We live on a stunningly beautiful planet; however a large percentage of it has been destroyed by human annihilation. Large groups of people have never witnessed or experienced this beauty because all they have ever known is ground covered in concrete, and huge buildings towering over them. Maybe they live in a high rise apartment where they must navigate their way through crowded sidewalks, filled with people rushing to get someplace. They possibly do not own a car and their other means of transportation is the subway or a taxi. Or, maybe they have grown up in the slums of a major city, where everything around them is reminiscent of a trash heap. Their idea of beauty becomes skewed.They think that a shiny new car, an electronic device, a new hairdo, or a tattoo is a thing of beauty, because they have never known the sound of a trickling stream in the woods, or experienced the smell of pine or decaying leaves. The only non-domesticated animals that they have ever seen are caged in a zoo and the only way they know, to fill the empty void inside of them, is through drugs. Millions of people will never know the lovely parts of our world that they are missing, except possibly, through their televisions.
This may not be the first time that our planet has witnessed the desertification that is happening today. Agriculture has been practised even in bygone civilizations. Places that are now deserts, were once a lush, tropical paradise. The difference is that today we are able to see and understand the role we have played in the devastation of what was once breathtaking. Centuries ago, ignorance caused people to make up stories to explain the terrible transformations that befell their world. The powerful Roman Catholic church invented the story of Adam and Eve, suggesting that it was lust and immoral behavior that had cost them paradise. It was immoral in the way we treated the earth and other species; but just like today, it was agriculture that drained beauty from the once fruitful earth. They made up another story, shunning the life here and making the false promise that only if we were good, would we be returned to paradise; but that it was another place called heaven and we could not go there until we died. Hell was just a step below the world we were currently living in.
It is time for the human race to grow up and to dispense with the fairy tales. Our earth was, and always has been, paradise. If we are to know her beauty once again, we must pay attention to her cries and to her warnings. We must make amends.
