It saddens me that there’s very little left to explore above sea level on this planet. I would have loved to have been an explorer. But it seems that every well-known explorer, even those with the purest of hearts, wound up being corrupted by basic human nature at its worst.
Man has pretty much trampled every inch of the globe that it’s possible to trample. We’ve extracted everything that we feel has value, we’ve introduced diseases and invasive species, we’ve leveled mountains and flooded valleys and burned forests and held back the sea in places that the sea has every right to go. We’ve taken people, stamped out their cultures and their languages and their self-respect, and used them within an inch of their lives. We’ve left behind craters and cesspools and islands of garbage. We’ve altered the climate and killed off more species than currently exist.
Maybe we should never have explored in the first place. Perhaps we should have minded our own business. If we had heeded nature and tamped down our arrogance, maybe harmony would prevail now. Things could have been different.
I would have loved to be the kind of explorer who found new things and new people and learned from them and left nothing but good behind. I would have enjoyed seeing the gifts the world has to offer, but I would have left them there for others to enjoy as well. I would like to live in a world where we did not instinctively feel the need to possess and control everything. If homo sapiens were a bit more humble, maybe we would have seen that abundance was already around us, and we wouldn’t have deprived ourselves of the ability to be content.
But nobody would have funded an expedition such as mine. The goals of those who hold the purse strings were never to experience and admire. They were to exploit and extinguish.
The ultimate form of recycling: Buy my book, read it, and then donate it to your local public library or your neighborhood little free library! http://amzn.to/2mlPVh5
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