Love the Mutilated World

“I mean, after all; you have to consider we’re only made out of dust. That’s admittedly not much to go on and we shouldn’t forget that. But even considering, I mean it’s a sort of bad beginning, we’re not doing too bad. So I personally have faith that even in this lousy situation we’re faced with we can make it. You get me?

From an interoffice audio-memo circulated to Pre-Fash level consultants at Perky Pat Layouts, Inc., dictated by Leo Bulero immediately on his return from Mars.”

— The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick

I read The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch when I was in my teens. The future was set in 2016. The world had become scorching hot, so hot that you either migrated to other planets, or underwent e-therapy, transforming you into a bubblehead with a larger chitonesque forehead able to withstand the incredible heats.

“Someday, he says to himself, I’ll live like Leo Bulero, instead of being stuck in New York City in 180 degree heat—“ Leo Bulero was a bubblehead , who spent his time on the resort beaches of Antarctica.

In he forty some years since my early Dickhead obsessions, my reading materials have changed a bit, as I don’t read pulp science fiction, as I now live in pulp science fiction. The world is scorching hot, artificial intelligence is real, rich people have surgical procedures to enhance their bodies, and minds, people microdose on the same mushrooms we used to get high on.

Recently, I came across Barry Lopez’s book of essays, Embrace Fearlessly The Burning World. I had first become aware of Barry Lopez while listening to the audio book version of Robert Macfarlane’s book Underland, a book about burial and unburial and deep time, what Macfarlane calls “the awful darkness inside the world”.

Macfarlane recalls, ”Lopez is, to my mind, the most important living writer about wilderness. The defining quality of a wilderness, for Lopez, is that it make us "stumble". It removes a step from our stairs.” Lopez is best known for his book Arctic Dreams.

I had not read any Barry Lopez, but was drawn to his book of essays. I could have easily picked up his book on the Arctic or his book on wolves, as both subjects fascinate me. But today I am perusing his essay on diversity.

“(Diversity) instead, is a condition necessary for life. To eliminate diversity would be like eliminating carbon and expecting life to go on. This, I believe, is why even a passing acquaintance with endangered languages or endangered species or endangered cultures brings with it so much anxiety, so much sadness. We know in our tissues that the fewer the differences we encounter, wherever it is we go, the more widespread the kingdom of death has become.Throughout the book I’m trying to be honest about the darkness I encountered. But I’m also trying to emphasize that it is cowardly to let it all be dark. You have to have some movement of the heart that re-opens the dark world that we despair over to possibility, especially the possibility of another understanding," he says. "The attention that I try to pay to darkness and to places we call 'the light' is intentional ... What you have to be careful of is to never let your spirit of life become paralyzed by the darkness that you’re faced with.” Barry Lopez

As someone who has been immersed in the darkness of Cancerland, I was interested to learn that Barry Lopez died in 2020, 7 years after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. I have not found any writing he did on that subject but will report later if I find any.

It is easy to be consumed by darkness in these End Times. Sometimes I feel guilty about even talking about my cancer, as if it only matters to a few people. I noticed the other day, that I now have no nose hair, as a result of the radiation. Nose hair is something men over a certain age struggle with, attempting to rein in the ever growing follicles. No one wants to be one of those guys who doesn’t groom their nose hair, resulting in a dreadlock growing from your nostrils. I remember seeing a business colleague who had a bunch of hair protruding from his nose, it was looking like dried snot that he had forgotten was showing. So while I was shocked by the loss, I was also secretly impressed. I am thinking these hairs will probably grow back, but perhaps the changes happening in my body as a result of the cancer can be used as a metaphor for the changes we see happening all over the world.

Imagine the Amazon has lost its nose hair, a metaphor for the clearcut rainforests, which have been called the lungs of the earth. These forests offered protection as a filter from our breathing in the poisons that man pumps into the air. Similar to me, we wake up, looking in the mirror, surprised with the loss of these lungs ( or nose hairs) forgetting we have been subjected to radiation and chemo ( chemical poisoning), except on a grander scale.

It’s like humans are the cancer here. The globe has undergone our radiation and chemo, we have poisoned our waters, contaminated the air and killed our animals and insects. We are suffering from insatiable growth. Humans are the cancer, as our carnivorous consumption of meat eats away at our soul, a soul cheaply sacrificed for skinny hamburgers.

Additionally, our ongoing addiction to meat contributes to a significant loss of global biodiversity. We see these formerly species-rich habitats, such as the Amazon and Indonesia, being bulldozed to convert the land to feed this obsession. 60% of the globe’s biodiversity loss can be attributed to the vast scale of feed crop cultivation required to rear tens of billions of farm animals, according to a 2017 study by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

“Researchers have found that 37% of methane emissions from human activity are the direct result of our livestock. The problem becomes more apparent considering the sheer scale of livestock raised for meat production throughout the world. A single cow produces between 154 to 264 pounds of methane gas per year. Not counting for the emissions of any other livestock, 1.5 billion cattle, raised specifically for meat production worldwide, emit at least 231 billion pounds of methane going into the atmosphere each year. Because methane is such a potent greenhouse gas, there is great interest in curbing its production. A number of companies and start-ups are investing in plant-based products that mimic meat’s flavor and and texture, while others focus on lab-grown alternatives, both of which would lessen the need for animal farms and their associated emissions if more widely adopted.” This information is courtesy of the US EPA. So when we are looking for ways to make a positive change to help climate change, reducing or eliminating meat consumption is a good place to start. “

Our planet has become a giant air fryer because we “grow” cows to kill for their meat, ( where a cow is magically transformed into beef) and the beef farts and burp to such a degree, that now the entire planet is screwed.

It is hard to look at the way humans have destroyed this planet without believing we are committing some kind of eco-cide. The world is burning, from the boreal forests of Canada to the Persian Gulf International Airport in Iran, which reported a heat index recently of 152°F (66.7°C). As the Washington Post notes, “Those are intolerable conditions for human/animal life.”

Record temperatures are creating migration from climate by millions of people, risking everything just to get somewhere else. And when they heroically get to where they are going, they find they are not welcome. They find that we are ok with a ship sinking, a ship with about 750 people,aboard, including for the most part women and children. His particular ship sank off the coast killing 600, and the western world shrugs, instead watching on their screens the exploits of a handful of billionaires imploding in a boutique submarine, ironically sent down to the depths to witness the wreckage of the Titanic.

We are a species that is capable of greatness, so why do we settle for a steady diet of atrocities, supplemented with shots of outrage at senseless school shootings, cluster bombs, and lab leaks. We can do better than witness the extinction of our species.

We can now witness the extinction in real time of all other species. Lions are down to 25,000, from 450,000. Leopards are down to 50,000, from 750,000. Cheetahs, who only exist as cartoons selling cheese, are down to 12,000, from 45,000. Even Kipling’s famous Tigers are down to 3,000 in the wild, from 50,000.

Will tigers only exist in poetry from previous centuries? Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

William Blake

Perhaps we need to address the elephant in the room. Did you know that before the white man came to Africa, it was home to roughly 20 million elephants. Today there are fewer than 400,000 remaining. African elephants could become extinct by the year 2035 if poaching rates continue.

That is only 13 years away!

Biodiversity loss is like heart disease; it is considered a "silent killer, “ as dangerous as global warming, but receiving little to no attention by comparison.

When we move our focus from micro to macro, we find the situation is similar. We are fighting cance, disease, aging; the world is fighting a cancer of billionaires, and a multitude of people caught up in trying to exist. But like the proverbial frog on the pot, we notice it’s getting hot.

SNAFU. Situation Normal - All Fucked Up.

I’ll leave the last words to Barry Lopez:

“We must learn to love the mutilated world.

We’re trying to swim in gasoline.

It’s impossible, but we swim on.”