While worldwide “folks” are “hunkered down” in an effort to avoid an invisible plague, the main message of all this stuff is being completely ignored.  Everyone is striving to deal with the sudden mysteries of our new shared reality, but few are asking the simple question: Why is this happening?

Some people, labeled the tin-foil hat crew, believe that the Corona epidemic was seeded by a nefarious cult of Chinese chemists, aided by the corporate elites of America, because they want to rid the world of those who they believe to be extraneous; the old, the physically impaired, the ordinary, generally, anybody but themselves.  These one-worlder’s, it is said, cooked up a virulent virus that will do their bidding, up to a point, and afterward the world will be a better, more centrally controlled, and less populated place.  And maybe the tin-foil hat crew is right.  Or maybe not.

Meanwhile, the telegenically-compassionate political set asserts that plagues are just plain bad luck.  Gosh darn it.  Shit like this happens every few centuries, and harried persons such as themselves are left to clean it up. They are doing their best to save us all from chance and nature’s trickery and, true, very often they fail miserably.  But meanwhile they stay up late drinking inferior coffee brought by their legion of minions and speaking oh so earnestly to whatever camera can be convinced to still itself before them.  Their professionally-coifed harried look clearly says that being the hero of the moment is not easy.  The key is that you – you and me – must believe that they are doing their best, and that you should do what they suggest – well, in reality, order – and, when possible, vote for them once again, if indeed the urgency of events has not required that such niceties as elections be done away at least until – well, until they want them to happen again!  Meanwhile, let’s all strive to be superficially supportive of one another, at least until they have the opportunity to benefit from their Teflon-heartfelt efforts.

But then, in isolated corners hopefully not overseen by the ever-present cameras, nervous citizens whisper about what is really going on.  With a grimace and a shake of the head they acknowledge, perhaps bit reluctantly, that we have been beating the living crap out of the planet we inhabit for a century or so, and now said planet is not-so-gently giving us a sound slap across the face. Perhaps the clear-cutting of the forests so more humanoids could eat crappy food was acceptable. Perhaps the gouging of the earth so sticky black stuff could be extracted to be burned was tolerable. But when these bizarre and toxic infra-something waves began to permeate everything, so that even the bees and birds got lost in the remaining forests and the animals could only eat left-over garbage and the mother frogs began to birth mishappen babies, well – enough was enough.  We have not only bitten the hand that feeds us, we have, environmentally-speaking, chewed the shit out of the hand and eaten the hand and the wrist and the arm itself.  We have fucked with the Earth enough to convince the Earth that we no longer want to be a part of it and, well, that can be easily arranged.  And it is now being arranged.

What we have done is we have taken the precious parcels of the earth, everything from trees to petrochemicals to shining stones to potatoes to cows to the very ether itself, and we have turned them into commodities.  A commodity is literally any manifestation that can be quantified and economically packaged and then marketed and sold to life forms that have now been redefined as “consumers.”  The sole function of consumers is to consume, and to consume things they have had no role in creating.  The more is consumed, the more commodities markets are pleased and so shower rewards on those humanoids who, although themselves also consumers, had nothing to do with the creation of the substances now redefined as commodities.  This process of utter disengagement of creation, maintenance, consumption and benefit has led the Earth to be perceived as a mere source of commodities, and has led to a commodification of the Earth itself.

Now, today, the Earth, representing all the trees and the stones and the microorganisms and the animals and the fluids and the sky itself, is voting that it does not want to be considered a commodity.  The Earth does not want to be commodified. Rather, it wants to be cared for reasonably well, like any other entity. The Earth, and the universe of which it is a part, understands well that entities and manifestations that make themselves discontinuous with the overall plan of nature are shrugged off into nonexistence over the course of years, or centuries, or millions of centuries. This is not a harsh judgement by nature. It is not a condemnation by nature. It is a simple nudge by nature to a manifestation that, fortunately or unfortunately, does not appear to want to fit into the general pattern of things. And humanoids, today, this very day, are beginning to feel the effects of not fitting into the general pattern of things.

Nature will laugh as, thinking we have destroyed the Earth, we blast off for worlds of which we were never a part, and as we stumble around on the moon or Mars or Titan in our clumsy metal suits.  Nature will laugh compassionately, but nature will laugh, because frankly, it will be funny to watch, like watching a frog trying to play basketball.  Frogs were not made to play basketball and humanoids were not made to blast to Titan in petroleum-powered machines. Humanoids were made to develop over millions of years in the companionship of nature itself until going to Titan, or galaxies billions of times farther away, will require a mere whim and a thought.  That is the glory toward which humanity is destined as a manifestation, a simple manifestation, of nature.

My modest suggestion is that we offer an apology to the Earth and double down on that apology by backing away as assiduously as possible from 5G, petrochemicals, animal consumption, deforestation, and all the other forms of cruelty to nature in which we have engaged.  I know it will take time, but it is the clarity of intention that counts, and nature, if nothing else, if everything else, is patient. If we see and we learn from nature, we will thrive.  If we continue to commodify the world and heedlessly consume nature, we will die.

As the beings in this natural manifestation that more than any other have a choice, at least an illusion of choice, the choice is ours.

And, whether it is in a few years or ten thousand millenia hence, we will see the results.