A perverted movement
I cannot get this week’s cover of The Economist out of my mind, since I first saw it a few days ago.
The culture we live in is one where industry reigns supreme. It has perverted the very concept of environmentalism, turning it into something unrecognizable. Instead of protecting the planet and the natural world, it has become a tool to further corporate profit margins.
The Economist magazine exhorting us to “hug pylons not trees” is a stark reminder of this fact. It speaks volumes about how we have allowed industry to dictate our priorities. We have become so focused on economic growth that we have forgotten that we are part of a living world without which we human animals cannot live.
The trees who once symbolized our connection to nature are now seen as obstacles to progress. They are cut down and replaced with pylons and power lines that stretch across the landscape like a scar. Trees who once made up forest communities, who breathe out the oxygen we breathe in, who are a home for countless species.
Industry has made us believe that growth and progress are desirable, and that it can only be achieved at the expense of the natural world. We have been conditioned to accept the destruction of our planet as a necessary evil. These are the lies that are fueling the ecocidal culture we are all caught in, imprisoned in, whether we like it or not.
Industrial civilization is only a few centuries old, and in that time we’ve decimated whole species, polluted the entire planet, and destroyed 90+% of all the old growth forests on the planet. We’ve created a death culture, one that celebrates $$ over life, pylons over trees. It shocks me every day; I can’t seem to get used to it, the utter craven depravity of it. We humans were not always this way. Will we be able to remember that life on planet Earth is a priceless, irreplaceable treasure before it is too late and we destroy it all at the alter of growth and progress?
