reply to post by Grimpachi
Regards your comments about smoking, I have to say that you are ignoring one key factor about human life, and living on earth, that pertains to the
apparant stupidity of smoking as a habit. I smoke myself, but I do so for several reasons. First of all, ironically, I breathe easier when I do.
Having had asthma for many years before I started, the ability to breathe in and out effectively NOW is more beneficial to me than the oppertunity to
breathe half cocked during the years of my physical prime and beyond would be.
Second, I live fairly close to the poverty line, have no prospects for earning my way out of that situation, will never be able to afford a pension
(unless I win a lottery I refuse to play on the grounds of being against gambling) and will have a twilight full of squalor at the very best to look
forward to in my distant future, and little else. Therefore it is important to me that I do everything I can to avoid actually having an old age,
although I wish to enjoy what I have remaining of my prime, and be as capable of living it up now as I can be. I will not kill myself directly, but if
I avoid the indignity starving to death in a council house, covered in my own effluent and weeping my last hours away unable to move, then I will
consider myself lucky, since that is my fate, should I live that long.
I have thought this through. However, where the fate of the human race is concerned, I have to agree with you. The fact is that if the human race
accepted as a whole , that continued use of fossil fuels, over use of heat regulators in the home and manufacturing plants, burial of nuclear waste,
and the reliance on non sustainable power in general, were bad ideas, and if they had accepted this YEARS ago, then we might be in a better position
to alter our fate as a species.
Perhaps if the human race had realised these things and actually acted upon it, we might live in a world in which we had a future on this rock, and
as a consequence, perhaps at the personal level I would see some value in attaining old age, infirmity, and indignity. However, it is too late by all
accounts for all of us, if the data coming out of the polar regions is accurate. Our only option now is to bugger off this rock before it decides to
shake us off by spewing out chemicals which will stifle all but the hardiest of life on the earth.
I wish I had the power to change these things. I wish I had the power to change my fate. I have the vision, as do many regular people. But what I
have not got, is power, and without it we cannot force change to happen for the better, or for the worse. Doom, I am sorry to say, is not worth
staying healthy for.