Observations From the Spectrum

Whether or not humanity survives another 100 years is up to us. If we don’t heed the warnings and change our behaviors we will cease to exist much like an HIV patient who refuses to take their meds.

HIV is a scary virus because untreated, it takes about ten years to kill its host. Humans are very similar to HIV. We are a living organism that over enough time will kill its host without intervention. Meaning, without a viable solution, we will kill our host Planet Earth.

It’s a stretch but I am sure exactly how far of a stretch it is. A scary characteristic about HIV, even with intervention, is that it can hide in the most unused hidden part of the body until meds are forgotten and it starts to replicate and take hold quicker than it did at first.

Humans seem to be like this. We are being told that if we do not act and take care of our collective home, the Earth will become inhabitable and we will die. That’s the writing on the wall. Only those who are Google dumb, don’t seem to get this message.

And the Google dumb are idiots in sense that they are illiterate and unable to read or write or think, they are just don’t believe taht HIV could happen to them. It is false thinking and false logic.

Weather is getting worse. BUt some will say that is just the cycle of the planet doing its thing. Even if we contradict most scientists on this point, no scientist or person of logic thinks that humanity can survive without food to eat, water to drink and air to breath. No one. Our existence relies on all three.

If you are put in a room without one, you will eventually cease to exist. This is a fact. And the cycle of short term life, a couple hundred years, is that the top soil moves around a bit and produces the conditions that allow plants to grow, animals to graze, photosynthesis to create oxygen and water to be filtered to the above and underground streams that eventually lead to rivers and the sea. If we end one part of the cycle, we eventually end up ending all three.

And there are plenty of people who think that the rules don’t apply to them because where they live is clean and maintained and not yet compromised because of humanity’s collective lack of intervention. Places like Switzerland and New Zealand and Maui. Places that we believe to be paradise on Earth.

To these people all I can say is that you  may want to gain a better understanding of the Pando Aspen Tree. Most of the time we imagine a tree to be one thing. An oak. An olive tree. An evergreen. And these are singular individual trees like you and I are singular people. The Pando Aspen is not.

A mountain side of Pando Aspens are one tree with one root that all began because of one seed. They are not interwoven or interconnected. They are the same tree from the same root. Humanity may want to rethink its roots based on this principle and evidence.

So often we view ourselves as these singular beacons of life independent and outside of the natural world. We are not. We are part of it and we are doing poorly at living symbiotically with our natural neighbors like the trees and the soil and the water and ants and all that it encompasses.

Without antivirals, HIV will kill its host. Without a global shift in consciousness as to how we view the planet, we will kill ours. Global warming I used to think of as a war. I no longer do. I view Global Warming as the spec on the horizon that you know will need attention because if you arrive there without being prepared, you are arriving at the end of the road. I would like the road to continue. Do you?

• All works at Observations from the Spectrum written by Dylan Netter
• Observationsfromthespectrum.org
• OFTS.blog 
• On? a third point of view – book of Essays
• Marinehippie.com podcast w/ Docstodden.com – dialogue exploring politics and musings of life 
• Horizoncoaching.org – English Tutor and Guide