Humans

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Humans are Ewww

I joined this online group for “sustainable farming and homesteading.” Today I left the group. All anyone ever asked about was how to kill things they didn’t like. Today it was slugs. “I have slugs outside and they’re slimy. How can I kill large numbers of them?” Then the responders post in glee about global annihilation of these creatures that are just living their lives. The other day it was: “I have five acres with gophers on it. How do I kill them?” One of the responses was: “Gophers are stupid. Just get them to pop their heads up then bash them in.” It was always something. Some plant some human didn’t like. Some animal some human didn’t like. Then post after post about how to destroy whatever it was. It made me sick.

Goddamn I hate humans. We are the most destructive things on this planet. Who the hell are we to decide that this planet is ours to kill? Our sense of superiority is so embedded we can’t even see it. No other creature destroys something just because it can all of the time. Only humans. We tell ourselves the lie that we are superior to justify our continued destruction.

Fifty years from now when there is virtually nothing left alive on the planet will there be anything left to notice just how stupid we were? I doubt it.

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Marveling at the State of the World

As I move through my day, more and more I’m looking around at the world and marveling at human intervention. Humans have taken over everything and they seem to take it completely for granted. In fact they do take it completely for granted. It isn’t even questioned, yet it seems so bizarre to me. I’ll see a lamp post or a sidewalk or a building and think This doesn’t have to be here. But it is and it is because humans have taken over the world.

As we are isn’t natural. We put ourselves in charge when we shouldn’t be. Even this typing and this website isn’t natural; I recognize this. There is so much that humans do and so much time that humans spend that isn’t necessary. We go about our days and live our lives as if any of this is how things are supposed to be, as if it matters more than anything, but it isn’t how things are supposed to be and it doesn’t matter the most. We aren’t supposed to control so much.

More and more lately I catch myself stopping and staring at a thing and amazed that the thing exists, and I realize that the humans who put it there were not thinking how odd it was that they created what they did. Yesterday while using the toilet, I noticed that the buttons on my button-fly jeans said “Loft.” Down each one, Loft, Loft, Loft. Somewhere some human decided that the buttons on pants sold at the Loft need to say Loft on them. That person found someone who could get others to carve this word into these buttons. That person hired others who made the tools to carve the word Loft into those buttons. They hired people to use those tools. They carved the word Loft into thousands and thousands of buttons, popping them out like little coins falling into a bucket, filling a container made through the same process, filling baggies and sending them to the place where jeans are made, sewing them onto those jeans, packaging those, and then mailing them all over the world to sell to the likes of me. Humans set up these immense and complex supply chains. Really, it boggles the mind.

I like my jeans. They’re comfortable enough. They serve their purpose. But seriously, how many people does it take to make a pair of jeans? 800? It seems we have created these immense and complex supply chains to give ourselves some purpose because we’ve lost sight of what our purpose really is. I’m not sure what that purpose was intended to be, but I’m positive that humans taking over the world and making things like buttons with the word Loft on them isn’t it.