Who’s ready for ambitious gerrymandering in Space Now?
Do we get to “own” Planet 10?
by Susan G Holland
Many knowledgeable sky-watchers are now talking about a mass about the same size and shape as earth hovering around just on the edge of our Solar System, so named by mere men sometime in the history of Astronomy.
And we decided that our Solar System had specific boundaries. Should we invite this new planet in to it or not?
I am always very aware that there is no bottom to the supply of new information we discover about what we call “our” planet and what we call “our” Solar System. We name the stars and planets and gaze on them as jewels in “our” universe — at least “our” corner of it.
These days I worry that we will get up to one of those other planets and begin to inhabit them. What a wreck we have made to the planet we live on! What ungrateful fools we humans have been, fighting over the land and the natural resources! We have avariciously grabbed up the riches of the land we were set upon and have turned them into “goods” that we buy and sell to others so we can amass more for ourselves. It is just as fake a kind of wealth as Monopoly Money.
And we are worried now about owning planets. Who is getting there first? What is a planet worth? Does it have something that is good to base a currency on?
I am sickened because I think we have dug a grave for ourselves.
Am I depressed? Yes. It is simply depressing to think of piling negatives on something I have so enjoyed — my earthly experiences have been many and some of them sublime.
But, like the rubbish swept up after a baseball game, this planet is beginning to stink.
Think about what is left behind after tens of thousands go to a stadium to watch America’s Favorite Pastime. Not only the unavoidable stuff off people’s shoe soles that is brought in from all sorts of places, but the debris and crumbs of our snacks and drinks and who knows how much sweat, blood and tears remain behind. Is anyone ill? Is anyone sloppy with their beer or their flask? Does anyone other than players blow their noses out on the ground? Do other people spit out sunflower seed shells and tobacco juice onto the floor in front of them? Do people dump wrappers and cups and dirty diapers on the stands? What is left behind in the dugouts? How much bubble gum? How much mucus? Yuk.
This stuff goes somewhere, giving some deserving person a job that pays well, I hope, and then it gets disposed of somewhere else. I find it difficult to imagine that anyone in the stadium Janitorial department is sorting all this stuff into bins marked recyclable glass, recyclable paper, recyclable organic waste, etc. Where does it go? To a barge somewhere out in the ocean where no one notices and dumped on the fish out there? Do we think about it?
It was 1960 when I thought I would take a swim in Lake Michigan. When I got down to the shoreline, there was an array just above the waterline — a strip of whitefish that extended both ways as far as the eye could see. And the nearest waters were bobbing with dead floating fish. This was really my first look at pollution of a large body of water. How could this be? Who would swim in that water? Not I.
That mess was, I heard, cleared up by cutting off industrial and sewage waste chutes spewing poisons into the Lake. It took a long time.
That was fifty-seven years ago.
Today we have whales lining up dead on the beach! We have Dodo Birds exterminating themselves by being stupid enough to eat plastic that floats in the ocean. Or is it that we are stupid?
How many oil spills, and how many nuclear waste leaks, and how many spoils from industrial enterprises will it take to put us under? How much acid rain? How much chemical poison will it take for us to think we need to take a trip to a new planet to get away from the stench of a wasted planet? How many diseases will it take to create stinking piles of human remains with no place to cover them up?
And we want to “have” another planet in “our” Solar System.
I know only one answer:
“If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people, and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land. ”Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to the prayer offered in this place.…II Chronicles 7:14
This is something from the Old Testament. God is not finished with us yet. At least I hope not.
The lesson of human negligence is repeated over and over again in nature — even when we leave something too long in the refrigerator, or let our pipes freeze. Human negligence stinks. We may never wise up!
Susan Holland — ruminating again. ©2017
