Last week, I was moving picnic tables on one of our beaches and I came across a large snapping turtle laying her eggs under one. She was about the size of a bag of cement, and probably only a little lighter. While not unusual, perhaps more time or my mood got me to thinking about her. Here was a living fossil, essentially unchanged for 200 million years. There was no need for further evolution in her species; she had achieved what was objectively perfection. I know that I am far from perfect, but I had not been thinking that we humans have strayed that far from what seems to be the ideal.
We tend to think of higher intelligence, tool use, and language as measures of evolutionary advance. We are social animals. When one thinks of the living fossils, they are none of those things. Of course, vertebrates like us will have to wait a few tens of millions more years to see if any of us get to join the living fossil list, but our prospects don't seem to be good.
It seems to me that the lesson in this for our current debates about banksters and insurance leaches is to adopt the turtle's virtues. I did not disturb her. Respect for nature was part of it. But I was certainly aware that if I had tried to pick her up they would likely be calling me stumpy. The banksters and our corporate overlords have no such fear of us.
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Great post, Salmo!
And it's also great to have another poster from Zone 5b....
NOTE I noticed your "transfer station" comment. Is there another huge landfill near where you are? And a lot of trucks?
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
No, we have avoided Hampden's fate
There was a proposal for one about 15 years ago, just a little to the south. It lacked a couple of the attributes that allowed that mess up your way. The story of Hampden is long and ugly - involving politics at the legislature, the Blaine House, and our DEP. Oh, and money in surprisingly small quantities when one thinks about what the profits are.
Some of our waste goes to a municipal landfill just over the border into New Hampshire, some of it goes to what used to be called MERC, still plaguing Biddeford, and some of it is still open burned right here.
Defense
The landfill and turtle come together on the question of defense. One of the most important attributes that has allowed that turtle's survival is her ability to resist attack and to inflict significant damage. Average people have lost the ability to do that. The crazies on the right address this need with paramilitary cells and paranoia. Let's hope that doesn't prove to be the superior response to what is class warfare.
$700 million dollars
is what they'll be taking out of the landfill up here. The payoffs to get it done are a tiny fraction of that. Our kleptocrats up here think small, very small.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi