt they could subdue at will, and did. They seemed to believe there was no end to this abundance. It was estimated that at the time Europeans arrived in what is now the United States there were 50 million buffalo. In a relatively short period there were no more than a few hundred (at most). They killed wantonly, took just the hides and the tongues, and, in fact, in many cases just shot them for sport.
This was unprecedented because of the lack of respect. American Indians killed, to be sure, but they had respect for the animals, and rituals and ceremonies to keep them healthy and prolific. Cynics might argue the Indians didn’t kill them all simply because they didn’t have enough people or the technology but this cannot be true. Europeans didn’t kill indiscriminately because there were too many Europeans, they killed just because they had the means, but also because they had a belief system that told them it was their right to do so. Following Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, we might entitle a book on this subject, The European Ethos and the Rape of Mother Nature.
And notice this was not peculiar to the Americas. The same pattern was followed wherever Europeans spread in the “Age of Exploration:” in Australia, Tasmania, South America, the Middle East, the Far East, and Africa. Wherever Europeans went, following their ethos, they destroyed: the animals, the forests, the indigenous peoples, whatever they wished. This still continues and, of course, is not a topic that can be dealt with here. It would require volumes: tomes of misery, rape, arson, destruction and death, shameful acts of greed and pillage, excused as “the white man’s burden.” It continues.
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