I had an email exchange yesterday with an old friend who's in the environmental education business and who is as disgusted as I am about the unprovoked carnage in Ukraine. They wondered if our interest in the environment wasn't rather trivial in the face of such giant issues, and at a time when infants are being brutally killed and old people harried from their homes. I wrote this in response:
"What you (and I and many, many others) do can’t be trivial. When all wars are ended we’ll still have environmental issues to confront and resolve. Best, perhaps, to view what we’re focused on as the most fundamental of all human questions: that of how we live appropriately on our one Earth."
How to live with each other and with the rest of nature is the most fundamental and existential of questions, and one that might attract more attention. Of course, wars might never end given that they seem built in to who we are as a species. It's as though we might just as well ask the tides to stop or the planet to rotate the other way. However, maybe keeping on with the struggle to live well – finding common cause in this with others across cultures and political interests – can play a part in diminishing our more aggressive tendencies.
Responses
Well said, Bill. Well said.