Words Poorly Used #36 — Earth Day

I’ll get the obligatory linguistic complaint out of the way first.  Every day since the Earth coalesced from space dust has been Earth day.  There is not a special day.  The fact that so many think there is a special day shows that humans are egocentric to the point of disability.  The history of human misperception about nature is rich and complex, but I will leave this contention by citing the simple phrases, flat Earth and geocentric universe.  Just because a genius such as Copernicus broadens the scope does not mean that most people do not remain huddled about the central tendency of ignorance.  Today, Julie Borowski posted a picture on Facebook depicting a planet Earth being held in the cupped hands of a human.  This visual metaphor is no more accurate than the pre-Copernican view of the Universe.  This is backwards.  The Earth holds humans.  Julie also announced, “This is Earth Day … How can we improve the environment?”  I am fine with Julie, but here I think she aids and abets some of the impoverished groupthink in which the lamestream wallows.  My response to her question was, “Forget ‘we,’ forget ‘improve.'”  The voluntaryist individual can only take responsibility for her own piece of “environment.”  Don’t even try to improve THE environment.  Don’t even ask “what we can do?”  Do the best, non-aggressive life you, as an individual, can do.

Kilgore.