[300 words]
The Anthropocene is one great mass extinction event.
So, why is it alright to continue to exist as part of it?
Firstly, we, as individuals, did not choose this or even really cause it. It cannot be anything but madness to try and hold ourselves accountable for it…… so help me God.
Secondly — in eating, sleeping, moving around, etc., we provide a home for trillions of microorganisms to live in and as our bodies. And that’s just our gut biome — think of the uncountable cells everywhere else in us.
By continuing to survive, we allow them life.
How could we extinguish them too — these lives which we are most directly responsible for?
Thirdly — if we make it through this, we could be custodians of the planet for the next few billion years.
Nature has been playing a dangerous game with us. It tried to go big in size and muscle with the dinosaurs, only to find an asteroid could wipe them all out.
So it went big in brain with mammals. And it let us continue with it, in the hope we might one day rein it in, begin to nurture rather than destroy… and perhaps eventually deflect the next asteroid.
Where we go from there is increasingly immaterial.
So that’s the specific case. The general case is the same as ever.
You exist by the highest right of Nature. You exist by Heavenly Decree. You exist because God says so.
There can be no higher authority and there can be no greater permission — indeed, validation — to exist.
You could have personally murdered every dead animal in the world, and you would still have every right to exist. Sure, other things might come and kill you, and that’s fine — they have a right to do that too. But it’s still perfectly OK for you to exist.
And if that’s true for someone who has murdered every dead animal in the world, how much more true is it of you?
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David Leon 