Disposable Society

I am becoming more unnerved by our culture. We appear to be a fickle bunch, and have lost the art of tradition. I know I can be a bit cynical, and I don't find it difficult to castigate humanity for the staggering multitude of flaws, but recently I have found myself spending more time with that quizzical look of concern on my mug, deepening the furrows on my brow. Not only does this increase my worry for our future, but also the number of wrinkles I will have, so nobody wins here.

Allow me to expand. For anyone with the knowledge, even a notion, of the history of the planet, they will know that we have categorised and sub-categorised the timeline into 'ages', 'periods', 'eras' and such. To give you an idea of how that relates to the age of the Earth, the well-known Triassic period (dinosaurs) lasted for 50 million years*. The Earth is 4.57 billion years old*. Therefore the Triassic period was 1%* of the history of the Earth. If you are 50 years old, 1% of your life is 6 months**. We humans have been walking around (in various forms) for 4 million years* - 0.09%* of the history of the Earth. If you are 50 years old, 0.09% of your life is 2 weeks and 2 days*. The point I am trying to get across here is that we are still just newcomers, guests even, to this planet. Yet we have raced through our evolution with such increasing rapidity that we haven't had a thought for our surroundings. I have often heard people say 'If the dinosaurs were so good, why are they extinct?' which is a very short-sighted and uneducated point, but there is an unwitting point in there. The dinosaurs actually were that good, that they lasted more than 10 times what we have so far without causing irrevocable damage to their home. The actual point is that we have been here for what might seem like a beach holiday for the Earth, yet we are doing our best to not only make sure that we are extinct, but also everything else around us.

What is mostly causing my discomfort at the moment is fads and phases. Nothing really lasts 'the test of time' anymore - we consume and discard almost everything in our lives without a second thought. I don't want to sound like an activist, partly because it is more of a frustrated observation, and partly because I am just as guilty as everyone else, but I seriously think that the Earth would bloom and flourish if it wasn't for the humans developing new ways of suffocating it. So, the only things that are truly disposable are us. And maybe banana skins.

Happy Earth day!

*roughly.
**exactly.