What is to be of our future on planet Earth?

Not being able to sleep last night, I got up and turned on the TV to occupy my time for a bit. It was about 5:00 am in the morning and found a program on primates that looked interesting.

The program was about the serious decline in many primate species around the world due to loss of habitat through burning of rain forests for farming and development, deforestation for lumber, the increase in human populations and expansions of urban life, bush meat for people who live in the bush, illegal hunting, war conflicts, the trade in wildlife (pet trade) and the illegal black market of animal parts. More than 633 types of primates are in danger of becoming extinct in the world because of human activity. Twenty-five primate species in Africa and Asia are on the brink of extinction from the causes I have just mentioned above.

Primates as with all living species have a role on our planet, a purpose to help keep balance in the ecosystem. Primates contribute to the ecosystem by dispersing seeds and maintaining forest diversity.

This whole program disturbed me because of our lack of understanding or caring for how our ecosystems work and why they are as important in our own survival as humans and the survival of a healthy, sustainable and balanced planet for all life. In one scene, one of the people doing the show was in a sanctuary for primates and was conversing with a chimp on the other side of a wired fence enclosure. He was having a playful conversation with the chimp as if the chimp was human. The difference was, this guy could just walk away from the fence and go on with his business, and the chimp could not. Though he was protected from the cruel outside world, he was caged in (as we humans like to do with animals), and the chimp could not just walk away. He was in prison, having no freedom to do what chimps do or having any choice for that matter how his life is to be.

Are we heading to a point in the near future where many species that are getting closer and closer to extinction will be forced into cages by man for their own survival and protection from man who is the cause of this very destruction? This way of thinking makes no sense if one understands how nature and the ecosystems work. The problem is that we have become so far removed from our connection with all living things and with nature, and our reliance on nature for our very existence that we have the false mind-set that we no longer need nature for our survival and development of our species. The destructive forces that man has laid on this planet with over population, over development, over harvesting of our oceans and of our natural resources, the destruction of many of our forests through deforestations, the rapid decline in population for many species of animals and their habitats and the polluting of our land, air and water as with the potential devastating effects of climate change are taking a huge toll on our very survival and the survival of most of life as we know it on this planet.

Is this the type of life we are choosing for our children? Is this what we have become, a species that cares little about other life that we knowingly or unknowingly depend on for our very own survival? A planet where the only way we can protect the species of animals is to cage them for their protection and for our amusement? Unfortunately we are already here.

I wish I could say that things will change, that they will get better through our understanding and knowledge of our planet. But the knowledge is already here and yet we have not learned, we have not changed, we continue to destroy the very thing that gives life.

Treat the earth well.
It was not given to you by your parents,
it was loaned to you by your children.
We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors,
we borrow it from our Children.
~ Ancient Indian Proverb ~

Humankind has not woven the web of life.
We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together.
All things connect.
~ Chief Seattle, 1854 ~

I wrote this around 2012.