The Mystic Ranger

“If a tree falls in a for­est and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” 

I believe, if you’re a friend of mine, you’ll pretty instantly say yes. If you’re not, you might, or might not. But I don’t care about the ques­tion. I strongly hold the answer to be yes. But what I care about, is the exis­tence of this ques­tion at all.

Peo­ple who sup­port the face that a sound shall not be pro­duced, argue as such: 

The pos­si­bil­ity of unper­ceived existence?

Can some­thing exist with­out being perceived?

Main arti­cle: George Berke­ley - Wikipedia

Another inter­est­ing post, which said that the answer should be no, was here. It “appealed to the sense of human­ity”. Or that’s why I got of it.

So, get­ting back to the point, what really con­cerns me, and is cor­rectly sym­bol­ized in the just above-mentioned person’s entry, is the intense “ego — or anthropo-centrism”, that is so instinc­tive in humans (at least, as far as I know), is very appalling. Espe­cially when you get to know of it.

I hope you got my point so far — we per­ceive, even after all this so-called-“development” we have under­gone, our soul men­tal­ity, is still very much the same. We still think, the entire uni­verse revolves around us. We might deride the stu­pid­ity of the Catholic Church from Galileo’s times. But how much have we changed? I don’t think a lot.

And I stretch this obser­va­tion to some­thing of my “pet” topic — some­thing, thanks to Michael Crich­ton’s State of Fear, I can hold a pretty strong argu­ment against — and that is about “envi­ron­men­tal damage”. 

All around, we must have heard about nature being “destroyed”. Envi­ron­ment being  “slaugh­tered” at the hands of the abu­sive humans. Humans destroy­ing nature. For most of you, such state­ments must not only be obvi­ous, you must have often used them.

“Nature”, as we know it — has existed for over four and a half bil­lion years. The triv­ial way we are taught about num­bers and such val­ues, you’d think that yeah, so what? Well, as Dou­glas Adams nicely describes the quan­tity of the length of the uni­verse as :

“Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mind­bog­glingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.”

You could really say the same thing about time. Or for that mat­ter most of the stuff we learn about. The uni­verse exists at such dimen­sions (read: scales), that we can’t even imag­ine them. We can only think we can imag­ine. And such hope is where human­ity lives. 

“Noth­ing is so firmly believed as that which least is known.”

–Mon­taigne

We think that the nature around us is get­ting destroyed –due to global warm­ing, “pol­lu­tion”, defor­esta­tion, etc. So let’s pull one thing out. Global Warm­ing kills, eh? Whom? We all know its gonna lead to a greater vari­ety of mos­qui­toes, “cooler” insects, and the sort. Of course, all that might lead to a decline in our pop­u­la­tion. But just us and a few around us. That is destruc­tion of nature? End of the World? Of course it is. At least for s. And that is why we must take care of it. Because the world will end if we go on crap­ping on the planet like we are. And who really is going to get killed? Just us. And that is all we care for. We might con­ceal our sym­pa­thy under the guise of car­ing for other ani­mals, and species. But all we care about, really is our­selves. How can a world exist if we can’t sense it? No, it can’t. =)

Really? You might think I’m an anti-environmentalist; I’m all out against those poor fools who are into “sav­ing nature” (which, as we have now deduced is = sav­ing our own poor help­less asses). But no, I’m not. Once again, I quote one of my favourite analo­gies from the State of Fear:

Ted Bradley [the poor, for­saken brain­less soul, who goes about think­ing like just-another-lame-human]: So, what exactly is your point? [hav­ing given up, after being proved of the futil­ity of argu­ing on the basis of the exis­tence of Global Warm­ing and etcetera]. You’re say­ing we  don’t need to pay any atten­tion tot he envi­ron­ment, that we can just leave it alone and let indus­try pol­lute and every­thing will be hunky-dory?

Ken­ner [my hero — please don’t mis­un­der­stand any­thing… ]: If you oppose the death penalty, does it also mean you are in favour of doing noth­ing at all about crime?

TB: No.

Ken­ner: You can oppose the penalty, but still favour envi­ron­men­tal controls.

TB: Yes, of course.

Ken­ner: Then I can say that global warm­ing is not a threat but still favour envi­ron­men­tal con­trols, can’t I?

TB: But it doesn’t sound like you’re say­ing that.

Ken­ner: *sigh* =(

Hence, I too say that we need to act even bet­ter for change, with more feroc­ity, and deter­mi­na­tion. But we need to do it, with a more absolute men­tal­ity. Some­thing that is not so fix­ated around human­ity. Even if that is the only point you can see as a motive for act­ing your­self. And what is really more nec­es­sary than any­thing else, is more knowl­edge. Try to know bet­ter stuff, peo­ple. I’m not say­ing I do. Or any­body does; but strive to. I think that’s most essen­tial.