Relationships with Planet Earth are Not Transactional

Those of you who followed my Southern Africa blog posts, may have come across one of my stories involving my best Botswana friend, Hugh.  There were stories about Hugh's student days as an anti-apartheid troublemaker at South Africa's prestigious Stellenbosch University in the early 1970s as well as our trip together to Botswana's Chobe National Park and Sowa Pan in 1987.  There was even a photo Hugh took of me taking a photo of elephant poo in an elephants' loo!

Hugh is an accomplished photographer and artist.  He has graciously allowed me to share the following frame with you from page 40 of his multi-media essay, "Drawing on Relationships".  I had trouble reproducing the slide so that the print would be readable.  Therefore, I have written out the text below.  

 

Relationships with planet Earth are not transactional

 

Air is a gift from the trees

Our relationship is exploitational.

No, it is not ‘our’ planet.

We are guests at best, perhaps

unwelcome visitors, possibly invaders and

quite likely the destroyers of this planet.

We are driven by our self-serving greed.

We have bred beyond the capacity

for this planet to sustain

our excessive ways.

Everything is dying, killed,

gasping for breath,

becoming extinct –

but we remain insatiable!

 

Noam Chomsky said:

“Our morality needs

to catch up with

our intelligence”

Adam Smith said:

The masters of

mankind (merchants

and industrialists)

are the principal

architects of the

state’s policies”

 

Try balancing that!

 

Photos and composition

by Hugh Gordon








  


   

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