Cataclysm vacation

I’m at the Duke Point Ferry terminal, waiting to get on the ferry to Tsawwassen. No one used to use this terminal, it was just truckers and their big rigs, but now it’s a Wednesday morning at 7 am and it’s jam packed with vacationers. The south island has changed so much since I was a kid. Anyway, the air smells of wildfire smoke and you can’t see the mainland from here because it’s obscured by the haze from the smoke, but you wouldn’t know it from all the happy young families that are running around, all excited about their vacations they are heading out on. I love the visual of these cheery families, merrily driving straight into the choking, suffocating apocalypse. It’s such a clear and direct metaphor for what the human race as a whole is doing. I feel lucky that I get to witness this madness.

reiteration of why we shouldn’t be sad about the impending end of the human race

I keep thinking about something I blogged about recently, which is how I am less worried about the various global crises going on — like unprecedented droughts, wildfires, and heat waves — because instead of seeing this as the end of something good, I see it more as the beginning of something else that will also be good. And today, I thought of an analogy for it that I like.

Think of Mother Nature as a pet owner, and the human race and/or the world as we know it as a senior pet, like an old Golden Retriever.

Old Goldie been a nice dog but it’s getting on in age, and it’s going to die soon. That’s a bit sad but that’s the circle of life.

And on the bright side, what happens after the nice old dog dies? The pet owner gets a new puppy.

That’s it. Pretty straightforward, hey? The jist, to simplify it even further, is that we will disappear from the planet but we will be replaced by other neat things, and that’s neat in itself. If we can look beyond our own interests and see the big picture, we should be able to be happy for the new puppy that will replace us, and its owner which will be happy with its new pet. I think that’s a great thing to strive for.

In essence, yes, I’m suggesting we should all rejoice at the demise of the human race. I’m just putting a cute spin on it to make the idea attractive to the commoners. How positively satanic of me. I am pleased with myself.