A Big Picture Fad | Teen Ink

A Big Picture Fad

March 9, 2010
By Anonymous

Its: love, hate, dreams, reality, happiness, sadness, trauma, relief, relaxation, excitement, and slow Mondays. It’s all we are; all we aren't. Who we were, are, and will never become. It’s what we strive for, will for, want for. We search for it. We take it. We hold it. We make it. It’s life.

Life as we know it that is. By now any reader would be concerned, they would likely ask, “How does this pertain to the title at all?” well when considered that earth is about 4.5Billion years old and we as human life are dated to only around 6000 years old. Makes us as a species seem a lot like a fad in the big picture.

As a fad we haven’t done much good really. In one sense we’re almost parasitic, taking whatever we want from wherever we want. This is seen almost everywhere you look; land that’s been cleared for housing, forests that have been cut down for lumber, and even other people that have been removed in the name of progress. These practices make us a parasite,” something that resembles a biological parasite in dependence on something else for existence or support without making a useful or adequate return”, or at least something parasitic as we depend on our good earth while giving nothing back, well nothing of benefit that is.

We could also be seen as an infestation, similar to cockroaches spreading through an apartment complex, except we leave behind buildings, dams, and massive messes wherever we go. These randomly abandoned structures do little but interrupt the flow of this natural world. Buildings disrupt the landscape like horrid warts, popping up and just defying the nature around them. Dams literally block the flow of nature, diverting the previous movement of water and in general just messing with natures plan. Then there are the garbage heaps; the great masses of messes totally doing nothing for the world but giving nature, the pleasant kind, a place to avoid, and the nastier parts of nature a place to thrive. Strangely it would only take the world roughly a million years to wipe away all the garbage, particularly the glass products that will easily out live any of us. But in the end the fingerprint of humanity would be relatively small when compared to the rest of time. But there is one threat we would leave behind.

Due to the harnessing of nuclear power, we are also the most unnatural destructive force yet. While maintained by mankind, nuclear power is clean manageable and relatively safe, other than the bombs of course. The power stations if left unmanned like so many of our other “achievements” would slowly pervert the natural world around them through nuclear meltdown. The power plants use a substance called uranium that when put through a certain process literally converts mass to energy. The energy we use to power our world based on electricity. There are many meticulous safety precautions; ones that if watched and maintained will keep the nuclear fuel from harming the world. But if unchecked the nuclear fuel can and most likely will put off its sub-atomic particles and slowly mutate, sicken, and kill the natural environment around it. And these are the less hazardous forms of nuclear power.

Then there are the bombs. Only two nuclear bombs have been used on mankind before, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the targets; they were literally demolished. When that destruction is taken into context of those bombs being like small children to the bombs we control now the prospect is frightening. There are bombs in service that are literally 200 times as powerful as the “little boy” atom bomb dropped in Japan. These weapons of mass destruction are actually harmless without human ignition.

With human ignition though and with proper use of the worlds current arsenal of nuclear destruction devices we could wipe ourselves out. This again in context of what we’ve done for the world may not be such a bad thing other than the massive destruction that the bombs would deal to nature as well. The effects that would ultimately kill out the human race could very easily kill out many other species of the planet. So like it or not we have imbedded ourselves quite securely with the planets eco-balance. This would make us a parasitic infection that has the power to pull the world plug on its way out; nothing more than a bad fad.


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