Nature is Trying to Kill You

Was working on a larger post along this theme, but saw this and decided to elaborate a little bit on the more basic theme.

NATURE IS TRYING TO KILL YOU

Even in our modern age and westernized culture, where we have overcome much of the day to day threats which plagued our ancestors, things like starvation, ferocious animals, weather, and disease, Nature, that cold hearted bitch, has all sorts of nasty surprises yet in store.  This is why I find it irksome when environmentalists talk about "communing with nature" or how we are "offending the planet" and have made it angry with our progress.

Folks, Gaia in all her splendor, started this shit.  She has been killing us, in the billions since time began.  And even if we were fast, strong and smart enough to survive all her traps of death, she designed us with an expiration, with a ticking time bomb called age which will finish off what the animals, bugs and environment could not.

My point is, I don't want to, nor feel the need to, "commune with nature".  I like camping and hiking in the worlds and the beauty of the natural world, yes, but I wish to be in a position of power, of mastery over it, so it does not kill me prematurely.  Nature and I (and you) have an adversarial relationship.

What this super-volcano emphasizes is that we live in a hostile world, one that could kill any one of us, or a whole LOT of us, in blink of an eye.  Think of Pompeii, what happened to an entire city full of people, and then imagine a good portion of North America being laid to waste either through fire or ash.

Yes, we live in a hostile world, and when you think about the tremendous forces around us in space, from a sun that might belch and fry us, or asteroids that might bring cataclysm or other even more random but catastrophic shit that could befall, you realize that is is a hostile universe.

THE UNIVERSE WANTS TO SEE YOU DEAD.

You, and your civilization, and well, pretty much anything you love and care about.

You have a right to fight back.

Of course, you will eventually lose that fight, but until you do, you have the right to keep swinging and slashing.

Yes, if you fully absorb what I am saying, this is not exactly a upper of a post.  It is meant, however, to put some things into perspective.  Hell, it is trying to put EVERYTHING into perspective.

It IS possible, folks, that the entire human race, not only all the people, but everything built and produced throughout could suddenly disappear.  Zip.

The only thing left would be our clunky interstellar probes and communication broadcasts bouncing around forever.

I don't say this with a SEIZE THE DAY mentality feverishly burning up my soul, trying to rally you. I am largely sitting on my ass, trying to fully absorb this message, trying to use it to spur myself, and it still ain't easy.

But what I DO know is that I don't owe Nature shit.  She supplies much, yes, but she also takes much, and often cruelly, so we're even.

One could say the same thing about God, I guess, and I admit I have thought the same thing.  It is easy to be all philosophical about the "duality of life" and how we must accept the bad with the good, but it's a bit harder when you see your family destroyed, or even your entire civilization overnight.

The only saving grace would be if the promises of some sort of afterlife were true, if, no matter what happens here, it is not meaningless and it is only a very dark time in a much better story.  I know some people, many, think it's a fairy tale, and perhaps it is.  But in the end, we have to accept that THIS life, while certainly being less "nasty, brutish and short" than it has been throughout history, it has horrors aplenty for us.

A bummer, yes, but there seems little point in not being honest about it.