The truth will kill you.

I just finished reading Collapsed, our text for Sustainable Development, and now I officially have no hope left for humanity.

I finished my final discussion point for the final chapter in tears. All this to try to get an A in another class. Goodness, am I depressed.

I know I am over-sensitive. It's quite painful to be that way. I seem to be affected more deeply than most souls around me, especially when it comes to things like this. Things that actually matter. Many say being so sensitive makes you less of a man. I say being able to face up to the reality of things and not constantly try to block it out makes one courageous.

Many truly seem to believe that ignorance is bliss. For those who prefer to remain blissfully ignorant, I suggest not reading too far into this book, or this paragraph. It wouldn't be your cup of tea, trust me. Run along and watch Harry Potter. Live in your fantasy, because reality will probably just depress you and give you very little incentive to press on. Take a walk in the sunshine, knowing nothing about the increasing complications posed by the photosynthetic ceiling. Wander through the woods, somehow believing that most of those species belong there and won't be turned into a housing development ten years from now. Breathe in the air, knowing that all those toxic chemicals are manifesting themselves in your lungs, but perhaps not being aware that they are also entering through the pores of your skin, slowly poisoning your dying vessel. Somehow believe that there is a corner of the globe that has not been adversely affected by the human imprint. Believe that technology will solve all our problems, when in fact each invention only introduces its own specific set of problems, forming an endless chain of dreadful links. There is no reason to use a 500-page read to instill in your head a hundred pieces of evidence showing why we are all doomed. We all know that anyhow, it doesn't have to be proven to us. Keep living in your bubble. You're safe there for a limited time. Pay no attention to what a Pulitzer Prize-winning author has to say. Curse your consciousness. Fuhgeddaboutit.

I am going to visit the north point lighthouse later today, but I doubt I will see much beauty. I will see the landscape much differently than I used to. Decay. Dessicated streambeds. Diminished rainfall. Several cattle on ugly, browning converted pastureland contributing their share to global warming. Eroding sea cliffs, exposing in their faces the rusted corpses of old plantation machinery buried inland a number of decades ago. Creeping normalcy. Landscape amnesia. Things change so quickly, yet so slowly for us. Day to day, it seems so gradual. It takes us years to realise how much less snow the mountain has received per year due to global warming. A family looks at photographs of how green their farm used to be twenty years ago, and compares it to the same farm today, their faces suddenly showing signs of shock. Times have changed.

It all happens so gradually for us. Yet, in geological time, humans have arrived and will depart in the bat of an eyelash. A human life is measured in a billionth of a nanosecond.

I probably just shouldn't care. Screw all the sentimental bullshit the human conscious projects onto so many other things. We are all just manifestations of carbon, here today, gone tomorrow, and our existence means nothing. We perform our moves, play the game like everyone else, then expire. We are everything and we are nothing. We are whatever we want to believe we are. Some of us think our God is going to come down and save us.

So then, you might as well believe in something. Whatever justifies your lifestyle and gets you up in the morning. Reincarnation is my belief. I expect to return to Earth as something other than human. Who knows what I may take shape as, though, and who knows what shape the world will be in then. It is romantic to believe I will probably return as a wolf, until I recall that most of the world's wilderness will be completely destroyed. Maybe I would be better off returning as a bee. People love sweet, fragrant things like honey and flowers.

A former acquaintance of mine who just recently committed suicide once shared with me one thing she considered a justification of her bitterness, "nature is dying." My perspective has now coincided directly with hers. It doesn't matter how you choose to interpret it, it's always true at least in one way.

But I care. It justifies who I am, and it is not my choice to make.

Oh, and before I forget, Happy Thanksgiving.