We Are But Tiny Specks in the Universe

By TRB

You are in a plane crash. You die. Alone. At home your family cries all day and sees mortality first-hand. It doesn't like it. They purchase you a coffin. A hole is dug. The coffin is placed inside. A stone is placed above. On it is your name, your date of birth and your date of death. The death merchants tell your widow that if she purchases the plot next to yours they will throw in a free engraving of your death on the same stone as your husbands' when you pass. It seems like a good deal. It is awfully hard to get a good deal in these times.

No one ever has time for death. We are far to busy for it. It is an irritation of momentous proportions. But it is also part of us, built in - not to last. And it is part of a deeper mess, even deeper than death, that we can't seem to overcome. Somehow we have gotten it in our heads that we are the most important beings of the planet. In fact, many of us believe we are even more important than the planet itself. This planet that sustains us is seen by us as a never-ending, can't be damaged, playground for all of our wars, a trash can for all our litter and a large toxic waste dump that just goes on forever.

Then our presense and activities alter something in the earth's atmosphere or in its seas. We constantly interfere with its chain of life, sometimes for sport. The earth, we seem to have decided, was placed here just for us.

Then a tsunami in Indonesia occurs. Followed by tremendous earthquakes in various parts of the world over the past few years like the one recently in Haiti. And now the earthquake/tsunami in Japan. And the power of the earth is seen firsthand. Even feared. Maybe we don't own it. Maybe it is not ours. Maybe we are less important than the planet.

All of these thoughts come to the fore, as you watch several nuclear reactors at a site in Northern Japan that was devistated by the tsunami. Sometimes they blow off steam. Sometimes they blow off smoke. These man made reactors are potentially more dangerous to human life than the tsunami.

Years ago a U.S.Atomic Energy Commission official - in fact, more than one, strongly suggested that these reactors in Japan, built in the '60 by GE, which had almost perfected such devices as the toaster over and the vacuum cleaner at that point in its corporate life cycle, should have a whole different kind of containment wall. That it should be much stronger. The Japanese owners of the plant thought that was all well and good, but too expensive for their tastes.

So now, half a century after those reactors were built they remain very similar in function and even safety measures as they were 15 years after the WWII ended. This is the most difficult of all things to believe about the disaster in Japan. Does man believe he builds things that are capable, with a little maintenance now and again, to last forever?

It has already been proven that man is capable of destroying the earth, just through his use of it. The earth wasn't made to last forever, but certainly billions of years. Man can not build anything that last billions of years. He can just barely build things that last a millennium or so and they're are not many of those around. In fact they are tourist sites, and they are invariably built of stone.

These reactors in Japan were built of man-made materials screwed together, provided with filters and some simple computer boards here and there, what looks like several corrugated aluminum shacks around the perimeter. Man made holding tanks, cooling tanks for nuclear rods. Basically a whole bunch of junk with the power to kill many thousands and close off an entire region of Japan to human life forms for centuries.

Knowing this, wouldn't you think the Japanese would gladly pay for any upgrade of its containment wall or anything else? Fifty year old nuclear reactors? Have we clearly lost our minds? An automobile can be registered as an "antique" in less time. The U.S. has 104 nuclear reactors, quite a few which are GE built. The President has ordered that all our reactors be checked immediately for any maintenance problems, etc.

That's good to hear.

We are all like that man on the airplane who opened this story. We don't know when. We don't know how. Many of us think we are immortal. Still others put themselves above everything even the earth itself. Isn't anyone humble anymore?

I was watching Warren Buffet give billion of dollars to the poor and to the needy and to research for disease and for a hundred other things that it is hoped will benefit the earth and its inhabitants. Then I was watching the Koch brothers out in Wisconsin financing all those seedy politicians who will break unions and make environmental regulations disappear.

There is this false belief that the earth does not have to be protected from our presence.

There is this continuous cultural emphasis on material goods that only serves to distract.

There is this absurd notion that human beings are somehow more than just tiny specks in the universe.

There is the straight out reality that humans could disappear tomorrow and, in a universal way, it would not change a thing.