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Forwarding Remark
Will there be a second expulsion from The Garden of Eden? Some contemporaries, in view of the presumed fateful transition from the second to the third
millenium a.d., are afraid of this.
Someone - born in 1922 - reflected on what he would think and do if he were the Blue Planet, circling in orbit, watching and listening all the
while to the actions and discussions of its upright-walking inhabitants.
In anticipation of the obvious question: he sees no signs of a warning concerning a second expulsion from the Garden of Eden, in fact the opposite is
true. The ever growing clarity, which he observed on three different continents during his life-time, makes it possible for everyone who watches closely - in his opinion -, to see the signs of a turning-point. This
is not a turning towards something, but rather the next stretch of the road for a majority of the Earth's inhabitants, a path which already many have chosen. It is true that this may be a diversion, but even
diversions lead to the goal eventually.
To the Point
If you look closely, dear Earthling, I am not faring any differently than most of you. I am continually spinning around my own axis. The only
difference is, that I don't tread on anyone's feet in the process, which is something you are finding increasingly difficult to avoid. As long as you had plenty of room to dance around yourselves and your equals, it
was amusing to watch you and to feel the tread of your soft feet. And the gardens and meadows you planted, sprinkled with flowers, instead of the woods and steppes which I had thought up, were and are beautiful to
look at.
But you have begun to speak of me as being an ever shrinking ball, too small for your flag-waving marches whose noise is a din in my ears. Over
and above this, some of you are thinking of emmigrating to one of my sister planets, which could mean that in the end, I may end up being little more than a launching-pad for your rockets.
That is why I am now tending to do the same as you, and delve self-critically into myself.
Could it be that I'm the cause of your unrest and dissatisfaction? Am I different to what I could or should be?
Was it, I ask myself further, negligence on my part that today on the eve of a new millenium for humanity, many of you would prefer another planet in
my place?
Have I perhaps watched passively, even perhaps taken pleasure in your continual efforts to change me, make me fertile, for far too long? Did I perhaps even give you the impetus to do so?
These questions weigh heavily on me; indeed, I wish that somebody would come and prove that you are not my true children, rather that you were thrown
onto me from somewhere at some point in time - as tiny, microscopic beings. If this were the case I could, without having to defend my actions, in a fit of pique - caused by your ever re-occuring stance of
judgement - just fall back into eternity, from whence not a few of you think I came. May the Gods open your eyes and ears, I obviously haven't been able to do so up until now.
In any case, whether you are my own children, univited guests or even asylum-seekers, it is beyond me to make the decision. The answer lies in that
darkness which the one sun that I have cannot, or will not, illuminate. All that remains is your daily effort to make me fertile, and that - at first slowly, then ever more doggedly - since many millenia. The
occasional doubt as to whether your actions are right or not, are pushed aside with the thought that this not only secures your existance, but you perceive yourselves to be my protector. My vulnerability you
declare, is making you worry. You, who once entrusted to me, I took under my wing, have now declared me to be under your protection. An astonishing reverse of fortunes, or even insolence on your part.
Because that which you feel for me is possibly a love-hate relationship, I will continue to tolerate your hustle, bustle and gossip patiently.
Even in the next thousand years, I hear many of you say, this must be continued - making me fertiler and larger, ignoring the foreboding within you
that I , your blue planet, am shrinking as a result - at least from your point of view.
I have been working on the beauty of the deserts for thousands of years, yet you want to make them arable - as you call it . But as I am now beginning
to groan under the fertility which you have burdened upon me, I am determined from now on, no longer to tolerate everything. I am prepared to make myself less inhabitable for you, or putting it more precisely, let
myself be made inhabitable - by you. Where am I to find the great amounts of water, that I will periodically have to tip over your increasing number of sweaty bodies, if I am to keep my clean blue colour
and not one day, be called the "stinking planet"?
Surely, a second expulsion from the Garden of Eden won't happen. The 'turning-around-my-own -axis" I have in common with you , other things,
like imagining a terrible end of the world, less... I have learnt from my earlier mistakes, like the moving of oceans and continents and the bringing forth of gigantic animals.
In the beginning, driven by my youthful strength, I was very hasty when renewing. In such moods, one can easily let all the vulcanos errupt at once and
all the oceans rise up, just to see what would happen afterwards.
Today my experience prevents such emotional outbursts. I have the least worries with trees which grow slowly and small, quick-flying
animals. They don't demand more fertility, as you so like to do in order to fill your ever growing number of stomachs.
On the other side, that which I brought forth from my over-brimming fertility, has failed. You gaze amazed at the remaining fossiles in hauses which
you have built especially for them.
Some law of nature wills it - perhaps because of my round shape - that the movement either becomes slower or, after first increasing - followed by a
decreasing phase, eventually ends up where it first began. Perhaps things will happen a little differently; movements do not only have one cause. One thing is for certain, my concious action - to make myself
less habitable for the benefit of us all - is already accompanying your efforts for increasing my fertility.
From now on, I will just let things happen. Some deserts are growing faster than you can irrigate them, because you want to use every square metre of
my surface even more intensely.
I don't need to act, just keep revolving around my own axis and watch you calmly as you go on your self-chosen path towards that goal you feel it
necessary to reach - to less fertility and with that, a less inhabitable planet.
Lessening of fertility by a constant level of inhabitableness, would have saved you a long journey. Some of you recongnised this as a chance, but
you had capitulated to the consequences of the increased fertility and were no longer prepared to consider other ways.
For thousands of years you were able to decide how many human stomachs could be fed at my cost, and for a certain time to come, you will still be able
to make this decision. But then, instead of a second expulsion from the Garden of Eden, I will become from day to day, less fertile. Your leaders will respond to this change by convincing you to work your
fields even harder, fatten your animals even quicker and force them to breed at a quicker rate.
At the same time, your diversion will lead your more and more and for a longer duration through meager landscapes. Finally, at the end of your path, a
balance will garadually be reached between your and my fertility.
On the way that lies ahead of you, you will be constantly forced to stop and linger, and an ever growing number of you will ask: What prevented us from
taking the other, shorter path? What was written on the signposts that we followed without thinking, and what on those we ignored, eyes wide open? When and where did we lose faith in those who prepared the path and
the signposts?
Such questions, asked in the shadows of the ever dwindling trees, will provoke thoughtful discussion amongst you. One or other of you will
remember the writing on the signposts which you blindly ignored. Old sayings such as, 'And you have been told Man, what is good', words such as Heaven, Soul and Eternity will be recalled and spoken out loud. And
although you will no longer be able to fill your stomachs three times a day, you will not be empty, but light, not pressurised but released. And then, when one of you thinking out loud, remembers the sign which said: 'And all Desires want Eternity, want deep, deep Eternity'(Nietzsche,
Zarathustra), you will no longer think of the many, small pleasures that wanted to be satisfied but which were only fleeting moments, but rather on that desire which those whose prepared the way had in mind, the desire to be, not the desire to feel.
Perhaps I have gone ahead too quickly while you are still on the first half of the path where you manage again and again, to increase my fertility and
will take no advice from anyone who is not your equal. Even I, your blue planet, must allow you to go your chosen path, even if it is a diversion, mistake, the wrong path.
This though, is not entirely keeping to the facts. There are ways for me to force you: ways and means, of which your prophets of doom know how to talk
about. Not few of you speak of me as avengeful, and say you must be warned. They say that I am holding terrible measures in store with which, at the given time, I will punish you for your stubborness.
I would be within my rights, according to the prophets of doom, to force you to realize and accept the limits of your growth, by bringing you a new
ice-age, a long bout of the plague or periodically failing harvests.
But on the other hand, I have grown so fond of you that I have no inclination to use such gruesom methods. Instead of avenging myself, I would much
prefer to praise you for steering towards the goal which I would wish for, of your own free will, even if it's not what you actually want. A moderately fertile planet with fewer humans. Keep yourselves busy if you
have to for a short time longer, with your plan for turning deserts into pastures and fields of potatoes. In the end, and for most individuals barely noticeable, water and many other things, will be in ever
shorter supply, and your souls will be filled more and more with the 'Desire to be' and less with the 'desire to feel'.
Your blue planet, who will each night and in the future give you a new day, will again achieve the greatness that he had in your youth . He will again
be enigmatic and mysterious, invited to dream of things not yet thought of, to paint by torchlight in the long, winter nights , to carve beakers for springwater, to sing songs of praise for the full moon. The
Prophesy: 'The earth became too small and the penultimate human sprang about her', (Nietzsche) will lie, collecting dust in the old cellers.
In this spirit, dear, penultimate inhabitants of the earth, your blue planet greets you, he who you say has grown to small for you.
Final Remark:
A discussion between a man, already old and a younger, female recipient is proof that the message was received.
- Tell me, what, in your opinion is the matter with us humans?
- With us, who it appears, don't seem to know how to put into practice that which we know to be right and necessary.
The man thus adressed, replied by opening a book which lay nearby and began to read :
When the Lord God made heaven and earth, there were no bushes on the earth, and nothing green grew in the fields; because God had not yet let it
rain on the earth and no human was there to till the earth. Only dampness arose from the earth and watered the surface of the ground.
Then the Lord God made man, from the dust of the earth and blew the breath of life into his nose; and thus did man become a living being. . - And
the Lord God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden so that he could keep and tend to it.
- As he lay his book aside, the man continued. When the God, of whom we are speaking here, saw that the future prosperity of his last made
creatures, to whom alone he gave the ability of exercising free will - was dependant on their respecting the existing limitations, including laws - he decided to test them. He did this using the first
commandment that was made on our blue planet. Later, far-sighted people, living on small islands in a distant ocean gave a memorable name to these rules of behaviour, Tabu.
- You know the story of the breaking of the first commandment and how it was punished, banishment from the Garden of Eden. A story, they say,
embellished by soothsayers and storytellers. As a future ethnologist, you know that there was and are, here and there, small groups of peoples who concientiously respected the tabus and still do today,
whereas others, to whom we belong, never really felt at home.
But because we have changed the meaning of these wise commandments which stem from the Word, and interpret them incorrectly, - as something which
shouldn't really exist under free human beings - we have become the tabu-breakers we are today, who constantly push back the borders even further, only to disregard them. This leads us unavoidably to the
side-tracking and diversions which our blue planet refered to in his letter. - Have you understood the message?
- I follow his meaning where he speaks of the limits of fertility. We would probably speak of the Limits of Growth. And now that you've
brought up the subject of tabus in connection with the expulsion of the first human couple from the Garden of Eden, which I always considered to be the over-strict punishment of a jealous God, I am now just
beginning to understand that this punishment was deserved and just and that we made and are still making it too easy for ourselves when we remark flippantly: Tabus are there to be broken. When I come to think
about it, we are facing a test once again concerning the respect for tabus, a test of which we have no idea if we will pass or not. May we repudiate the natural laws for motherhood and fatherhood as we please?
- You will probably live to experience whether or not we can, without being damaged. At the moment it appears as though the answer to this
question is the beginning of another side-track, which will make our diversion even longer and more difficult. Luckily we are living on a planet, from whom we can assume if the promises in his letter are
anything to go by, that he will try no short-circuit solutions with us. One of which could be: no humans anymore.
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(1)Page 30 in: Kurt Titze's No Violence towards Humans, Animals Plants - Words of the Preparer of the Way, Mahavira. Clemens Zerling Publishers, Berlin 1993. ISBN 3-88468-054-4
Editor's Note: Will present this book to our readers shortly..
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