The next time you have a few minutes on a Saturday morning, put your hiking boots on. Take a bus and get out into a park or go even further. Go to a forest and walk around. Commune with nature. At the higher elevations, even better.
Get up into the mountains. Smell the fresh air. Hear the bees flying. The birds twittering. Feel the wind upon your face.
Why? Well, the simple answer is because we are less and less inclined to acknowledge that we are natural beings. We have all come from nature. When we left the Rift Valley in modern day Ethiopia, A Hundred Thousand Years ago or so, homo sapiens began to march and eventually populate the entire Earth, we had a direct connection with nature, of course. And slowly, we began to gravitate towards communities, and those communities became safe.
And ultimately, the communities lent themselves to cities. Today, for example, in North America, close to 80% or more of the population actually lives in cities. And in Europe, 70 5 Percent. Gosh. Asia, we’re doing slightly better, 55% or so.
But obviously, we all know this. The trend is growing. We are getting more and more and more divorced from nature. And this is a very dangerous thing for many reasons. The first reason is that we can trick ourselves and we think somehow that our natural environment is the city because we can easily run to the store and buy whatever provisions we want.
Right? Whatever we want. But in many environments, you have two days worth of food in the local store. And when that store is not resupplied very quickly, you will have famine and of course social insurrection. And this has happened many times in history.
I was reading something the other day that I think you might find a little bit interesting. We all know, of course, the Roman Empire. And the first emperor was Augustus. And it’s a little bit before the Roman Empire is formed. It goes along and it runs along.
It has a really good run right up until the Roman emperor. The one we know, I think most of us know is Marcus Aurelius. He is the great emperor. His book Meditations, he’s a great stoic philosopher, etcetera, etcetera. Still held up to be a wonderful work, and it is good book.
I recommend it. His diary, if you will, his journal. But the end of the golden age of the Roman Empire was created by a plague. The so called antonine plague, which went on for about fifteen years. Now he died in January, and the plague was not yet over.
His son, Commodus, kind of a horrible man supposedly, bad emperor, but also he had to contend with the plague. What happened during the plague? Twenty five percent around of the Roman population died, which meant, of course, less people in the army, protect the frontiers, less people to produce food, to do commerce. You know, you can see the story. So, obviously, the plague was created because of urbanization.
The Roman legions had perhaps gone into the East fighting Parthia and modern day Iran. They came back, brought the disease with them. They marched around in urban centers, triumphal marches in the capitals and in Rome. People came out to see them, spread the plague, away it goes. So this could all, in a certain sense of the word, happen again.
So we cannot be too smug. And, yes, we live in a modern world and modern medicine, and we protect ourselves, and we have better hygiene, all of those things, for sure. But we still are once again natural people. So it behooves us to have a real understanding of Gaia, of mother earth, and our contribution to mother earth. Truly, without any question at all, we cannot fool ourselves.
You know, I was driving the other day and I passed a man, and he just rolled down his window and tossed some garbage out of his window onto the ground and drove away. And I thought, gosh, if it had been a little bit faster, I could have said to him, hey, what are you doing? But, you know, of course, missed the opportunity. At least this is my excuse. Right?
Because I try to say if at all possible to people, please be careful as I’m sure we all do. Please protect mother earth. Please protect her. So get out in the environment. Get that Saturday or that Sunday morning.
Find that Sunday morning and go off and do a walk and have a relationship with nature because slowly but surely, we’re losing those contacts. And once again, as I documented with the antonine plague and COVID nineteen in that sense could all happen again. And we don’t want it to happen again, and God willing, it won’t happen again. But if we can understand that we are natural people, then we will really be serious about protecting the earth, won’t we? For sure, we will.
We will be careful with what we do. And you know what they say. You know what they say. Critical thinking is everything if we’re going to protect the Earth and ensure that life goes on and critical thinking is great. Truly great. You take care. God bless. Bye bye.