the brilliantly leaping gazelle

One thing I hate about christmas – and there are a lot – is the christmas catwalk. Whilst you probably haven’t been consciously aware of it so as to name it, you will have seen it and increasingly so in recent years. And it doesn’t always take place on christmas day either, although whilst it is highly likely, any day after christmas day is a good day to see some garments. But christmas day is when you’ll most likely see all the wearable presents someone can possibly leave the house with being paraded.

For as we as a society have become less abashed at flaunting our material trappings and more blatant in displaying our good fortune in an obviously ‘look at me’ way, we are doing helping to perpetuate the cycle of acquisitive consumer greed.

This trend for conspicuous spectacle, to be seen by as many people as possible is both a reflection of, and a savage indictment of a society that will, ultimately consume the planet to death. Not the death of the planet, but rather the death of the human race. And this is a good thing, as no sensible person taking a sober and rational analysis of humanity’s effects on the planet can judge it to be as anything other than an unmitigated disaster.

The planet on which we live is 4.6 billion years old – and you’ll recall that a billion is a million millions – whilst the modern form of humans only evolved about 200,000 years ago. Civilization as we know it is only about 6,000 years old, and industrialization started in the earnest only in the 1800s. While we’ve accomplished much in that short time, what we have accomplished isn’t much to be proud of. Since the Industrial Revelation, mankind – well the tycoons and businessmen anyway – have plundered the planets resources for their own short-term rapacious financial self-interest.

In years to come, that is if there are future generations to ask the question that is, they might reasonably ask ‘ But you knew what you were doing was causing irreparable harm to the planet. Temperatures were rising, so were sea levels, habitats were disappearing, species were becoming extinct, ice caps were melting, weather extremes were occurring with greater regularity all this and more you knew. The warning signs were unmistakable. And you did nothing, or what you did do was so utterly dwarfed by the sheer enormity and complexity of the problem. But heck, at least some of you drove electric cars. Mind you, you didn’t stop having children did you? More mouths, more consumers, living in less space and exacerbating the problems. Thanks for that. Cheers.’

Humanity deserves to suffer the same fate it subjected the dodo and knowingly condemns other species to.