In The Midst

I had finished my last lesson for the week, and as I walked back to the metro station, I found myself wondering: has a dominant species ever survived a mass extinction? If so, did that species remain dominant in the aftermath?

We are alive during the 6th Mass Extinction in the history of Life on Earth. (I'm not gonna go hysterical Cassandra--Stop using whatever in order to save Everything!!, etc--so hang with me for a bit.) We are witnessing something that has only happened five times before this, and I don't just mean since the beginning of recorded history. I mean in the History of Life. A lot of people aren't aware that we don't need an asteroid to see the apocalypse--it's already happening!

So be excited! We are the first spectators of this event with an awareness of what we are seeing. Most people think it'd be cool to witness the extinction of the dinosaurs, but the dinosaurs didn't even know what was happening. I couldn't imagine a more interesting time to live than one during which all forms of life are rapidly being erased and we are here to watch it go down. Gone. Sayonara, you squirmy bags of organic compounds.

Yes, it's our fault. But fault is a tricky word. Nature created us. We are not separate from & really can't be held responsible for Nature. We ARE Nature. Nature decided to create a species that would devour Nature herself. I'd bet she has a plan. If the dinosaurs hadn't gone extinct, this blog post would have never happened. Etc. So, the thing is I don't think we should feel guilty if we wipe all life from the face of the Earth and turn the planet into a toxic deadzone. (If you think people are more important than anything else, well then yes, you should feel guilty and try to save the planet, etc.) Maybe in a billion years a greater life form will emerge from the plastic slime that will thrive in our toxic mess. And maybe that life form won't be possible until we destroy ourselves & take our living planet with us.

But I wonder: could we possibly survive this extinction? I'll have to research, but I'd bet the Extinctions are batting five for five in terms of wiping out the dominant life form. Kinda long odds against us. On the other hand, seems like the dominant species is due to survive one of these. Maybe even overdue. Imagine if we could be the first!

Then I got on the metro.

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This morning, on the way to the metro, I saw a man.

Most mornings I take the red line to my first class. I take the tram in front of my building one stop to Hlavni Nadrazi, which is the main train station in Prague. It's where I left from for Amsterdam. It also has a metro connection--the red line. The station has a big park around it, so you have to walk about four minutes along a tree-lined path to get to the station itself. Early mornings, sun still sleeping, I just follow the flood of commuters who fall upon the station.

There is one man who walks in the opposite direction of all us sleepwalking commuters. He walks away from the station, kinda off to the side of the path. He is an old man with a longish, dirty white beard. He wears an old baseball hat & clothes that look scavenged. I would guess he's homeless except I've never seen him beg or even accept money. He just walks in the opposite direction of everyone else, and he chants. He sings, Dobreeeeee Dennnnnnnn, so long that all us commuters could be well past him & gone before he finishes saying it--the words themselves never fully hit our sleepwalking consciousnesses, but I've pieced them together over multiple mornings, jigsaw-like--and the words mean, Good Day. I think he must be an angel.