“Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of World,”attributed to India’s classic Bhagavad Gita, these are the words spoken by American nuclear scientist Joel Oppenheimer upon witnessing the destructive magnitude of the atomic bomb he was instrumental in creating.
Throughout the overall biomass of the Earth, there is a constant dynamic of asymmetrical balance in favor of life. Predators and parasites are kept in check. Unable to attain immortality, we are the sole species to make killing fields, no man’s lands, dead zones, to build concentration camps, manufacture weapons of mass destruction, politically and ideologically pursue genocide, ecocide and the civilizational; obsessive and oppressive preparations for omnicide, out of our conditional intolerance of conscious mortality. This is what I call the Death-Wish of Humanity. It is highly contagious, proliferates within the nihilism of thingness, deconstructs, reverses or negates transcendent values, and is our most dangerous human pathology.
Eco-pioneer Thomas Berry, challenged us to “reinvent the human on the species level.” At the canker-root of addressing this challenge for radical transformation is the Death-Wish and the proclivity of rage for waging war. Buddha answered the question of suffering by detachment, by letting go of that which cannot be held. Jesus responded with a message of love. But the generosity of the message has not overcome the clutching powers of fear and hatred. Where do we begin? And to begin now, so late, is to recognize that time is a wall casting a dense shadow over our efforts.
In a lecture titled In the Time of Murderers, delivered in several South American countries in 1949, Albert Camus told his audiences, “Most simply, it requires one to love life more than any idea…(to) replace efficiency by values of example.” But that was 1949, ancient history in the culture of forgetfulness. In the 76 years since Camus’ modest address, the cult of the walking dead, matrix technology, and the idolatry of the human death-wish, nurtured by boredom, bombarded relentlessly with junkification and so-called alternative facts, is exponentially more efficient. Then again, how and where (and when) do we begin to counter bad thinking with good action?
Once more Camus: “the time has come to bring the forces of dialogue together against the ideologies of power.”
~ ~ ~
David Sparenberg is a humanitarian & eco-poet, international essayist and storyteller. He is the author of three recently published eBooks, IN SEARCH of THOMAS PAINE (5 April), EOC SANITY (22 May) & ECO WOKE (18 July),eachfrom OVI eBooks & the Word Press. OVI eBooks are always FREE to download. David lives in Seattle, WA in the Pacific Northwest of the United States but identifies as a World Citizen.
MINDFUL on HIROSHIMA MEMORIAL DAY, August 6th
by Nada Jung
Aug 6
“Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of World,” attributed to India’s classic Bhagavad Gita, these are the words spoken by American nuclear scientist Joel Oppenheimer upon witnessing the destructive magnitude of the atomic bomb he was instrumental in creating.
Throughout the overall biomass of the Earth, there is a constant dynamic of asymmetrical balance in favor of life. Predators and parasites are kept in check. Unable to attain immortality, we are the sole species to make killing fields, no man’s lands, dead zones, to build concentration camps, manufacture weapons of mass destruction, politically and ideologically pursue genocide, ecocide and the civilizational; obsessive and oppressive preparations for omnicide, out of our conditional intolerance of conscious mortality. This is what I call the Death-Wish of Humanity. It is highly contagious, proliferates within the nihilism of thingness, deconstructs, reverses or negates transcendent values, and is our most dangerous human pathology.
Eco-pioneer Thomas Berry, challenged us to “reinvent the human on the species level.” At the canker-root of addressing this challenge for radical transformation is the Death-Wish and the proclivity of rage for waging war. Buddha answered the question of suffering by detachment, by letting go of that which cannot be held. Jesus responded with a message of love. But the generosity of the message has not overcome the clutching powers of fear and hatred. Where do we begin? And to begin now, so late, is to recognize that time is a wall casting a dense shadow over our efforts.
In a lecture titled In the Time of Murderers, delivered in several South American countries in 1949, Albert Camus told his audiences, “Most simply, it requires one to love life more than any idea…(to) replace efficiency by values of example.” But that was 1949, ancient history in the culture of forgetfulness. In the 76 years since Camus’ modest address, the cult of the walking dead, matrix technology, and the idolatry of the human death-wish, nurtured by boredom, bombarded relentlessly with junkification and so-called alternative facts, is exponentially more efficient. Then again, how and where (and when) do we begin to counter bad thinking with good action?
Once more Camus: “the time has come to bring the forces of dialogue together against the ideologies of power.”
~ ~ ~
David Sparenberg is a humanitarian & eco-poet, international essayist and storyteller. He is the author of three recently published eBooks, IN SEARCH of THOMAS PAINE (5 April), EOC SANITY (22 May) & ECO WOKE (18 July),eachfrom OVI eBooks & the Word Press. OVI eBooks are always FREE to download. David lives in Seattle, WA in the Pacific Northwest of the United States but identifies as a World Citizen.