I was walking home late on Friday evening several weeks ago when two four-legged silhouettes pouncing around the cars parked on the street caught my attention. They turned out to be foxes as I drew up closely – and I felt sorry that animals that otherwise belong in the depths of a forest were scavenging for food amidst houses, parked cars, busy streets their feet touching the modern-day cement.
News of animals in captivity or species on the brink of extinction at the back of my mind, I felt as though we were closing in on the habitat of all living creatures more than ever. And that we will continue to do so and stop only when we have placed their final specimens behind glass enclosures, admiring them as “unique” and “last ones standing” – just as we’re currently ogling at beautiful objects in window shops wanting to buy them.
A couple of days later I opened the fridge and got hit by a wall of medium, small, smaller boxes full of packaged food looking at me – and not one single item of loose greens in sight. Why does there have to be so little contact between us and the food we eat, I thought again: it’s almost like we don’t even want to see it on its way down to our stomachs.
A meme was circling the internet a couple of years ago – a visual of mankind throughout its history with Home Sapiens at the right-end of the development spectrum deciding to turn back – because “we fucked up everything”.
There is a disconnect between us, our own nature and the wider nature at the moment – how can we stop and fix this before we indeed fuck up everything and eat ourselves out of horse and home?
President Macron said it best, “There is no Planet B.”.
Irina Writes 