And you thought I was a NICE guy...........

I'm not exactly sure what people think of me overall as a human being based on what I have said in my blog. For the most part I think I'm fairly likable. Even those who have had direct contact with me pretty much give me the benefit of the doubt. Ah, but there are dark things beneath this teddy bear exterior. I was reading Amber's husband Dan's blog about end-of-the-world fantasies and how some of us have this deep seated longing for it to all end, with us and the one's we care about intact, of course. I understood where he was coming from. That alone would scare alot of people. But let me explore my own take on apocalypse and see if you still think I'm a decent human being. This might take some deep thought, so don't rush to judgment. Hear me out.

I have daydreamed on occasion that a plague of all plagues swept over this world and took out at least 90% of the population. And I have done so not with horror, but with longing. That, on the face of it, would rate me up there with Hitler and Stalin as personalities go. And that is perfectly understandable. But like I said before, bear with me.

For at least the last third of my life on this Earth I have not been a particular fan of the Human race as species go. Before we came along, it was survival of the fittest, and no one species consciously thought of doing evil to any other beyond what was naturally necessary to survive. Big fish ate little fish, and that was it. Nothing sinister there, my friends, all in balance. Then a light bulb lit up over some monkey's head, and it went downhill from there.

Intelligence is a wonderful thing. It produces art, music, love, bravery, good deeds, and some damn good alcoholic beverages. However, on the flip side, it has also brought the world clear-cutting, pollution, greed, war, genocide, Walmart, violence simply for the sake of violence, taxes, Jerry Springer, the Windows operating system, George Bush, and Tammy Fae Baker. Every other living thing in this world operates within a system of checks and balances, predator versus prey, etc. Mankind has no predator. Mankind has no checks, save himself.

To make things worse, somehow evolution came up with a "God" gene, and once that one kicked in, things really went to hell in a hand-basket. It was bad enough that we preyed on each other to get a leg up, but once we convinced ourselves that invisible men in the sky were cheering our bad behaviors on, we really took our ability to destroy everything in our path to heart. We got smarter.....we embraced science along with religion and devised new and exciting ways to kill each other and anything else that got caught in the cross fire. With friends like ourselves, who in the hell needs enemies?

I understand the basic nature of man, and left to it's own devices, that nature is not something you turn your back on. Even my own disdain for my own race could be viewed as less than noble. But I have to be honest with you......should some alien ambassador approach me with the idea of keeping mankind under it's thumb for our own sake as well as that of this beautiful planet of ours, I would get Benedict Arnold in a second. I think the worst possible thing that could happen to the universe, and all those life-forms that must exist out there in that vast wonder, would be for the human race to discover a faster-than-light drive for starships, as in Star Trek or all those other stories that conveniently bypass the laws of physics as we know them. You think manifest destiny was a crock here in America, imagine that concept on a much grander scale. It would NOT be pretty.

So, back to the great near extinction event. Why, if I claim to be a decent human being, would I advocate the deaths of millions of innocent men, women and children? Well, to even conceive of such a thing, you have to have accepted that it is already happening, and has for quite some time. How many famines have you witnessed from the comfort and well-fed safety of your living rooms via your television sets? How many episodes of genocide have you seen our government and governments around the world allow to happen without lifting a finger? Were we not complicit in all these horrible happenings by not demanding with the utmost outrage that our leaders put an immediate stop to such atrocities? You know it, and I know it; we are quite capable of sitting by while millions of innocent people die, not by natural causes, but by the horrific capabilities of evil men.

Haven't you noticed that despite all these plagues, wars, genocide's, famines, you name it, this race of ours STILL continues to grow by staggering numbers? And hasn't it been painfully obvious that this world of ours is NOT growing in diameter in order to accommodate all these masses of hungry mouths? Is the natural world SO removed from your living rooms that you can't see how fast it's getting paved over? And is all this horror OK with you?

No, I do not wish death and destruction to rain down upon my neighbors. But it already is, my friends, and even now we are starting to see the effects of the worst of our considerable influence on this planet. And there is no other way that I can think of that will have any effect on us as a cancer upon this globe. We must for once in our long history truly become part of the natural world, including it's checks and balances. SOMETHING has to be higher up than us on the food chain. And that thing is that microscopic little wonder known as the virus.

Even now we are fighting a losing battle with bacteria, which thanks to the very real process of evolution, is becoming resistant to our chemical weapons known as antibiotics. We are poisoning our land, our water, and our food, which in turn is breaking down our natural resistance to our environment. And now comes the Avian flu, which is just a few mutations away from becoming the next great pandemic. Do you really think, after Katrina, that we are going to handle that one any better? I still have a few bridges to sell if you do.

So, Michael, you evil little selfish man, you'd love to become that survivalist, holed up in some bunker until the nightmare subsides and you can come forth with your friends and loved ones and rule the world.........that's what you're thinking, huh? Sorry, but no. I have no more right to be a survivor of such a cleansing than anyone else, and there's precious little chance I would survive anyway. I know that. No, I don't wish it upon my loved ones either. But Mother Nature never has, never will show favoritism to any living thing. That I respect. It's the natural order of things, or at least the way it used to be.

So, when all is said and done, what I am suggesting, and long for, is that this wonderful planet somehow get a breather, a chance to heal itself before Man in all his glory utterly devastates it. God is not going to come down and clean up this mess for us, my friends. No one gets out of here alive.

I hope my honesty does not disturb you. THE Michael will not be an instrument of any of these possibilities. That is far beyond anyone's capabilities, save some brilliant geneticist working feverishly in some secret lab somewhere. I hope you all live long and productive lives. Just understand that in my humble, if twisted, opinion, we all exceed our rightful place in the great circle of life, and if we cannot find some shame in that, then we fall prey to our own righteousness.