Monday, June 21, 2010

Are "Nature Lovers" going too far?

So long as violence is not fought with violence, anger with anger, or hate with hate, no, they are not going too far. The Earth needs saving. The forests need preserving. The animals need shelter and freedom from cruelty.

In a world where humans are the principal tormentors of humans, one would not expect to see anyone standing up for Nature. But there are many groups, some well known (Earth First, Greenpeace, Peta) others hardly in the public consciousness (Socially Engaged Buddhists, Unitarians, FMLY, vegans, Food not Bombs, Bread not Bombs, Food not Lawns). Tens of thousands of people are doing something.

In a country of 300 million, 99 monkeys are not enough to tip the scale. Every voice counts. The media lulls us, BP defeats us, Obama lies to us with the sweetest tongue of any president before him. And we laugh with Beavis & Butthead that anyone would care about trees or life on Earth that is not exclusively human. We are a small part of the ecosystem capable of doing great damage to it or saving it for all creatures.

But it's an individual choice. Unless individuals choose to do something, nothing will ever get done. It is said that one person or a small group can't do anything to change things. But in fact they're the only ones who ever have -- for good or ill, it's always only been a handful of individuals.

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