Our society is a “growth economy”. For an entity to grow, it needs nutrition. The growth nutrition in our growth economy comes from “resources”. Resources is a distancing word meaning from the Earth. All thingsproduced originate from the Earth. The human people, labeled “consumers” are distanced from the production processes by multinational corporations, retail outlets and dealers.

The Earth and her non-human inhabitants are consistently violated or killed in the processes of production. For instance, strip mining and oil extraction often leave the Earth at those locations completely unable to support any plant or animal life. This statement includes human animals. Animals are often killed or chased away in the first stages of these two extraction operations. The land is raped, stripped of trees and dug into with bulldozers and drills.

In a strip mining operation, say, for copper, the copper ore is then taken to a refinery where arsenic is a by-product. For aluminum, the process by-product is flouride which sticks to the factory smokestack scrubber and is collected there for the use on your teeth in the form of toothpaste.

The copper is made into wire, sometimes into televisions which is channeled into your home in the form of Jerry Springer, misleading wildlife documentaries and the news, featuring murders, politics and other garbage.

The flouride adds to the future osteoporosis of your already calcium deficient bones (thanks to phosphoric acid used in sodas), contributes to the health problems of your children and rewires your brain for you. With the psychotropic drugs prescribed by the family doctor, this can’t be too good.

There are thousands of these resource extractions for the good of the “growth economy” that add to your misery everyday. Meanwhile, you are strapped to the 9-5 job that contributes to other stress related physical problems and only continues to funnel money into the pockets of the wealthy.  The corporations do it by threatening to withdrawl the money from your pockets, the only system of living that you have ever known. That threatens to remove the roof from over your head, starves your children and leads to homelessness and death.

This is not the only life you need to know. In future Thursday updates, I will be giving advice on how to get out of the system that threatens violence and further be discussing the problems with civilization.

You can call me Sha Chetan, or “Red Hawk” in the Lakota language. I am 1/8 Brule Lakotah and 1/8 Pima.  I’m somewhere around 30. I live in the amazing Pacific Northwest.  I’m desperately in love with the natural world.

I believe that the defense of the natural world should be every human’s number one priority. The Earth can survive without us, we cannot survive without the Earth. The continued destruction of ancient trees, established forests, habitat of non-human persons, habitat of wild humans, poisoning of rivers and streams, needs to come to a halt. I am not sure, as are most, if we are past the point of no return. The demise of the human species is eminent if we insist on continuing in the same fashion as we are today, at this very minute.

Most civilized humans don’t care what happens to the natural world, as long as they have their facebook, MySpace, television, cheap genetically modified snack foods, hot tubs and breakfast coffee. For most humans to give this up, you would have to pry it from their cold dead hands. I am prepared to do this, personally. I am also prepared to educate anyone who wishes to know more about the natural world through this blog.

The Natural World is waiting to welcome us home, with open arms. All that we have to do is accept that.