I never watch the programs that are aired on The Weather Channel, depicting the doom and gloom of real and potential natural disasters. The urgency in the narrator’s voice is generally enough for me to want to turn off the television immediately. Last night, I forced myself to sit through a few segments as they wove stories about how Mother Nature was recovering, in abandoned places.
They likened these occurrences and our human relationship to them, to warfare. The doomsayer proclaimed that we were in a fierce battle with Mother Nature. And therein lays the problem. The dominating mindset of human beings is that we must do battle, fight, and defeat this so called enemy. Mother Nature is not our enemy! We are as much a part of nature as the tree growing in our front yard, or the mouse raising her family in our garage. We are one with the robin taking food to her hatchlings and with the bumblebee extracting pollen from the flowers in our garden. Even the weeds that are the dominant feature in so many suburban yards are not separate from us. We are not above nature. We are not special.
Many, many people watch these programs. They are pulled into the drama and never stop to question what they are hearing from their TV’s. During the commercial breaks, they are further programmed by the makers of herbicides and pesticides, to purchase their products so that they can conduct their own war, in their own backyard.
When will this mind control of the general public through their television sets, cease? Although I seldom watch television (mine remains covered with a lace tablecloth most of the time) I am not against it, per se. I simply do not get sucked into it. Ninety five percent of the programs would bore me to tears. I always mute the commercials, refusing to listen to the ravings directed at consumers. Even PBS is not immune to promoting things which are not aimed for the good of all life. So much of the world is asleep to the problems our world is facing. I want to shake them and tell them to WAKE UP! We must relinquish this idea that we should wage war on Mother Nature. She is not our enemy – she is us.
