Walls

 First there are animal-paths, generally made or mostly maintained by the passage of larger hooved animals, as they find and use the shortest or easiest ways between food and water, also used and crossed and recrossed by animals of all kinds.

 Then we humans come and use those paths, too, using the easier ones for horse-paths.

 Then we use the easiest of those as wagon-roads, traffic and weights and wheels rutting and eroding, making it difficult for the smallest animals to cross, killing some beneath the wheels.

 Now traffic increases, and its frequency and weights and wheels make the roads still more difficult and dangerous for small animals to cross, killing more beneath the wheels.

 Now traffic increases further, and its speeds increase, and the roads are widened and graveled, with crossing still more difficult and dangerous for many small animals, killing still more beneath the wheels.

 Now comes the automobile, and traffic increases further, and weights, and speeds, killing more and more animals, and larger and larger ones, and it even starts becoming dangerous for birds and bees and butterflies to fly low across the roads.

 Now the roads are asphalted, and traffic and and weights and speeds increase further, and still more and more animals are killed as they try to cross or fly low across the roads, which are becoming walls of asphalt and machine and draft between water and wood everywhere, making it dangerous for the other animals of our living world to reach water, or food, even to pollinate.

 And now the roads are asphalt and concrete and multilane, with dividers and chain-link fences and actual concrete walls, impossible for animals to cross or fly low across, killing all that try, and the roads have become Walls of asphalt and concrete and machines and draft between wood and water everywhere, slicing our living world into smaller and smaller sections, making it less and less able to sustain itself.

 These our Walls between wood and water everywhere, slicing our living world into smaller and smaller and ever-less-diverse sections, are classic and pervasive examples of a change in quantity becoming or being also a change in quality (Hegel, Marx), examples devastating our living world.

 These our Walls are equally classic examples of our tunnel-vision typical even of our engineers and scientists with regard to the effects of our constructions and technologies upon our living world.

 And these our Walls are equally classic examples of our contempt for our living world (witness in particular the popularity of "road-kill" jokes).

 But what fairer way to judge us as a species, than by how we treat one another, and our living world?


 [See also:

 [ "Jewel"
 [ "The Overpopulation Equation"
 [ "Geocide"
 [ "The Savage Principle"
 [ "Population Law: The 1% Solution"
 [ "Photonomics: The Photosynthetic Economy"
 [ "The Just Limits of Wealth and Concentration of Wealth"
 [ "Beyond Plutocracy and Its Two-Plutocratic-Party System"
 [ "A World Without Lies, Evil or Violence"
 [ The Uncivil War ]