The other day we heard two people talking intelligently about the possibility that the earth is in its sixth great period of extinction. Someone’s been waiting a long time for this sequel. The last great extinction—made famous by the dinosaurs—was about 65 million years ago. That’s almost how long we feel we’ve been waiting for the next movie in the Lethal Weapon franchise. But putting aside our admittedly minor troubles to think about the topic at hand… But, no, let us just add that we don’t really know if we could enjoy another Lethal Weapon movie given all that’s happened in the world since the last one (1998), or at least, we don’t see how it could live up to our expectations. And perhaps we are different now. But, again, let us put such things to the side. We are talking about extinction here, life and death. (Of course, the Lethal Weapon movies always feature much death, but—no, no—put that aside.)
These people we heard talking were troubled that humanity may be causing the current spate of species-death. Perhaps we love death. Perhaps we are carelessly driven by our teeming lusts and we sow death as an unconsidered side-effect. But either way, tsk tsk.
While listening to those two people, The Stoneslide Corrective couldn’t help but think that life has clung to this planet for billions of years, through five preceding great extinctions, in fact. We humans may exert our ultimate efforts to burn, strafe, destroy, sow with chemically altered salt, bury, and/or trash, and something will live on, even if it’s only a sea of purple goo and the insects that can raft on that swell. Life will on.
What these people we heard talking were really worried about when they talked about extinction was preserving the delicate architecture of biosystems that make possible the continuation of our own species. They’re worried about the framework that cradles the destroyer, you might say. Or, to be plainer, they’re worried about their own extinction. When environmentalists mewl about saving the dolphins, they’re really saying, save me. To look at the world through this lens of selfishness is to blind oneself to the kaleidoscopic opportunities opened up by the end of most known forms of life. The survivors would multiply, diversify, and take on forms as new and different from us as humanity is from dinosaurs.
Indeed, the instinct to put “man” at the center of creation is common, even banal—think of the Bible; think of centuries of church orthodoxy—as is the inability to picture a cosmos free of our shaggy mite of a species and spinning on in unimpaired balance and oblivious beauty.
We believe that those who reject the environmentalists’ cant about man-made destruction are gazing toward this future, with the light of mystical foresight in their eyes. They have seen and accepted the inevitability of change; they have glimpsed the vastness that lies outside our narrow genetic channels. They make us think of the Norse gods, who knew of their own undoing, but who went on living their role in the great narrative of the universe, though it led to obliteration at the gate of a new age. Perhaps, like Keats’s fallen titans, we will see a fresh perfection tread over us, and know its name. Perhaps if we can truly appreciate the perfection, and the beauty of the new order, we will perish gladly.
We would like that to be the case, and so we at The Stoneslide Corrective honor those who can release the love of their own species for a greater love of life in all its forms, those who can welcome the knowledge that humankind will wash into the great oneness of evolving life and never suffer the pang of grief called humaneness. The examples of these selfless, almost saint-like heroes must be very very few. Who can bear such a great consciousness? We can think of only a few examples: laissez-faire economists, profit-maximizing executives, greedy consumers, small children, people who light fires when they are cold.
Hmm, perhaps humanity has more saints than we first realized. Perhaps it is this saintliness in people’s natures that moves us so assuredly toward extinction.
We only hope the next Lethal Weapon movie will come before the end, as majestic as a Valkyrie moving over the field of carnage in her garments bright.
Oh, is that too much to hope?
