Long December

It's weird but I feel like November has been December for three weeks. I don't know why but my body keeps telling me that it's December and it has been. In fact, Thanksgiving feels like it happened weeks ago rather than just one week ago.

Maybe it's the fact that I have little kids and they are getting ready for Christmas and are filled with excitement over the prospect of Santa Claus and presents. Or maybe it's because Thanksgiving came a little earlier than usual this year. Whatever it is, it's a weird feeling.

The last time something like this happened to me was in October of 2014. After the month ended, I felt like it was still October until well into February of the following year. It truly makes no sense considering time is an invented human concept. Most of our ancient ancestors and nearly all of our animal friends don't give a hoot about time down to the second. Months aren't even real, it's just a thing we do.

It feels like it's been a long December and December doesn't even start until Saturday.

The world we live in is a strange place. It's both large and small at the same time. In 24 hours we can travel to the other side of the planet but if we are on a boat in the middle of the ocean and get caught in a storm, we may never be found. The mysteries of our own planet are vast and still largely unknown. Our own exploration of space is akin to holding your finger an inch above a globe of the Earth. As advanced as we are, we are still very uncivilized.

Look at how small humans are in the grand scheme of things. We are but a blip on the radar. We are a speck of dust in the middle of the cosmos.

The further we zoom out the more the universe resembles the cells of the human body. The mesh of the cosmic web resembles the dendrites of the human brain. As we venture into the human body we also see the universe, we see that we really are created in the image of the universe that surrounds us.

This winter, as we look at the bare branches of the trees, look at this image of the dendrites of the human brain. Dendrite comes from the Latin word for tree. You can see why.

 

Why is all of this so important? Because we are small but we are not insignificant. The pain and suffering that we experience is as large as the universe is. Our planet is the only one of its kind that is confirmed to exist. There are theories, of course, that there are others like this, but if they do exist they are nowhere close enough for us to go to if this Earth should die. Hence, we need to care for it.

The trees of our Earth are as important as the trees in our brains. If they die, we die. More trees equal more oxygen. We are partners with the plant life of our planet. Oil is the blood of the Earth and it should stay where it is. We have advanced enough to know that coal and oil and fossil fuels are bad for the Earth. I supposed it would be similar to sucking the blood of a human being and setting it afire. Of course the results would be devastating to that human.

Just because it is politically okay to authorize the murder of the only planet we have doesn't mean it is okay. It isn't.

If we calculated the landmass of all paved, numbered highways in the United States that land is the same as the size of California. Yes, we have paved at least one entire state. Our economy is utterly dependent on oil and gasoline. Oil is used in tar, tires, and of course, cars, trucks, trains, etc. Stopping the use of oil would cause an economic disaster. But, we would survive it. We will not survive an environmental disaster. 

Look at the wildfires in the west, the rain in the east, the hurricanes in the south, these are all a cause of climate change. Yes, we are probably at the tail end of the last ice age, but we would be ignorant to believe that our use of fossil fuels during the Industrial Revolution was not a cause for our expediting the process. Countries like China that continue to burn fossil fuels with no regulations are also impacting the speed with which our climate is changing. Humans live here, humans are impacting the climate. This is a scientific fact. This is not a hoax.

Venus is Earth's sister. Venus is essentially Earth post Greenhouse Effect. Venus is hot for different reasons, one being it is closer to the sun than Earth is. The other reason is that it rotates in the opposite direction at a much slower pace, allowing it to roast like that of a pig on a spit. Venus has lakes and mountains just like Earth does. The theory is that the Big Bang caused the two planets to ricochet off of each other, Earth fared better by far. Earth is home to organic life. Venus is a vast wasteland of fire and lava. Not a place any human would want to, or be able to, live.

When money is king, the people suffer. Look at the landscape that has been created because of capitalism (which does not equal efficiency, by the way).

• Massive military expenses when we are already the strongest military in the world instead of spending the money on the homeless and hungry in our nation.
• Gun lobbies fighting to enforce a misinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment in order to keep gun sales up rather than limiting sales and protecting the people of our nation.
• Privatization of prisons in order to capitalize on human suffering rather than look at the root cause of the issues of the people in our nation.
• Privatization of war to make private companies rich and ensure that peace is never achieved.
• Emphasis on nationalism to make globalism look like a bad thing in order to make the rich richer and keep the poor poor.
• Privatization of healthcare to keep people sick so that they have to buy medication from pharmaceutical companies that are also paying off politicians.
• Claiming that corporations are people and that money is a form of free speech in order to pay off politicians and push the agendas of special interest groups.
• Allowing elections to be stolen for the sake of solidifying a judiciary that will enforce all of the above and then some.

As we enter the final month of the year 2018 remember what is really important. We don't own the planet, we just live here. The resources here are to be shared between us and the other organic life among us. Money is pretend. It is an imaginary commodity that was created to streamline trade. It doesn't make you better, it doesn't make you happy, it doesn't love you back. Money doesn't go with you when you die. The best that we can do is to live as our best selves, to be kind to one another, to love one another and to appreciate that which can not be bought.

I hope your long December is peaceful.