Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Touchstone

For thousands and thousands of years this land, the Earth, has been walked by the most beautiful of animal, the Tiger. Within a span of 100 years they are now facing extinction. Only one out of the eight sub-species left has even a hope of
survival, the Bengal.

This is a very strange time to live, and often an angering one. My heart yearns for the safety of these big cats. It yearns for us, another animal on this Earth, to feel with the most sincerity our connection and kinship to everything on this Living organism, Earth.

We have no idea what really will befall us and all of life when we extinct such a large species such as the tiger. We are so removed from our killing, that most of us barely feel it.

Do you feel it now? Do I? When we do feel it, I mean really let it inside, what do we do? What can we do?

The answer that we really believe is... nothing. And unless we do something extreme then yes, that is really the only answer.

Let's take the Bengal tigers in India, for example. They are the most protected and populated tiger species, their population being around 3,000. Yes that's right 3,000!

The Bengal is only one of the four species of tiger still alive on the planet. The other four have already been wiped out... The Caspien, in the 1950's. The Javan, in 1972. The Bali, in 1937. The South China.

The latest of these to go was the South China tiger, when in 2003 scientists finally said that after over 20 years of not seeing any in the wild, they were gone. In the mid twentieth century, they were hunted down and killed like vermin.

So, ok, we have the Siberian tigers left (around 50), the Sumatran (400 to 500), the Indo-Chinese (1,200 to 1.700), and the Bengal. Ok lets assume the money we send those environmental agencies actually helps out the tigers - the last time I checked the Bengal was protected by rangers and I thought "Oh, awesome! They will protect them from poachers!" Well then I found out that those poor bastards don't have the funding for vehicles, radios, guns, or even shoes! These are the people protecting the last of the big cats on Earth! They also are alone in a 5 kilometer radius of jungle. So when they see a jeep filled with heavily armed poachers, you know what they do... Run!

Even with the Bengal’s, who live in "protected" areas, one tiger is poached each day on average. You can do the math. When there are less than 3,000 left, they don’t have much longer.

My heart weeps. Then I get very angry. I want to kill, and I don't want to calm down. I don't want to forget. I don’t want to numb out. I don't want to just pray for the tigers. I don’t want to just pray for the killing to stop. No. I'm talking about real change. I'm talking about revolution. I don't believe in sending money to organizations so they can make “recreational parks" for tourists to see the last of the tigers. No. Revolution. I'm not talking about believing in the system and voting for some fuck head who believes in industry and business as usual more than sweet animal life. No. Revolution. I don't believe in praying to some God whose own book tells people that we have dominion over the land and animals. Dominion! Fuck that. No. Revolution.

I say stop working for Them! We give them power. We do. It's time to stop. It's time to drop the hell out. They are killing us! They are killing all Life! We are letting them. I understand why. We have never known anything else. But if we are to live a great life and feel our true potential, we must pull away from this repressing dogmatic bullshit.

We can't let the corporations make us feel guilty by saying that they only do what they do to provide for us the service we ask for. Fuck them. Planet killing fucks, Soul raping fucks!

How much longer are we going to care about watching T.V. over watching the stars. We're not feeling life when all our energy goes into making money. All of it. The truth is right now life on the planet fucking sucks. Not real life, but the lives we are handed, which is misery stacked on misery, so much so that we think that escaping for a few hours or days is actually pleasurable. And of course it is to a degree. It's fun to play games or have a drink with your friends - but not at the expense of life on the planet. We live separate from the earth, and it's killing us and making us insane. We are wildly thrashing from that insanity and taking out everything in our path.

The extinction of tigers is just a small grain of sand in that insanity. But they matter to me and they're deaths cannot go unpunished or in vain. No. We must reach into our soul and hold onto what moves us and keep pushing until we are dead.

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