We are Burning Man

[GliderGuider]

We are "Burning Man". We are burning 2 billion years of stored carbon, burning the topsoil, burning uranium to keep the lights on, burning the forests full of other eyes, burning the midnight oil trying to find some answers. Now that we have almost burned it all, we are left with the thrillingly uncomfortable question, "Now what?"

[begin_within]

1. We burn out

[AtheistCrusader]

2. What does a Dam burn?

[GliderGuider]

4. What does the electricity a dam produces burn? nt

[ChairmanAgnostic]

9. water. Once dated a girl who routinely burned it in

the kitchen

[phantom power]

3. Hmm

[GliderGuider]

7. Ashes to ashes... nt

[Newest Reality]

5. We burn down.

And will be left to build something new and, out of necessity, very different. Maybe the caveat will be a resounding, "Never again!"

We will mine what's there, from the skin of big-box stores to the huge landfills, scavenging what we can and toiling to create a pragmatic, more simple world made by hand, once again. There will be tribes and communities that resort to the need for survival in cohesive groups with diverse capabilities, due to our frail nature compared to other creatures.

We will have to revive and learn old skills and technologies that were sacrificed on the hi-tech and industrial altars where our ability to survive with nature was traded for bondage to our "owners" who baited us and blinded us with doo-dads and trinkets in exchange for our brand loyalty and servitude.

Or ...

We will be culled in massive numbers and those of us left will serve those who now claim ownership of Earth.

Maybe both. Things will never be the same, though.

[cliffordu]

6. Didn't one of those bible dudes predict the world would end with fire, this time??

[Gregorian]

8. Come on, unreccers. You can't handle the truth?

The slow, smoldering wreckage of frustrated people will now live in a world of less diversity, less beauty, less stability. Like I say, the human being is the specie that didn't know when to stop. And had the power to overrule nature's mechanism for keeping things in equilibrium. I wish I were unaware.

[FiveGoodMen]

10. Interesting perspective

I think you're on to something.