Day 595: Transcending God

How much faith do the trees, animals and other plants have at the beginning of spring that the rain will come? Enough faith to start budding new leaves and flowers. Enough faith to start having babies. Here in the grasslands of Africa the winters are dry and chilly, with most years seeing little to no rainfall for 6 months. Still, every year the trees start budding as soon as the evenings start warming up, whether there has been rain or not. Imagine how much energy they put into pushing out their little leaves after all that time being dormant. The soil in these parts of Africa is often also not of the highest quality, so it's not like the trees are swimming in food either.

Essentially the trees bet almost everything on the hope that the rains will come. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. When the rains come the trees can continue growing, but if the rains don't come then the trees stop growing, do not go to seed and the smaller trees often do not survive the hardship. The same would go for the other plants and for animals - without the rains the plant eaters have less food which in turn means that the meat eaters have less food as well. Lives are lost across the different types of life forms.

Who controls whether the rains will come? Is it God? If it is God, then what makes him/her decide to not send the rains? Malicious intent? Spitefulness? Some warped lesson? Maybe it's just plain curiosity. If you ask me, it's a pretty stupid and cruel design, this 'circle of life'. Everything feeds something else UNLESS part of the circle fails (like the rain) and then everything starves.

Why is it like this?

Does it have to be this way?

Would it be possible for humanity to one day be directors of nature so that we could ensure that all life has the opportunity to thrive at all times? Some say we shouldn't 'play God' - and I agree - God is a cruel concept that we accept as allowing all sorts of life forms to suffer for some profound unknowable reasons - no one should try to emulate that.

We should transcend God and create Heaven on Earth. We should take responsibility for the planet and all other life living here with us to stop needless suffering.

We have the power to take all of life into our hands, the only problem is that our current tendency is to destroy life instead of creating and nurturing it. We love only that which we know intimately and show no concern for much else. Living in this way will not create a world that you would want your children to grow up in.

We can change the world in the same ways that we participate in maintaining the way it currently is. We can change ourselves to reflect the world we want to live in, accept the things we want to allow and do not accept the things we would not want for ourselves. the only reason the world is the way it is is because we accept the nature of it, we believe that it is the way it is because that is the nature of it, when we are the ones who have made it this way. We have the power, now we just need to take responsibility.