I read the following for class from Peter Mathiessen's The Outlying Rocks. It's beautifully written but so hauntingly sad that I had to share it.
"The finality of extinction is awesome, and not unrelated to the finality of eternity. Man, striving to imagine what might lie beyond the long light years of stars, beyond the universe, beyond the void, feels lost in space; confronted with the death of species, enacted on each so many times before he came, and certain to continue when his own breed is gone, he is forced to face another void, and feels alone in time. Species appear and, left behind by a changing earth, they disappear forever, and there is a certain solace in the inexorable. But until man, the highest predator, evolved, the process of extinction was a slow one. No species but man, so far as is known, unaided by circumstance or climatic change, has ever exstinguished another, and certainly no species has ever devoured itself, an accomplishments of which man appears quite capable. There is some comport in the notion that, however Homo sapiens contrives his own destruction, a few creatures will survive that ultimate wilderness he will leave behind, going on about their ancient business in the mindless confidence that their own much older and more tolerant species will prevail."
I hope that didn't make you too depressed about humanity! I truly believe that people are good at heart, just look at all the people who have come together to help those affected by Hurricane Sandy.
I hope my follow Americans have a wonderful Thanksgiving tomorrow
and that everyone else has a lovely week!
See ya Monday!
