The World Is an Overcrowded Elevator

The World Is an Overcrowded Elevator Going Down

It didn’t start with Bush, but he has certainly pushed the express button for the basement floor.

What we as individuals must do is ACTUALLY DO what we think is right, not just talk about it. Eating meat, for example, bothers me terribly because of the cruelty used in killing the animal. What I and like-minded others MUST do is learn to eat vegetarian meals only. Even that may not solve the problem for all of us.

There was a recent film on fishermen cutting the fins off of sharks because the fins are a popular delicacy, leaving the sharks to die. And now the world’s oceans are losing their shark populations.

Even worse, is the “sport” of hunting or fishing just for the fun and companionship of it, killing those animals in order to eat them for fun, or to put on a wall or a floor as a testament to the virility of the hunter with the high-powered gun or the hook intended to fool them into thinking they are finding their food as nature intended. God, doesn’t that make such men appealing and sexy!

But eating differently and living differently, despite good intentions, have unfortunate effects upon others as well. If humans stop eating meat, the ranchers who raise the animals will no longer be able to make a living by raising the animals. If people no longer eat fish, the result is the same. If people stop “going to the mall” to spend money for fun, the malls will go out of business. If we stop driving recreationally, or going to and from work by public transportation, the gas stations will not be able to survive in convenient profusion. And so on and on and on.

I was a birdwatcher when I lived in the Bay Area, and I had two friends who were 15 to 20 years older than I. Both of them remarked to me that when they were younger, the skies used to be BLACK with birds, and now, 10 years later, I can look further decline in the eye. How sad!

All of this means that we must think of an entirely new way to live our lives, and it will especially have to include our responsibilities to each other, as well as to other creatures. I do not know what the answers are. I only know that the way we live now is not it. And I also know that the farther the elevator falls, the faster it will be going, and the harder it will hit the basement floor when it gets there.