Lessons on life

[Courtesy Flush]

I was at a dinner party last night and many of the group were freepers. That's unavoidable when you live in a very red state. Conversation came around to the environment and I learned that if a guy has a boat with twin 250 HP outboards, and burns over 100 gallons of fuel on any given weekend, just for kicks, there's not a darned thing wrong with it. If he can afford it, it's nobody else's business. After all, we couln't destroy the planet if we tried.

But what I din't understand was this: If that same guy puts his boat away, goes into his bedroom, and has sex with another man, he's destroying the world and everything we hold dear.

I'm glad I know this. It's important to spend time with freepers once in a while... to learn life's valuable lessons.

[petronius]

1. That's some valuable information!

Must have been quite a party. I hope the food and wine were good, anyway - it sounds as though the conversation may have been lacking...

[skygazer]

2. I have no use for freepers

But I do have to point out that there's one thing there that is correct - we couldn't destroy the planet if we tried.

Humans are so egotistical - we always refer to it as "destroying the planet." The planet has been around for billions of years and will continue to be around long after we kill ourselves. We may make it uninhabitable for humans - and at the rate we're going, that wouldn't surprise me - but we're not going to destroy it and even if we send it into some horrendous nuclear winter or global hothouse, some life will cling to it and eventually, another cycle will begin.

We're specks in the universe. The only power of destruction we have is our own destruction.

[Courtesy Flush]

3. Agreed

But when you use the argument to support destruction of the environment... welcome to Freeperville.

There was a time when the most patriotic thing you could do was to preserve resources. Now that's actually frowned upon by many. Sad.

[hippywife]

5. We not only can make it

uninhabitable for humans but most of the other species that share it with us.

Writing it all off with a shrug as being mere specks in the universe is also a selfish view in that it shows little caring for everyone and everything we do share our world with,

[skygazer]

6. I absolutely do NOT write it off with a shrug

I feel strongly that we owe it to ourselves, to the other living things who inhabit the Earth and to our children to leave this place in as good or a better condition than that we found it in. There is nothing selfish or uncaring about that. You misread what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is that it's unbelievably arrogant of us to feel we have the power to destroy a planet - that's what's selfish, to think we're so omnipotent that we can create and destroy, like a god. Certainly we can make it uninhabitable for ourselves and for millions of other species, including plant life. But we won't destroy it entirely. The Earth will continue without us and we need to understand that we are not as all-powerful as we think and quit acting like we stride the Universe like a Colossus. We don't. We ARE mere specks - that doesn't abdicate our responsibility but it damn well should teach us a little humility.

[hippywife]

7. My apologies

for having read you wrong.

I guess it all depends on one's definition of "destroy." While maybe we can't destroy the actual planet itself, as in the mass of rock circling the sun, we certainly can thoroughly decimate it and that to me does equal destruction.

[SarahB]

4. This country has some fucked up priorities.

Puritanical crap and hypocrisy filled religions without compassion for anyone who thinks outside their little box and without regard to long term global consequences.