Common sense is independent thinking

If we think about it for even a moment, with a completely open mind, this magnificently evolved planet supports life … our lives, human life.
Moreover, it supports all the necessary interactions among the flora and fauna necessary to life on the planet. We’re all part of the Earth’s gaia. No part rules the other; it’s one great symbiosis.
Sadly, there are many invasive things that we humans do, some on a great scale, to paralyze our planet as it struggles to maintain us, its natural system, and the order of things, every day. These are things we, ourselves, could mitigate. Some are easily altered with just a switch in our way of thinking. Some would require a small or temporary inconvenience – a farthing in comparison to the benefits for us and our future human population. Others would be harder. For others we must really bite the bullet, but we can do it all.
Most obviously and most important, we must understand the seductive and, indeed, addictive, aspects of wealth and the power it buys. We’ve talked about that before, in a more clinical way, here at Chatterbox. That’s the beast we battle in our determination to stay alive and to keep the planet alive.
It’s odd that so many of us can stare down the barrel of our own destruction and remain implacable in our choices: personal and political. The changes our planet’s people have to make to better sustain all life here on Earth won’t kill anyone and aren’t earth-shattering to anyone. Not making them, of course, is going to be earth-shattering to everyone.
It’s easy to understand the hesitancy of people to accept a huge change when they believe their personal wealth will be challenged. Many also believe great power and money will, somehow, save them from any fallout, so they hold fast, stagnate, and barge down D’Nial River. What’s mind-boggling is trying to understand why their obsequitors do the same and what the lure is for they who have nothing to gain and everything to lose.
One of the saddest things I’ve ever witnessed in my life was the carnage at Jonestown in Guyana in 1978. I’ve pondered far too many times how mesmerized anyone has to be to put a bottle full of cyanide-laced Kool-Aid into the mouth of one’s own trusting and innocent infant, to murder one’s own child, to commit suicide on the command of a madman. Jones’ brainwashing of his minions ended the lives of over 900 people, including over 300 children. It destroyed the quality of life for all their survivors. It was not only brainwashing at its most lethal, it was the deadliest of demonstrations of the destructive power of cult mentality, and it clearly illustrates what can happen when a single person or group of people inject a personal mania into others who fail to stand against it.

No one should ever stop independently thinking for his/her self. We all need to always examine what truth we see, on our own, and to reason it out. Ultimately, what works best for the largest number of people, for the greatest part of life on the planet, and what works for the protection of the planet and our ability to sustain it and all its life, is the best for all.
As humans, we bear the greatest burden of maintaining this orb which supports us, every day. If that means we must make a few sacrifices and alter our attitudes, then that is what we must do.
Right now, especially here in America, we are embroiled in two battles. First, do we refuse to modify our lives a little in an effort to maintain the ability of our home planet to keep us alive? Second, do we allow a plague to continue to kill off a portion of our people (and though some may think they know who comprises that portion is, they don’t) or do we take the best option we have and vaccinate?
These are slam dunks that shouldn’t even be debatable around the kitchen table.
We not only need a leadership with the brilliance and guts to stand up for common sense, but one that will confront those who continue to believe their feeding tube of wealth will keep them safe. Then, we each need to develop our own backbone to stand up for what’s best in the long run for all of us around the world, and for all the world’s components … human, plant, and animal because we all are interdependent upon the others.

---

Join our readers whose generous donations are making it possible for you to read our news coverage. Help keep local journalism alive and our community strong. Donate today.