Lyle Northey (Silent/Boomer)

A continuing theme of getting along. Our environment is a living organism and we have for a very long time disregarded that fact. The native peoples of this nation and most other nations have a much friendlier way of living on the land than what seems to be current practices.

If you are in doubt about it being a living thing then remember that life begins in the soil and reaches for the sky and sun. That seedling then produces offspring of its own and when it has done that and lived to the maximum age it can attain then it returns to the soil and becomes food for future generations of whatever may grow there. Without that birth, growth, death, and decay process none of our crops would grow, trees to supply us with building material would not be present in our world and we would not be drilling for oil left from the decay of living creatures. 

Our world at present is one of hostility and war. The citizens of earth do not all get along with one another in a productive way. We as a species have made and are making weapons to destroy each other but in the process we are not doing our world any favors either. We dream of the day we can travel to other planets and it has to be a question are we going use cargo space on our vessels for weapons of destruction, in case we run into something that is hostile, or are we going to take along items we hope will help us find a way to draw life substance from the environment on whatever planet we reach. 

One may argue that we are not alone and that we have no idea what other species might be like, friend or foe. There is no way to know but if curiosity is a common factor in all species then should we work off the idea that curiosity will override hostility at least in the beginning.

Have we been visited in the past? We can not know for certain but if we go with what we do know from science then the possibility seems likely. We are told that the universe is expanding and that things are getting farther apart all the time. Based on that then we can assume that everything was closer together in the past and if there are civilizations that were advanced enough for interstellar travel at that time it would have been more likely at least distance wise. Looking at things on earth that seem beyond the reach of the inhabitants of earth that we have found it would seem someone with more skill and better tools must have had a hand in building some of these things. Helping to build and very possibly improving the lives of those here does not seem hostile, but of course that was before man became his own worst enemy and decided to kill all those that oppose him be it for political, religious, ideology, or ethnicity issues. Now if we are being visited as some say they may well be waiting for intelligent robots to take over and then they will contact the inhabitants of earth.

Now going back to earth and its survival. We have caused a great deal of harm in our practice of farming. The great plains were plowed up and allowed to dry out and blow away, much like the sands of the Sahara do yearly and are swept across the Atlantic during hurricane season. Entire mountains have been washed into waterways for the sake of finding gold and those ecosystems that were there have never recovered from that damage. 

Everything that lives in the earth or on the earth has an impact, good, bad or otherwise. Too much methane from cattle, negative result. Too little water due to the building of dams again has a negative result. Altering the substructure with the exploration for mineral wealth has had and will continue to have negative impact on water sources, and we can only guess at some of the other effects that we have yet to monitor or even consider, think sink holes.

So we need to learn to live with this earth in a harmonious way. We can grow and harvest what we need. We just need to replenish and give back so that earth can support us and continue to survive and stay healthy. When we travel to another planet it will be an even greater challenge for us to learn how to establish a harmonious relationship so we can live there and not destroy what we have found.