Today a friend pointed me to the documentary Earthlings which seems to be already known of everyone but me. A half-enlightening experience: while I was already aware of the issues, and I already knew some facts, the images made my understanding more vivid; an unpleasant but refreshing enhancement.

But still, something in this documentary was bothering me all the way. Now I can see it: the title.

“ Earthlings ”

And the documentary goes over animals, about how humans relate to (and use) other animals. Did they not forget something?

What about the other earthlings?

Turning vegetarian after watching such a documentary completely misses the point. All in all, any human has to learn to deal with fellow living beings. That always involves killing to survive, often in nasty ways for convenience. We should just choose how to minimize the amount of inconvenience for our community of earthlings as a whole.

Topic for this week's discussions: if you were to get a mental picture (or a perception) of each living thing that is used or killed to sustain your own life, where each being would be expressing their opinion by speaking in their own distinct voice (possibly a little squeaky), how would you deal with the situation? Imagine, for example, the opinion of that branch of parsley on the cutting board if it was expressing human-like feelings and consciousness about its fate…

Life is tough.

One day, we will wake up in the morning and see a world devoid of plants. Like the dolphins, they will have left us to our own device.

Today's conversation added to the list of concerns evolving around my mind at the moment:

• will China invade Siberia when oil becomes scarce? or Iran?
• what will be the form of the next conflict between Japan and China?
• who will end up controlling North Korea?
• why doesn't the ECB propose to invest in a deep and far-fetching solution for the American mortgage crisis? Why doesn't China propose either?
• How is the obligation to carry identity documents helping against “terrorism”?
• what will be the long term evolution of the current tendency of governments to alienate citizens into criminals and “protect” them against themselves?

Evidence shows clearly that we will not be able to eat fish in the future unless strong global policing action is taken now. We know already that future generations will never enjoy cod as a popular and usual dish. Still, even so-called “developed” countries make irrational political moves about fishing and short-sightedness combined with global disinterest runs rampant.

Overfishing is a canonical example of a tragedy of the commons. In other words, everyone is responsible, and nobody cares.

A topic I was debating the other day with a new colleague was: why should we care? Another I was debating longer ago with an older friend was: should we take responsibility for other people's actions and reduce our demand for fish to induce a decrease in production?

The conclusion was straightforward: any purely rational approach based on a fundamentally individualistic philosophy (where everyone should be only responsible for their own actions) dictates unsustainable behaviors. This is a logical conclusion, leaving choices to be made:

• not be rational: let God dictate what is “good for you,” possibly reducing your environmental footprint. Possibly effective, but unpredictable.
• empathize with fellow humans worldwide and time-wide (of the future), then take responsibility for other people's actions and act. Likely effective, but equally unlikely to happen within current morals and value systems.
• not do anything.

Choose your future.