Take a look in the mirror today.
While I am dismayed at the brutality of the scene, I have seen many deeply troubling scenes like this for years. I am a wildlife film maker.
I am asked to review films each year as a volunteer at one of several film festivals. I try to make time to do this as a free service. Various groups now have access to wonderful video cameras- light weight and high resolution and because of this- in our industry we see many troubling images from around the world.
If there is a single message I see and hear from deep inside myself as I peer into the mirror, it is simple but clear. There are too many humans on this planet and with the growth rates of our species, which we are seeing we will outstrip every available resource sometime in the next 100 years.
Today I checked the World Population clocks. There are several on line. 6,852,336,963 people needing food shelter and love. Too many of us see ourselves as needing to do anything we can to feed ourselves.
Folks, Friends, Family- It is Time to Wake up. From Inside ourselves to Around the World.
Our species has learned to domesticate our food sources because it created a steady supply. Still we continue to persecute Wild Animal Populations around the world in scenes like this or in others less obvious. I shuddered just as deeply when I read China was beginning to harvest Krill from Antarctica to feed to pigs. The image of a huge factory ship gobbling up tiny shrimp-like creatures and turning them into protein mush is not as sickening but is killing whales perhaps even more rapidly than this atrocity we are shown.
From Lowland Gorillas (used for Bush Meat) to the Genocide shown graphically below, in every - EVERY ECOSYSTEM we humans interact with by living there or visiting, we annihilate anything we choose, blindly believing that SOME MYTHICAL ABUNDANCE will somehow provide for us and wipe our sins away.
Meanwhile, we add 5-6 MILLION people to this planet every month. Entire world religions continue to not only turn a blind eye to this, but actively promote ignoring Birth Control and advise the Divine Sanctity of human life.
I am not an enlightened Master, but it seems we are missing something here.
By this day in 2013 (October 23rd) we humans will have passed 7 Billion of our kind on this planet. These are friends, neighbors and families of someone we know. They are potential Einsteins or Mother Teresas. But each one still has to be fed. Each one deserves to be educated and loved. And this is why you and I both need to look deeply into that mirror.
As we surge toward 8 Billion people on this planet at a rate of 5-6 Million new babies each month who will you deny? Old people are still dying, soldiers are being killed, whales are being slaughtered, birds and insects are going extinct.
The conundrum of our time is very simple. We live in a world becoming increasingly smaller each day. Because we are filling it with more humans each day.
We in the West push our religion on every other part and along with it our washing machines computers and every trapping of our "superior" society. Television and internet link us like never before so that a child born today in a slum of rural Alabama or urban Sao Paulo, Calcutta or Chicago or Lagos Nigeria- will watch the famous leap of Michael Jordan at least once in his life. He will be offered Nike shoes, Apple iPhones, Hundayi cars and wonder at the amazing technology and why he has a lack. Truth be told, there is plenty of money and food to provide a better life for that child. Truth be told, he or she will not have that unless many circumstances miraculously fall into place or we find the perfect society. Don't count on either.
Capitalism as practiced by the radical right in the US today will ignore this child while preaching the virtues of greed.
I know that the solution lies in halting the rate of population explosion of humans. I know that every human now is linked in ways we could never have imagined. I know this child will see the riches of a developed country and told by marketers they should want to be a consumer too.
I know each human deserves a good life.
But so does every living animal species. and I believe the wildlife is in a critical dangerous place world wide. More importantly I feel - I FEEL - deep inside we are going to push many species to the edge of extinction. I feel that if we ignore this too much longer, we will push things to far and the elimination and eventual extinction of our species will begin. Worse, I feel this will wipe out millions of innocent species along with us.
The improvement of life for each person can be accomplished... and we can save many species that are part of our rich, diverse, beautiful and wonderful world. I even believe we can get back to a better place for wildlife, a better balance. But we actually need to decrease the human population to about half of where we are today to do both.
Take a look in the mirror today. Love yourself, see the determination to help things get better, Love the world and resolve to do one thing to make it a better place each day. Resolve to do this with Grace and Compassion- tenderness and firmness. Be disciplined in your life and practice restraint along with resolve.
OVER 5 MILLION NEW HUMAN MOUTHS EACH MONTH. WHAT IS THE LARGEST CITY IN YOUR COUNTRY? OR PERHAPS MORE PRECISELY: WHAT CITY OF 5 MILLION WOULD YOU ADD THIS YEAR? WHERE WOULD YOU PUT IT AND WHAT HAPPENS TO THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE BEAUTIFUL NATIVE ANIMALS THAT USED TO BE THERE?
Take a look in the mirror today.
