The other morning, I went into the kitchen. Gosh, it was early and cold, bitterly cold, and I was feeling somewhat disheveled, a little bit unhappy, a little bit too early, and then it was still dark, of course, but the sunlight was just beginning to ebb in. The light was just ebbing in. And what do I hear? The Twitter of birds.
Nature was awake already, and I found it somehow comforting, truly comforting. And I thought to myself, wow, nature is always there, isn’t she? And I thought back to my childhood and nature was there as well. The wind, the birds, the smell of the sea. Gosh.
She was always there. But increasingly, as we all know, we are beginning to move more and more of us into cities and we’re totally distance from nature. We truly have no idea what she is actually like. Now as an aside, there is apparently a trend that is always believed that we became more and more urbanized over time but there is a recent study that has discovered a settlement in Mesopotamia that suggests that we moved into cities, built cities, and then after a period of time, we didn’t like it and we moved away back to the farm. Perhaps it was more natural.
And then once again, we moved back in. And we are soon as a species, on our way to live in cities. Most of us, around 70% overall. Now as we become more and more distant from nature, we are really, really up for an interesting time. For instance, if you ask a class of young people, have you ever killed a chicken?
And you get a shocked reaction. Like, what are you talking about? I said, well, where do you think chicken meat comes from that you find in your sandwich or perhaps pork or beef, etcetera, etcetera. When you can see why more and more people, if you have any knowledge of what really goes on to produce our meat, become vegetarians. Right?
So as we become divorced from nature, we’re into a dangerous time because, of course, Gaia, mother Earth, dominates our lives and she controls how we actually think. Now if we go back to just after World War two, what began to happen was a bit of arrogance because we began to assume as a species that we could take over nature. And there was a product supposedly introduced called DDT, and this was used to spray and kill insects, basically. And then a lady by the name of Rachel Carson in 1962 published a book, Silent Spring. And this was about the effects of this poison DDT and what it was doing to nature and she launched truly an environmental movement.
So the environmental movements that we think of today that are concerned with the changes that are occurring on Earth are a direct result of her, many people believe. So then, I guess as a human being, how do I return to nature? Well, I think the first thing I do is to stop killing the bugs, the bugs that are around me. I recently had lunch with a young woman and there was a tiny insect that had fallen into her glass and she very tenderly pulled this bug out. And then the bug once woke up and flew away.
And I thought, wow, that’s a tremendous statement when it comes to nature. So I think we just have to stop killing these things. And I know they’re irritating and me as well, I sometimes get very frustrated when I’m bitten by a mosquito and my tendency is to slap it, which I do many times. But other times, I try to brush it off and push it away because if we go on killing all the natural environment, spraying everything, cleaning everything up, we probably won’t have a world in the future. And the thing that’s so startling about Gaia is that Gaia will go on.
She does not need us. She does not need human beings as bizarre as it sounds. Perhaps she would, in effect, be far happier without us because the pollution would decline and the natural species would find a way to judge their population levels naturally and the world would just go on. And you think to yourself, we get everything from the natural environment. Even our synthetic clothing is produced from the oil that we extract from inside the Earth.
But we have to be more careful, don’t we, when it comes to protecting the environment? If you really wanna bond yourself to the environment, I have a suggestion. And especially when you’re feeling stressed, the next time you’re feeling really a little bit upset about anything really, find a piece of grass perhaps in a park and take your shoes and socks off and then go for a walk barefoot and see what it does. And it’s a very, very strange experience because it will pull you into nature whether you wanna go or not, and you will feel linked with the natural world. An interesting experience in my estimation.
So I guess the next time you wanna kill a cockroach or kill a bug or perhaps push away a bee or whatever it is, really reflect on how important they are to the natural environment. And as we know, the honeybees are dying on mass worldwide. And of course, this is probably related to even though DDT is now gone, the synthetic chemicals that we are using in the natural world most assuredly is killing the bees, the bugs, etcetera, etcetera. We are on our way to wiping out the vast majority of species. And when they’re gone, we’re gone.
If we don’t have honeybees to pollinate a lot of our fruits, they won’t exist, and we won’t have those. You know, so you can see how this concept of the natural environment mother earth totally tied together. So I think the environmental movement tragically is a bit of a knee jerk response because if you’re serious, we would do something. Great idea. Great thought.
You’re really concerned about the environment? Have a shower in cold water for a week. I highly recommend it. And those are the kinds of changes that we’ll have to do on our person if we want to really change the world because it all starts with me. Right?
It’s all for me, begins with me. My actions will dictate what will happen in the future. So think about the environment, think about what you can do, and you know what they say. You know what they say. If we’re going to change the world, critical thinking is necessary because critical thinking is great, truly great. God bless. You take care. Bye bye.