Blog Posts

What's the Point?

11/3/2021

Humans are ready to give up...but only when it comes to helping the planet.

An old friend recently watched ‘The Shame of Point Reyes’ and while he included a compliment in his message he also said, “Part of me thinks, what’s the point, that area is going to be underwater soon anyway.”

Two immediate thoughts come to mind in response; One being that people who say things such as my friend did may truly believe that earth is screwed, but that doesn’t stop those people from getting up and going to work or paying the mortgage or the bills. As modern humans it seems that fighting for the future is a futile gesture, but robotically earning paychecks until we finally retire to the grave is not.

The second thought being that we are a society that seems to accept just about any ghastly behavior as long as an excuse was provided.

It’s not that I can’t relate and it’s not that I haven’t said similar things at some time or other in my past, but regardless of my own level of guilt the fact remains that collectively our species has become better at justifying mistreating the earth than at doing whatever they can to help it. Part of that has been our shift in values; earning money seems to take precedent over almost all moral choices. Forget the morality of it, earning money has erased personal desire to pursue the very lives most of us once considered worth living.

Humans have become quite adept at providing excuses to justify their behavior. Doesn’t even seem to matter if we’re talking about a lack of professionalism in the workplace or justification for animal cruelty, as long as you can provide an excuse…
The “give up” mentality of those who say “What’s the point” is just an extension of this. It reminds me of all the people who came down hard on Greta Thurnberg when she was at the peek of making her stir; they found ways to rip on a little girl who was trying to inspire change, not because it was important to point out her flaws, but because those same people were looking for excuses not to improve. “If we pull Greta down, we don’t have to rise up.” So many excuses of why we shouldn’t listen to Greta were thrown out there ranging all the way to “She didn’t have to walk to school uphill in snow so how dare she criticize us!?” Anything they could think of as a manner to dismiss Greta and continue life as they were, i.e., any excuse not to change.

I actually wrote a blog about that when it was happening and was reminded of it recently when a friend said, “What’s the point?”, regarding my efforts to save Point Reyes. It’s not that he thinks my efforts are unfounded, it’s more that convenient adoption that the world is doomed anyway so why try. One problem with that approach is that we only adopt the doomsday mentality when it comes to seeking excuses not to be better. These people still get up and go to work, even if they hate their jobs. They still worship the almighty dollar. They are content to earn paychecks, to go to social events, to groom themselves and dress nicely. They didn’t stop raising their children nor did they stop paying the bills, and they didn’t tell all their friends goodbye and seal themselves off from the world because, “Hey, what’s the point?” No, it’s just when it comes to us being faced with altering our selfish, destructive habits that we suddenly point at the end of the world. Why bother to save an endangered species, to protect habitat, to learn to be more compassionate toward other creatures? Why plant native plants? Why reduce plastic use? Why stop paying someone else to steal babies from mothers so we can drink bovine pregnancy lactations? Those things are childish, now excuse me, I have to get back to my Zoom meeting to make sure the company’s quarterly financials are looking good, you know, like an inspiring, intelligent homo sapien who truly understands the meaning of life.

My conclusion is the same as it was in the first blog. We should be behaving correctly all the time, not now because the need is more urgent than ever and not because some critical jerk like me cut through all your excuses. Even if the planet was in great condition, why should that lead to the conclusion that we should start fucking it up? What is this strange desire to be destructive? Do we not know how to define ourselves as a species otherwise?

Be better because it is the right way to behave. It is about holding ourselves to a higher standard and letting our children witness their parents engaging in that higher standard as inspiration instead of showing our children that all you need is an excuse to be bad.

If we’d been striving for goodness all along perhaps we wouldn’t be facing doomsday today.

An incomplete list of examples I've heard just this year:

“That cow is going to be killed anyway, so what if it begins life without a mom?”

“Yeah, the dog is chained up in a backyard all day, but it’s better than being in a kennel, right?”

“It’s not endangered so who cares if they are getting killed.”

Or the convenient flip side to that one,

“It’s an endangered species doomed to disappear anyway so why waste resources trying to save it?”

“I hate where I live, but I can afford a bigger house here at half the price of where I was living before.”

“Solar isn’t perfect, we should stick with fossil fuels.”

“You have a car, right, so don’t talk to me about renewable energy.”

“Plants have feelings and you eat plants so don’t tell me I can’t buy the flesh of animals that lived a hellish existence before slaughter.”

“What about jobs?” (Apply this to everyone who destroys the planet for a paycheck; loggers, miners, drillers, fishermen, ranchers, developers).

“Yeah, these ranches are damaging to the land and animals, but at least they aren’t factory farms.”

"Gotta eat."

"Gotta live somewhere."

Or the two go-tos that people use to get out of just about anything;
“It’s just a" (insert species name here)” and “It’s cultural”.

Using culture as an excuse to do just about anything seems to have gotten particularly out of hand. And there’s always human superiority and the need to reduce other living creatures to raise ourselves or make ourselves feel better about treating other creatures poorly so we simply say, “It’s just a (cow, dog, sheep, shark, monkey, whale…).

Humans are ready to give up...but only when it comes to helping the planet.​

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Humans are ready to give up...but only when it comes to helping the planet.