6th Mass Extinction Accelerating

Context: Sixth mass extinction of wildlife accelerating, scientists warn

…and all the while, humanity stumbles and lumbers around from one profoundly tragic self-inflicted catastrophe to another, all but blind to this darkening existential threat and profane insult to life itself that emanates like dusty, choking smoke and tar from the ill-purposed machines of civilisation.  What are we able to say of an animal that’s simultaneous strength and weakness lies in it’s ability to cultivate abstractions? What can we possibly say of ourselves when the self-same intelligence that dragged us out of the darkness and into the light (or at least into the promise and potential) of miraculous technology is also that hyper-inflating referential space and mirrored labyrinth of abstraction, image and thought that blinds us from the world that lies beyond our own reflection, these half-silvered psychological aspirations and assertions or projections of dissonant order upon nature.

In a billion years, not even the ashes of our civilisation will remain.  Our abstract self-reflections and our dissasembling confusion will be gone much sooner. I don’t suppose it will matter, in the end, if there is no one left to see it. No one will know what fools we were.