by Ray Jason
The deep serenity down here in the
Archipelago of Bliss soothes and inspires me.
Sometimes AVENTURA and I find a tiny
lagoon that is so tranquil that the silence almost seems to speak. In many spots the Jungle runs all the way down to the Sea. Such symbolism comforts
me, because they are both such essential incubators of Life.
Last week I found a bay so sublime
that the voice of Nature was louder than the clamor of Humanity. On a typical day I would see 25 dug-out
cayucos being quietly rowed by extremely fit Indios. Only rarely was the stillness disturbed by a
boat with an engine. Most of the human
sounds came from happy children - laughing and playing in the shallow water.
A little cabin on the shore caught my eye. It seemed like a perfect hideaway for a
writer, and I imagined Thoreau sitting on its tiny porch in the twilight savoring
a day well-spent on reflecting and writing.
I believe that if he lived today he would choose a sailing boat as his
platform for observing and commenting on Life.
A cabin on Walden Pond would be impossibly expensive; and he would chafe
at the preposterous restrictions that the bureaucrats would demand.
I have long felt that he too would choose the Sea Gypsy
Philosopher life. This intuition was
recently reinforced for me when I learned that the final sentence that he
uttered on his deathbed was, “Now comes
good sailing!” These thoughts led to
a deeper meditation on how astonishingly different the world is now - in just
the 153 years since his death.
*******
Here are some of the universal themes that dominated Henry
David Thoreau’s thinking and writing:
·
The
need for people to stay connected to and reverent towards Nature. Otherwise, they will suffer great psychic
damage as both individuals and as societies.
·
The
importance of recognizing that the Individual should be more powerful than the
State - and that the best governments are those that govern the LEAST!
·
The
urgent need to fight against Injustice whether it came in the form of Slavery
or Tyrannical Imperialism.
·
The
value of Simple Living as a way of avoiding the distractions of the modern
world and thus discovering Life’s deeper meaning.
Even though Thoreau provided wise and prophetic counsel on
these topics, his guidance was largely ignored.
Let’s assess how Humanity has dealt with these issues in the century and
a half since he died.
·
REVERENCE
FOR NATURE – The human-built world has become so dominant in contemporary urban
society, that for most people an experience of Nature means a vacation in a
national park. In other words they visit
a preserve that is like a theme park except that it is filled with trees and
bears and geysers. Even agriculture is
barely natural anymore. The soil is gone
and replaced with a thin veneer of fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides. And the farmers spend most of their time
driving enormous air-conditioned tractors and combines.
·
POWER
TO THE PEOPLE – The brilliant and noble concept of government “by, for and of
the People” has been so distorted that it is a mockery of the original
intention of the Founding Fathers. And
this is not just in the U.S., for almost all nations now have “elected
representatives” who are just puppets for the tiny rich elites who really pull
the strings of power.
·
BATTLING
INJUSTICE – Those who wield the levers of power continue to shape a world which
is dominated by a few rulers and an enormous mass of people who are ruled. Unfortunately, these people - who I refer to
as The Malignant Overlords - are as clever as they are ruthless. So instead of shaking an iron fist, they
wield their control more subtly - using meaningless elections and a lapdog
media.
·
SIMPLICITY
FOR CLARITY – The modern world is a tsunami of electronic gadgetry that is drowning
humanity with tiny machines that complicate our lives instead of simplifying
them. People spend their days staring at
screens that are LCD replacements for authentic living.
So what would Thoreau think about this “Progress” that we
have achieved in the last century and a half?
Presumably, he would be appalled and outraged. But these issues that he was crusading
against are actually puny when compared with the problems that face humanity
today. That’s because in those days we
had the technology to harm one another; but we didn’t yet have the means to
actually exterminate the entire human project.
But in one of his lesser-known quotations Thoreau does allude to man’s
horrible capacity for malice and destruction:
“Thank god men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as
the earth.”
But in fact, we have “laid waste” to the Sky and the Earth
and the Sea. And we are faced with such
enormous problems that the very existence of humankind is at risk. Fortunately, if we do manage to drive
ourselves to extinction, our small, wet, lush planet will survive. And eventually Mother Earth will heal the
wounds that 10,000 years of human civilization - and especially 300 years of
industrial advancement – have heaped upon her.
I realize that this seems like blasphemy since we are
bombarded with messaging that assures us that the rise of capital C
Civilization is the best thing that ever happened to the planet. But a visionary like Thoreau would clearly
recognize that we are defiling and destroying our one and only support
system. The lunacy would be obvious to
him. And to those who might not perceive
it, let me mention a few possible ways that we may very well end our stay on
the planet in the very near future.
·
CLIMATE
CHAOS – Despite the efforts of the rich and immoral industrialists bankrolling
the climate change denial camp, the mass of evidence from “un-bought”
scientists is overwhelming. Our human
conduct is profoundly altering the very biological, geological and atmospheric
functioning of the planet. And those who
think that the looming disasters will be gradual and manageable, have not
examined the ice and tree core data that clearly shows catastrophic climate
change often occurs swiftly and violently.
·
NUCLEAR
INSANITY – The movement by the most hawkish and psychotic elements of the U.S.
political and military “leadership” to reignite the Cold War should be
terrifying to everyone. And yet it is
barely noticed by the general population who are largely fixated on their
iDistractors. Instead of the long
standing policy of only launching nuclear missiles if fired upon by an enemy, a
new “first-strike” policy has been quietly installed by the U.S. Plus, money is now being allocated by
multiple governments for new generations of even more lethal nuclear
weapons. And with the rise of computer
hacking, the dangers become multiplied even more ominously.
·
WORLDWIDE
PANDEMIC – This risk has several variations.
A Super-bug could spread rapidly around the world because of how interconnected
the planet now is through air travel and long-distance food shipping. Or more maliciously, evil elements – be they
terrorists or tyrannical governments – could release some of the many horrific
bio-weapons that have been developed in recent decades. Or such a weapon could escape accidentally
through an explosion in a lab where such hideous concoctions are developed.
·
NUCLEAR
POWER DISASTERS – Let me count the ways… earthquakes, tsunamis, grid down power
outages stopping the cooling pond pumps, sabotage, human error by technicians, spent fuel rods with
no place to go. What could possibly go
wrong?
·
TRANSHUMANISM
AND ROBOT REBELLION – The plot lines of B-grade science fiction movies are
rapidly becoming possible realities. The
maniacs who refuse to embrace and abide by the Laws of Nature have now conjured
up these new threats to human survival.
Why do they do it? For human and
planetary betterment - or for fame and fortune?
You be the judge.
*******
And so as I sit here in this stunningly peaceful lagoon
staring at the little Walden cabin by the sea, I am deeply saddened by the disastrous
evolution of the human project since the days of Thoreau. If he were alive today he would undoubtedly
speak more insightfuly and convincingly than I can on these profound subjects. But my hope is that I can capture a bit of
his phantom spirit ghosting about in that tiny cabin - and use it to give my
own words more power and eloquence.