"Signs, signs, everywhere a sign..."

Something I meant to mention in Tuesday's post, but neglected to include: signs.

It seems that the sign of the night at the RNC was "Country First." I imagine that this didn't bother many people, particularly at the Republican convention, but it bothered me. This is why I tend to vote Democrat; putting the USA before the rest of the world strikes me as dumb. Extremely dumb. I'm not saying that there's anything all that wrong with seeing yourself as an American first; I'm just saying that that's short sighted.

I'm a human being, with responsibilities toward humanity, first, and an American after that. I am an inhabitant of the planet Earth first, and an inhabitant of the United States after that. (I'm trying not to use phrases like, "Citizen of the World.") You probably don't agree with me; most people don't. And that's the problem.

Let's face it; the world is in a mess. Do I really need to go into all that now? Haven't you heard it enough? Well, you probably haven't heard it enough (go rent a copy of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth if you feel like getting educated). And it seems to me that one of the ways we got this way was by putting country first, by making decisions based on what's best for us rather than what's best for us all.

I think differently. Or at least I try to.

Now I'm not going to go all green on everybody; my concern for the Earth is based on self interest. If we don't start recognizing that we all live here, that we live on the whole planet and not in just one corner of it, then we're likely to find ourselves without a corner left to stand in.

People have been shouting about saving the world for years. I agree with George Carlin that the world doesn't need us to save it; that the world scarcely takes notice of our presence and that our entire time on Earth is just a tiny fraction of an insignificance compared to the life span of the Earth. That's not the point; if we really don't matter to the planet, if our presence here makes no difference to the Earth, then we can't expect the Earth to somehow save us from ourselves. The planet has superb defense systems and can easily rid itself of whatever threatens it or its systens; but unlike Carlin I think that we are well capable of making ourselves a threat to the planet's systems. It is in our own self interest to make ourselves as little of a threat as possible.

We need to end this attitude that what matters in the U.S., how the U.S. deals with its own resources, is all that really matters to us Americans and the rest of the world can go it's own way. As much as I hate to resort to a cliché here, it's true enough:

We're all in this boat together.

So I don't like "Country First" signs because it's that kind of thinking that got us into this mess, and that may keep us from crawling out of it. But, like I said, I don't expect you to agree with me.

That does not mean that I am going to be quiet.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.