You Are A Vital Link In The Chain

 

I was looking at a picture of an orangutan and a bulldozer yesterday, the kind of picture that makes you turn away because the feeling of helpless rage is too much to bear. A picture of man’s “progress" destroying nature. Once again. Endlessly. 

I was thinking of how many people have to be complicit to allow this event to have taken place: the operator of the bulldozer, the people in the crew that transported it to this location, the foreman who ordered it, the boss who ordered him. The accountant who figured it was a few cents cheaper to tear down a forest than farm sustainably, the people who buy products from businesses willing to extract profit from a dying earth. The politicians who did what they were told by the people who give them money to be elected, and the police and military who use force to make sure profit reigns supreme over planet. Even the guy who took the picture could have tried to stop this from happening.

 Not a one of them was a free person. Not a one of them does not bow to a system that is destroying us all. And yet how many of them believe themselves free? How many loudly proclaim their love for personal freedom when they never dare to use it?

 Because it would only have taken one of the people in the chain of command to say no to stop this picture from having been taken. But the only one with the courage and the lack of rationalizations was an orangutan.

 Just a few people with courage and morals will be enough to stop most of the evil that is taking place in the world today. Because it is obvious there are precious few real leaders. Most of the rest of us simply go along and do what we are told. All it takes is a few of us to simply refuse to obey what we know in our hearts is wrong, what hurts us to our core and lessens us as human beings. All it takes is to listen to the inner voice rather than being obedient to someone or something we despise. All it takes is for a few people to be who they want to be.

 Because this is a war. You have been conscripted into it, whether you like it or not. But you have been conscripted into the wrong side. This is a war against nature and I don’t have to tell you which side you should be on. Your heart knows. Your heart knows.

 Because a war against nature is a war against everything—absolutely everything—that matters.

 And you are oh so much more free than you have been led to believe. They have told you a story—a horribly ugly story—and you believed it. You believed it because you couldn’t believe anyone would lie like that, because you would never think to lie like that.

 You believed a story that said life is terrible and you just have to swallow the terribleness if you’re ever going to eke some small degree of pleasure from life. Accept that the human race is on a march to extinction and is taking the rest of the planet with you, and they will let you make monthly payments on an SUV. Accept the gnawing feeling in your guts and you can escape reality on the weekend by watching Star Wars episodes and thinking how cool it would be to be a Jedi. Accept the rule of the psychopaths and they will leave you alone once in a while.

They tell you there is nothing you can do because you're just one person. They tell you you're all alone and nothing you can do by yourself will ever matter.

 They tell you its just how it is. They tell you there’s no hope in resisting. They forced their beliefs onto you and you have internalized them.

 But it only takes one person to refuse. It only takes one link in the chain to decide it’s not going to be a part of it anymore. It only takes you. You can change things. I believe in you. 

And you are not alone.

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