#52, October 4, 2000
A few days ago, my 10 year old son Riley asked me if plants
had meaning in their lives.(!) "They just grow, make seeds, and die, over
and over again," he said. "What's the point? I asked him how people
are different. He answered, "We have emotions, and we can improve."
This led to a very interesting and still continuing
discussion. Next time he asks, I'll tell him this:
Whatever they feel or think, plants play out their purpose
in the great body of life on earth. Giving oxygen, food, shelter, beauty…they
share their lives with the animals and with each other.
People certainly do have emotions, and the strongest ones
are centered around their children. On my way to work one summer morning, I saw
a mother sitting in the all-but-empty skate park, smiling with pride, watching
her wobbly son on his rollerblades. Something about that scene, the mother's
early hour devotion to her boy, brought a tear to my eye. She will do what it
takes to see her son grow up healthy and happy, capable of having healthy happy
children of his own. Much like the plants, we strive to grow, and plant and
nurture our seedlings, before we die.
Plants can improve, but they carry on that work as a
species, across scores of generations. For them, quick improvement isn't
important. They are here on earth today because they've been through a long
selection process, where those without the right characteristics for survival
were "weeded" out.
For people, improvement is more complicated. Individually we
can "improve" as we grow up, and for some, this maturing ends only
with death. But there is another level of personal and societal improvement,
one that will determine whether our species will continue for many more
generations.
Simply stated, it's about how we treat the children beyond
our borders, and the children of the future.
A few weeks ago, Riley, my daughter Laurel, and I stood
before the City Council to dramatize the myopia of Amendment 11's watershed
mining policy. Representing today's users, I opened a pint bottle of water and
drank a fourth of it. Then I dumped another fourth, to represent what we are
wasting. Laurel, representing the equally inefficient new users served by A-11,
drank a quarter, and dumped the rest. Riley, representing the next generation,
was handed an empty bottle. He looked up into it, then keeled over.
When you cast your vote for City Council this November; when
you decide what to do about your household's water use, first picture yourself
in 2020. Will you tell the thirsty young families that through your
waste you drained the Russian and Eel River watersheds, or through conservation
you restored them.
In 1991, you and I allowed our money and government destroy
much of Iraq's life support system. Since then, we've let our government
maintain sanctions responsible for the death of 5,000 Iraqi children a month,
to this very day. When you strip away all the propaganda, you find we are doing
this for cheaper oil. When you cast your ballot for President; when you decide
what car to buy and when to drive it, first imagine you are an Iraqi
middle-class parent. You are trying to tell your crying, skeletal ten-year old
why the drinking water is killing him, and that you are powerless to stop it.
Few parents would hesitate to give up a bad habit to save
the life of their child. The test of our worthiness to inhabit this planet is:
can we give up bad habits to save the life of any and every child?
We can and will improve, Riley, but not to just survive a
thoughless existence, hand to mouth, birth to death. California author Kim Stanley
Robinson describes another possibility: "we take the earth to be a
beautiful sacred landscape, worthy of sacred inhabitation, a joyful living in
the land-- (we become) the land's human expression and part of its
consciousness." In other words, we
act as if we are children of the future.