BUG, BASILISK, SNAKE & ME

Seeing a bug fall into my garden patch of parsley, then within a second a basilisk shoot from among my cosmoses into the parsley after the bug, and then a snake just as quickly rush across the open area to plunge into the parsley after the basilisk... got me to thinking.

For, on that calm Sunday morning as I sat reading so peacefully, actually I occupied a stage on which the actors bore fangs, pincers, stingers, claws, talons, hinged razor-mandibles, hypodermic proboscises... and the plot was the very old one of eat and/or be eaten.

Realizing this, a question arose: Has Nature granted humanity special dispensation from the world of eat and/or be eaten?

After thinking about it, I decided that humanity still is endangered by predators, just that the predators have shifted from the biological into the psychic realm. Humanity's new predators are faulty, self-delusional thoughts that lure us into pleasant, possibly culturally sanctioned, but ultimately unsustainable behaviors.

Humankind's modern enemies are local customs, tribalisms, nationalisms, political movements, economic structures, religions, philosophies of life, romantic notions... that in any way encourage behaviors at odds with fundamental ecological principles.