This play, which was presented at UCSC from May 17-26, sounds like a timely production, doesn't it? Here is a link where the play is described:
With almost all the insects gone, the world is beginning to fall apart as crops fail and people struggle to hold on to their ways of life. Cassandra and her brother Alexander are tracking the last monarch butterflies in the world as they head to the west coast. Their path intersects with a truffle farm where a small group of people are hunkering down for the on-coming collapse of society.
In case it has escaped your notice (though I know it hasn't), insects do support our human society. This is one more real-world example of my "Two Worlds Hypothesis." "Our" world, the world we most immediately inhabit, is totally dependent, in the ultimate sense, on the "World of Nature." We do tend to forget that!
Somewhere, which is being called a "Primer for the End of Days," is intended as a reminder. That's welcome, I guess. Here's one caveat, though. We tend to think that what "is" is "inevitable." In other words (I call this the "is" fallacy), if something exists - if it's "true" that something exists - then whatever it is that exists is "real," and "real" is often taken to mean "inevitable." We also assume, most of the time, that our particular vision of "reality" is the only way that reality can be seen. That's not true, of course, as my blog posting from yesterday pointed out, but there is a powerful prejudice in favor of believing that our own vision of reality is the "true" and "only" vision of what truly exists.
In fact, the "Human World," which is where we most immediately live (I sometimes call it the "Political World") is a world in which "anything is possible." Just because we see something happening (the death of the insects upon which our world depends, for instance), that doesn't mean that it will "keep happening."
Insofar as the things that are causing the death of insects are human activities (which they are, almost totally) we can stop the onward march to an insect apocalypse because we can change the things that we are doing that are causing the worldwide death of all insects.
What I worry about, in a play that calls itself a "Primer for the End of Days," is that we might think that this play is a kind of "instructional manual," and that it is reporting on what must and will happen. What we REALLY need is a "Primer For Those Changes That Will Save Our World."
Think about it. If you don't think that we have the ability to write such a book.... a "Primer For Those Changes That will Save Our World" ....
Think again! We do!
Isn’t it called survival if the fittest?
ReplyDeleteI moved to Santa Cruz to join the Organic Farming Movement, which started here in 1973. I quickly learned that insects are VITAL to our existence, not just a 30% loss on profits. Organics TEACHES you that we must share 30% of our farm with the gophers and the birds and the squirrels and many, many insects etc. 70% is our share. Share the rest.
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