Letters to Ukraine – 7

How might our modern relationship with ecology seem, to an advanced alien race? Like someone selling their home for a few dollars to rent a tacky room overnight. Like a frog soon to be boiled alive in slowly-warming water, where the frog itself set up the experiment. Like a surgeon crudely opening a patient’s skull, hoping that the sophisticated instruments required to complete the operation have just been invented. Like a tourist allowed to burn the Mona Lisa in his portable stove, so everyone can enjoy a few chips. Like the expanding circle of a biological culture in a Petri dish, moving towards its future by consuming it. Like a split mind that reveres great poets (“I will show you fear in a handful of dust”), playwrights (“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin”) and philosophers (“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading”), yet organizes society to be incapable of responding to them. Like a creature that defends its children from terrifying predators, then relaxes by eating the grandchildren. Like the final moments on a juggernaut hurtling towards a cliff, whose occupants heatedly debate whether they are doing 95 or 105 miles per hour.