When to step on the brake?

 

When to step on the brake?

I was so tired as I have never been before. Another great effort and a few thrusts with my great big black wings raised me up into another air stream where I could coast for a while, but the air stream highways were not behaving in a normal way. Again I plunged in a downward vortex, speeding towards the scorched earth below. There was nothing green and familiar. There were no other ravens in sight or any other living birds.

Pain… burning my lungs, hurting my muscles, eyes dry and my cry was raspier than normal. I must have left the river I was following and now I was flying above a human city all black and dead. Nothing moved. My long fall was going to crush me to the ground, I didn’t care, but I heard the familiar swish of my wings and I was again rising to where the air was not so poisonous. A tall metal frame rose to meet me. It used to be one of the human skyscrapers once shiny with glass. I grabbed onto a beam and rested. There was nothing around that I could eat. A strange way to end life, even for an old raven.

I had a thought that persisted and I hung on to it. It’s a dream. Only a dream. I moved and felt my familiar bed and blinked. On the opposite wall, I could see the door frame and through it the hallway night light. Thank you, Lord, I heard my human mouth whisper. It was only a dream.

I know that we always dream, but since that night I never had another dream that I can remember. I never realized how important this blue water world is to a human, or even a to a raven, until I had that dream of the end of it. There was a strong emotional reaction in my brain. Before this, I believed that we would not be stupid enough to destroy our only planet, but now I believe it.

Humans began existence as a single cell organism around four billion years ago according to science. Some religious scholars estimated Adam and Eve starting “life as we know it” at creation less than twenty thousand years ago. It doesn’t matter when, what matters is until when. In both cases, we were given intellect, consciousness, and free will. Each of us can choose to end life at any point and figure out how to do it.

Nature is built around “natural” selection. The fittest reproduces and others disappear. The old testament glorified those who won wars, but we see some hints of compassion and cooperation in some ancient books. Still, competition is the driving force. Also, the idea of ethics and morality has seeped in. Cities and countries took advantage of the weak and were told to repent or be destroyed.

Two thousand years ago a powerful religion was created advocating sharing and cooperation as the solution for human misery. It was named Christianity and took over the world, gaining more followers than any other theory of governing.

In recent history, people harnessed competition to be the driver of growth. It worked like a charm and soon altered Christianity, but the basics remained in human consciousness.

We are the product of the conflict between two fundamental theories. Co-operation and empathy versus predatory competition. Do we starve people into working for our benefit or do we care for the least amongst us, trusting that all human life is beneficial?

So far, our drive towards populating the earth and conquering nature to serve humans excelled. The competition proved to be a substantial driving force useful in many ways. Where there is no competition there is stagnation. The problem is that we did not set a high limit shutoff safety device.

The race towards power derived from winning drove most of the benefits from human’s work and world resources into a few hands who have no sympathy for the majority of less competitive people. Hunger and sickness are used as a driving force.

When a pandemic hit, the world was thrown into a backspin. The few who own most wealth (1%) naturally devastated the many with no consideration for their wellbeing, and everyone took sides.

President George Bush summarized the situation preemptively. “You are either with us or against us.” Those who struggle to survive realized that being with “them” means the looming end of many lives of people whose labour is no longer needed while forgetting that they are also the consumers.

The rich countries failed to win wars against poor countries. All we can do is keep people sick to sell medicines, keep people poor, and use trillions of dollars to bomb them, and destroy the environment, settling our future generations with paying to fix it. We are also good at pretending that we are not, but COVID exposed our weaknesses.

Right at this moment, authoritarian regimes are using the rich private sector players against our liberal democracies to their advantage with China and Russia at the top of the list. We need to restrict private greed’s reach and power over governments. In the post COVID era, the “free world” must take charge, unite efforts and work towards shaping our world to be the haven of humanity that it was designed by God or nature to be. It is too late to always play the assumingly safe center position.

I see two shadows passing on the ground and lift my gaze to the sky above. Two ravens are dancing the mating game above the green mountains. They trust that we humans will keep this gift we call world safe for their hatchlings, and ours. Will we have the guts to do it or will we sell out to selfish, greedy short-term profits. Will we build a better Christian world or avoid conflict and lose the world?

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.