Power struggle

Disasters after disasters have struck different parts of the world in recent years. In the face of these forces of nature, we tend to see how small we are as compared to the titans of the earth that are the elements.

In the BBC series, Earth: the Power of the Planet, that I saw recently, it showed the different environmental factors that have created the world and continuously shape it.

The series is composed of five parts: Volcano, Atmosphere, Ice, Ocean and Rare Earth. Through vivid images, computer simulations and scientific evidences, the series showed how the first four elements work together and at the same time fight each other to give birth to the Earth and later on maintain its stability for life forms to start and then flourish. Until humans came along.

On the last part of the series, it explained the uniqueness of the Earth and postulated that it is probably the only one of its kind given the “lucky” phenomena that led to its formation and its position in the solar system.

This is no Popular Science so I won’t repeat what Dr. Iain Stewart has explained. But what he said is probably true, the Earth has met its greatest challenge with the arrival of humans.

While the Earth has its natural processes to heal itself and restore balance, humans tend to, well, fuck them up.

Enviromental activism has never been my strong point so I will leave it to those who know more to show how the earth and its environment is being destroyed by human activities, and in particular for the past centuries, the relentless drive for capital accumulation. What the series has in terms of giving information into the earth’s working, I think it has fallen short in accounting for the social relationships – the class contradictions – that exist among humans and make life miserable for Mother Earth.

But if a certain friend of mine hears me complain about this, he’ll just say that we cannot expect anything less from the mainstream media which is itself driven by capital. Fine.

The show ultimately concluded that humans will be eventually wiped out

But I believe in the resilience of humans. If only the basic contradictions can be resolved that shall, in theoretical possibility, free humans to reach their potential and even resolve its standing struggle with nature, then “I Will Survive” shall not be an athem for gays alone.

I am a reader of sci-fi novels and the usual setting is an inter-planetary or inter-galactic one. With no known limit yet of human capacity to adapt, the sci-fi can probably be facts in the distant future.

Non-humans may exist in the far reaches of the universe. Other planets may be discovered that can approximate the characteristics of the earth.

But for now, we only have this one to live in. Millions or billions of years from now it may not be habitable anymore either due to the earth’s core dying down or the sun running out of fuel to burn.

But humans will survive. If only we can find a way to not, well, really fuck things up.