Notes from the Small Pond: Manifest Destiny

The world cares. Sorta. The earth doesn’t give a darn. Planet Earth was so much healthier without us on it. Planet Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, as a lava- and gaseous-laden living thing for most of its life, slowly solidifying, evolving life, as its own “thing.”

Then, about 200,000 years ago, we came around as arguable/inarguable humanoids and tried to make sense of the rock on which we lived, miraculously. Where’s the water? Where’s the meat? The oxygen unmentionably available.

The rock accommodated. Friendly.

Then we fought about who owned the earth and who got to make decisions, a lot like who gets to make decisions once the marriage certificate has been signed.

Meanwhile, Earth didn’t give a damn who lived on it.

So, we started killing it. Like black widow spiders: Kill what you love and copulate. Eat your young if they threaten. Poop them out as webs to catch others.

That’s what we did.

Capitalism. (And I am an ardent capitalist.)

Adam Smith. “The Wealth of Nations.” The invisible hand.

Invisible. Says who? Ask the guy that can’t afford to be tested, spreading the plague, dying in solitude. Invisible. Silent. His kids knocking on the glass.

Your neighbor. You need his consumerism as much as he needs your oxygen.

Pffft. 100-percent visible. Even Adam Smith isn’t flawless.

We suck at being inhabitants of Planet Earth.

This is Planet Earth like a black Lab shaking off the sewer water into which it mistakenly plunged.

Earth allowed us on board because it could accommodate. It’s shucking us off because it can’t.

Manifest Destiny, my ass. The Earth wasn’t born for us to inhabit any more than we were born to live the lives of our fathers. We’re an arrogant species, full of hubris. Intellectual, but stupid.

Long live Earth. The ants and raspberries and tulips and ducks and viruses — their time to rule.

G’nite.

Parnell Thill is a Cloquet-based author and marketing executive and one-time frequent contributor to the Pine Knot News.