Greed
No matter how you count it.
* The Earth will not die; rather, our lust for profit and resource might render her unliveable for humans.
* Life has a price: ask an AIDS patient what the monthly cash cost is.
* Life has a price: Africa? Hey, we've got starving children in Appalachia. Too remote? I live in Seattle, and we've got starving children here.
* What is warfare, but greed for territorial, economic, or moral dominion?
* Compassion is too expensive; consider the above, and also please consider the addict that must confess to felonies before receiving treatment; consider that athletes are worth more money than schoolteachers in the United States.
Perhaps this sounds like my usual soapbox, but I can guarantee you that if it's a plague, the cure will be too expensive; if it's a nuclear war, it will be over oil or water, and the price thereof; if it's a comet, well, Congress will have cut the inbound-defense systems' budget as wasteful.
Perhaps it's not greed. Perhaps it's stupidity.
But I actually have a good deal of hope that the human race will figure out how to stage a massive warfare effort that involves no weapons. I can imagine a billion people in the streets singing, "Bomb us if you dare," and who could, but the greediest and stupidest? But at some point, I really do think we can stop. The trick is in
not looking forward to the end of the world, the next war, and so forth.
But then again, I live in a country that sends our sons and daughters to battle every time we build a new piece of neato kill-hardware. Gotta start at home, a'fore I can change the world.
Perhaps I agree with the esteemed Mr Waters, that this species will amuse itself to death.
thanx,
Tiassa
