Sunday, August 29, 2010

Taking An Ignorant Dominion Over The Earth


Quote any out-of-context scrap of your wornout religious fairytale that can grease your own agenda
Plunder this earth in the truly wacko belief it was created for your ignorant and selfish whims alone
Righteously waltz away from your messes with profit in your pocket and hand on the good book
Rest easy in the certain knowledge of your divine right to an eternal and shameless greed

Take dominion over the beasts and despoil all the places in which they might take their shelter
Hunt them down, burn them out, or even, vow to protect those few your children deem attractive
Treat plants and animals just the same: For personal & disposable use in any way you see fit
After all, they lack the everlasting souls with which your one true god has favored you, alone

Foul the air with impunity seeking extractive revenue or gas-powered wreckreation
Cut and burn the forests for corporate gain under his command to go forth and multiply
Concoct and release any manner of poisonous chemicals - if you think you can make a quick profit
Empty even the vast seas of all their life to satisfy the insatiable demands of the blessed free market

Sanctimoniously treat your brown-eyed cattle as mere non-living, statistical units of production
Modify their genetics at your whim, deny them the calming shelter of their herds,
Raise them in crowded filth, kill them without any dignity and just as cheaply as is possible
Rend and cleanly package them in bloody factories and then bulk ship them as consumer goods

Remain smug in the knowledge that you alone are cast in your one god’s image
Channel the rivers, strip their banks bare and introduce all manner of your toxic runoffs
Casually block out the divine skies with your smoke and His stars with your paranoid nightlights
Consume non-renewable resources at unsustainable rates behind casual, knowing smirks

Take accidental dominion over the atmosphere, obliviously unbalancing its exquisite constituents
Unconsciously but innocently infect and pock the earth that He bequeathed only to you
Derive moral authority from scripture and trust the outcome to the blind hand of free enterprise
Try vainly to place yourselves divinely outside of the earth’s cycles and its cosmic web of life

Put people and jobs above the natural world and its cycles without which they cannot even exist
Righteously commend the territories of the heathen enemy and his false god to ashes and to ruin
Matter-of-factly demand adequate income from any lands socialistically held in the national trust
Praise those who gash and extract for us and allow them to move on without healing the land

Swarm into any marginal habitat you stumble on and guiltlessly tip its balance towards entropy
Measure the health of your society simply by its consumer spending and unemployment rate
Always make sure to put people first in a ceaseless, artificial struggle to overcome nature
Be sure and erect sturdy fences to cut off access beyond your leveraged holdings

Blindly trust to the wisdom of billions of isolated, greedy decisions to result in a sustainable future
Blithely waste and pollute irreplaceable clean water on a daily basis without the slightest regret
Pray for relief from the drought and heat while steadfastly denying that our efforts produced them
Take it on faith that air, water and an equable climate are inexhaustible free goods, provided by god

Let the animals and the habitat which supports them and us all exist simply at your pleasure
Ignore the finite nature of all the resources squandered in raising your precious children
Permanently alter ancient rain forests with a single-minded focus on the profit for this fiscal period
Rest secure in the perfection of heaven, independent of any god-willed mess on this earth

Take dominion over the forests and plant millions of cloned trees, equally spaced and fenced-in
Artificially color the modified fish that you unsustainably farm while poisoning the ocean
Thank god for his blessings then stuff down too much and just throw away the rest
Draw freely from earth’s finite resources provided for you alone in his infinite wisdom

Trust that he will look after tomorrow thus allowing you to blindly consume and despoil today
Sleep well believing that you follow the only true and righteous path to eternal salvation
Trample the silent lilies of the field in a smoky and noisy quest for your vital wreckreational pleasure
Celebrate our fruitfulness under his edict even as we render our very nest unfit for life

Take up arms for god and lay waste to the enemy lands in His name and for His glory
Twist and eviscerate your god’s teachings such that you evade responsibility for the earth that nurtures you
Teach that preserving this lonely planet is criminally negligent in terms of family costs in jobs and money
Dwell on important moral concerns like abortion, gay marriage and flag-burning while ignoring the vast ecological holocaust of our foolish lifestyles

Mindlessly shovel resources into that blind and gaping maw of global corporatism
Trust that things will turn out all right according to His mysterious and omniscient plan
Call the heat and drought and new deserts the unfathomable will of your omnipotent god
Respond grudgingly with tiny band-aids as entire ecosystems collapse but unquestioningly increase already unconscionably huge military outlays
Try and save the species of your choice, if you will, though they have nowhere to live or anything to eat

Marvel at the wonder of His creation over the roaring of the bulldozers in the background
Displace the plant and animal communities with filthy, teeming, unplanned slums
Rip up fertile sustaining farmland for shoddy strip malls selling throwaway plastic schlock
Destroy ecosystem linchpins but still, find your solace in prayer as the mystery of His ways unfolds

Twist a fossilized religion and out-of-context economic theory into a rationalization for unencumbered, shortsighted & suicidal greed
Give thanks for all of our blessings and righteously ignore their toxic origins and externalized costs
View all of his creations through the unique lens of our own divine entitlement
Take dominion, secure in the knowledge that His will be done, in the fullness of eternity

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