Well, now that the assignment on junk mail is over, I have started receiving mail again. Yesterday, someone tried to save my soul with a 4 by 8 cardboard flyer. Life is good. On that note, I just saw something that makes me wonder about humanity. I was just playing around on the net in a public computer lab. Sitting next to me is a very young mother with a beautiful baby girl. I am assuming that she is continuing her education. Now, I am aware of the stresses of being a mother and going to school (My mom did it both single and married 3 times,) but I saw something that kind of bothered me. Now let me make something clear. I am not overly fond of babies. I think they are cute, but I have no overwhelming urge to have my own. Her child had been crying, and I assume that this upset her mother. I know that it was bothering some of the more self-absorbed individuals (I guess that, even though I am rather self-absorbed, having 2 little sibilings has tempered this aspect of my attitudes.) Well, I am good with children, so I started to play visual games with this little girl, and she cheered right up. She was laughing and giggling (and there is no sweeter sound than a happy little child) and squirming around (oops.) Well, she smacked her mother (little baby fists flailing around) a few times, causing her to decide that her child was in a bad mood (the sparkle in her eyes and her laughter were clear cut demonstrations to me that this was not true) at which point, her mother brought her over to her father where she has been less happy, and more noisy since. Now for how this ties in with environmental ethics…
I can find a few conclusions to draw from the above scene.
First, I wonder how much further this commercial society will go. I am all in favor of people getting an education, but it seems to me that we have gone too far when it requires both parents to work to the detriment of their children (Afflunza?) Even if both parents had to work, it used to be that people’s families were there for them to help share the effort of raising a family (Real quick, mine weren’t.) If we can’t take care of our own, or can’t be bothered to do so, then how do we expect to deal in a sane manner with our environment? It seems to me that a living person, though maybe not more valuable than the environment, is a more immediate and obvious thing for us to see and feel compassion and a sence of "this needs my help and protection for then the environment. How can we be expected to help the environment if we can’t help each other? In a society that shows this little understanding (the people grumbling about the crying baby) and willingness to help (the fact that the young woman had to have her child with her,) I have to wonder if a need for compassion and responsibility toward the environment can even be recognized. (I’ll try to keep the next entry closer to the environment.)