Dying Lifeforms

The Sleeping Giant Vs.The Ghost In The Machine

"Did you read "With Speed and Violence?" - the best description of mass extinctions and how they unfold."

Gail,

No, I have not read With Speed And Violence, but I shall have to seek it out.

We did write a piece "The Sleeping Giant Vs. The Ghost In The Machine".

It is similar to Judith Jarvis Thomson's "The Violinist" but is applied to mass human extinction.

In the Thomson analagy, imagine "You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. [If he is unplugged from you now, he will die....]

In The Sleeping Giant analagy, it is about the human race and our economic and environmental systems. Imagine the human race as a sleeping giant and our economic and environmental systems as a heart and lung mahcine keeping the giant alive. Unfortunatly, the heart and lung machine is failing. It's making horrible noises and is obviously on its last leg. What do do?

You and I are the giant's ears. If we wake the body without having a good plan to replace the heart and lung machine, the giant will likely go into a panic and run amuck... become unattached to the machine causing our immediate death. On the other hand, if we do nothing, the machine will fail and we will surely die.

When we first wrote the piece, the world was not in an economic nor environmental crisis. Now, it has become quite evident to the ears that our systems are failing, and we have no replacement systems in place. What to do?

Fortunately, there is hope in finding bright minds, such as, yours. In times like these, "Those who are wise shall shine as brightly as the sun's brilliance, and those who turn many to righteousness will glitter like stars forever."

Shine on, Gail :)

Daniel