Like Lambs for Slaughter

 

I find myself at risk of plunging this blog into monotony, because once again, this time by proceedings in Asia, I have been forced to revisit the topic of global warming and its effects.

In the wake of the Myanmar disaster it has occurred to me, in retrospect, that I might have appeared insensitive or appeared to trivialise the effects of global warming in my earlier posts (see covenient truth and convenient truth; the sequel). I would like to assure you that it was never my intention or goal. Indeed My heart goes out to the family and friends of the over 45,000 victims (over 15,000 dead and 30,000 displaced) of the latest manifestation of nature’s wrath.

It is important and indeed considered good technique in problem solving, to set emotions aside when analysing a problem. It is that technique that might have appeared to be insensitive or trivialising of the effects of global warming and in that same breathe it is that same technique I will employ now to analyse the human race’s greatest challenge yet.

There are two things that can not be denied. One is that global warming is happening, fuelled by human industrial and agricultural activity. There is no doubt that the human race (not the planet) faces one of its greatest menaces in global warming and its effects.

The second is that since global warming passed from being a theory whispered by stuffy foresighted but oft ignored scientist to a biting reality, we have come no closer to effecting or even devising an efficient strategy to combat it. The cutbacks in our energy largesse and emissions championed by most environmentalists are simply not a solution, because they ignore the primary root of the problem, our expansive human population.

There is a latent irony in the strategy of cutbacks that dooms it to failure in the long term. The cutbacks will provide temporary relieve from global warming and its effects and in essence recreate the environment that led us to prosper and grow in numbers in the first place and we will do exactly that. This increase in numbers will mean more industrial and agricultural activities, which will mean more emissions (enough to offset the cutbacks), which in turn will put us right back where we started; in the frying pan.

I do reserve hope, although un-rooted in reality, that a combination of energy and emissions cutbacks coupled with a world wide effort to check population growth will provide a lasting solution. But the reality is there is no way to put in place global policies to check population growth and even if you could we are all ready too many to begin with.

The real solution lies tantalisingly close, but just out of reach. The human population has to shed some weight. The answer is obvious, but there is no way to effect it outside of finding a new habitable planet and moving half the population to it.

The sad reality remains that we might suffer a few more of these disasters as our planet attempts to cull our numbers for us and we will be powerless to do anything about it, short of postponing the problem for future generations. The planet is serving us up like lambs for slaughter.

 

WEDDINGS, I LOVE WEDDING PARTIES

No relation except friendship, but the evidence said otherwise. I could have bet my sanity, which I held onto desperately on account of the din the 3 evocated, that they where kin, descended from some banshee whom burden bore a melancholy so severe that she abandoned her providence to spawn and spread the misery around.

I, timing my query as best as I could in a priceless lull in the hooting and hollering, inquired into the root of the hubbub and was rewarded with a stubby little finger, with a small, shinny rock attached to it by ways of a metallic band, being shoved into my face. Dangerously close, the danger being that even at that proximity I had to strain to see it, a task that was made less dangerous by the fact that from time to time the rock caught the light and bounced it around, as shinny things are ought to do.

‘Ah! You have a shinny pebble on your finger,’ I exclaimed ‘very clever the way you have attached it to your digit.’ I said with utmost sincerity, knowing that all 3 where quite simple and a feat like wearing a ring would merit celebration if indeed it was achieved with no assistance.

‘No silly; He proposed,’ said the most disagreeable of the lot and once again I was enveloped in a cacophony of shrills cued by this triumphant declaration.

I thanked God for the little grain, because it gave me the opportunity to observe beauty, an opportunity I had hitherto been denied by the presence of the 3.

I, after bidding my time once again for the banshees to run out of breathe, inquired why an apparently blind man’s proposal would evoke so much hollering.

‘You have been cohabiting with this man for the last 4 years, you have two children by him already; the only thing that has changed is that he mortgaged your home to buy you that speck of ground that you wear on your finger; why the screaming?’ I asked, while inwardly it occurred to me that as well as being blind the groom to be was a consummate fool.

My inquiry must have dragged them to the depth of their shallow minds, because they pondered the question as Sir Isaac Newton, no doubt, once pondered the nature of gravity. A welcome relieve, because it brought temporarily reprieve from their clamour.

Eventually the bow legged one, in a tone laden with uncertainty, as if her unmerciful primary school teacher would leap out of her history and chide her for giving the wrong answer once again, whispered, barely audibly in an inquiring tone, ‘coz there is going to be a party?’

 

Thank God for stupid people, they are “the little boy” in our “emperor has no clothes” world.

For if you remove the unmerited emotional hullabaloo associated with weddings, all you have left is a contract, a contract formalising your commitment to go against mammalian nature and to mate with only one person for the rest of your days.

As if believing that a formal, legally binding contract is not enough to deter you from adhering to nature’s intent, it is signed in the presence of God, a God who is omnipresent, but apparently more so in those buildings you frequent periodically; buildings decorated with crosses, crescents or what a view depending on which part of the world your ancestors hailed from or which smooth talking orator has you under his influence – a man whose word you take with blind faith, but would be hesitant to leave alone with your kid, but I digress.

So the bow legged one was right, for probably the first time in her life. On the day you surrender your natural rights to human and supposedly divine law alike, there is nothing to celebrate, the only thing to shout about, the only reason to be happy is the temporary distraction of an impending party. You say wedding party, I say consolation party.