Blog #1660
Dymitri Harszewski
AC2622 C-Yard
P.O. Box 409060
Ione, CA 95640
[Write me 😊]

July 21st, 2020
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The Call of the Wild

If you read my blog, maybe you need a break from the angry cop-bashing and de-moralized calls for a more humane, anarchist organization of society. I know I do, though there's plenty more of that sort of thing still in the pipeline. Right, now, though, I was just thinking...most people are still generally staying home because so much is still closed down. We'd started returning to normal, but now we've backed off again for a while. What I want to ask is, as we reopen again soon (then probably re-close, then re-open, maybe re-close again...), would you please take a moment to consider whether the old normal is really what you want? There are countless reasons to change how we've always done things before, but a few posts back, in April or May 2020, I blogged about the COVID-induced improvement in the conditions for wildlife and the environment in general, and that's all I'm asking us to think about for now. Would you go visit YouTube and maybe watch some videos showing how nature has changed over the past few months? Look at the improved air and water quality, and how much more relaxed so many animals have become. Listen to how much longer and louder the birds are singing in the absence of human noise. Couldn't we all just think about how we each might just...you know, downshift a bit? Throttle back on commuting; encroach less on the world? I don't know about you, but I'm absolutely enamored by the expansion of the animal kingdom lately. Endangered sea turtles enjoying record reproduction with fewer human feet on the beaches, and fish swimming closer to the shore without boats everywhere. The world is just less stressed out.

I don't suggest surrendering human culture to other species, but could we maybe be a little less voracious in our consumption of the environment? Very soon the calls will go out again, calculated corporate calls for us to drive and travel and trample the glove... and we SHOULD experience and enjoy our world, for sure. I just question the need to let profit-driven, psychologically manipulative commercial siren songs work their dirty magic and complete us to gratuitously go buy things and bounce around, once again squeezing our feathered, finned and furry friends with a nary a second thought.

Our planet is undergoing some wonderful changes, maybe even humanity-protecting changes insofar as the climate goes. Returning to our known normal negates all of that. "So what", you say?. No, I get it, I really do, but please - check those videos out and see if all of the images of animals enjoying back a little bit of that space we'd taken from them don't move you a light recalibration od your priorities. We can choose a new normal, you know. A thoughtful one.