I've talked before about how playing Animal Jam in 2012 is what initially made me discover a love of the natural environment, and the desire to protect it. It bridged fantasy with reality.
Honestly though, the way it's managed now, it can't do that for kids anymore. That's something Wildworks is going to need to recognize if it actually prioritizes what it advertises: inspiring love for the natural world.
But right now, Wildworks doesn't seem to actually care about that. If they actually cared, they would do more to fulfill their end of the Playing4ThePlanet agreement.
Which is why I'm not going to talk about Animal Jam today.
People don't care enough.
People don't care enough, and animals go extinct because of that apathy.
People don't care enough, and entire ecosystems become dead zones.
Earth is slowly becoming Mars.
There are countless deaths, human and nonhuman alike.
We're killing other animals, but we are all dying together because of it.
None of us care enough.
Wonderful things happen when people change, but people are not changing fast enough. People don't want to face the whole reality.
Specifically, people who have the power to decide whether all the plants and animals of Earth live or die. People in government. People at the heads of the handful of corporations responsible for the annihilation of everything that makes the world beautiful.
(source)
I've been thinking about how it seems that the people who care the most about the future of our world are the ones who have the least power to stop its destruction.
Children.
Indigenous people.
Oppressed people who are hit the hardest because they're treated the worst.
People who are so overwhelmed with empathy in a world where it seems like no one cares that everything beautiful is being killed around them.
It hurts that when I was 11 and crying about plastic bottles polluting the ocean, I would have not been able to stomach the profound environmental destruction that we all face now in 2020.
But the people who care the most, beyond anyone else, are the people that we're too uncomfortable to acknowledge as people: the plants and animals we're murdering to extinction.
If other animals and plants and creatures were not thought of as "less than" humans... the world would be a much kinder place. For all beings, humans included.
I think a lot of hate and discrimination can be traced to the fear and hate of other creatures, and nature in general. Animals represent the ultimate "other", and so how you treat that "other" affects how you treat others who are different from you.
The desire of people to control nature, to exploit it, really comes from the idea that humans are somehow disconnected from the rest of all life. This is the false idea that your happiness doesn't depend on the happiness of the plants and animals that make up your world.
I hope that no one ever forgets that COVID-19 is here because of the trafficking of endangered animals.
Everyone is suffering because animals are suffering.
We're all connected, and no amount of human ego can change that.
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I've been taking walks around the field outside where I'm living every day for the past couple of weeks. It's just plain flat lawn grass, but the clusters of clover flowers were always covered in bees.
As I got more familiar with the area, it became clear those clovers were their only food for miles. There were no other groups of flowers plentiful enough to feed them.
This morning I was woken up by a lawnmower. I went outside, and almost all the clover flowers were gone. Far too many bees will go hungry, because people care more about keeping up the appearances of a lawn than letting struggling bee populations live.
I'm talking about this because environmental destruction is not just in some faraway forest– it's right there with you. Every tree that gets cut down around you, every patch of wildflowers sprayed with herbicide... its the same steady flow of death. And I'm not being dramatic, because that's what it is.
Because environmental destruction is all around you, you actually have more power than you think. If you or your family own any land, you don't have to give in to the same practices that chip away at life on Earth. You can plant and let native plants live, feeding struggling bees and beginning to heal the local ecosystem you're apart of.
I'm probably going to talk more about native plant gardening in future posts, because it's a powerful way you can begin to shift the status quo towards supporting the environment through gardening rather than trying to control it to its detriment. Urban wildlife restoration is a big passion of mine.
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I've been through a lot of painful things in the past year, but even as I'm working so hard to feel better, I realized that what I care about most in the world is to help it become a kinder place for all of Earth's creatures, for all beings.
It's ok if you don't completely agree with me, I know these kinds of ideas are not always easy. I just hope that you can understand this:
Caring about other creatures, opening ourselves up to their pain as well as their beautiful uniqueness, will hurt deeply and inspire you.
But it's the most powerful and important thing you can do in a time like this, when all life is at stake because of humans not caring.
Thank you for reading. It means the world to me that these words reach you somehow.
I just don't want a future where animals only exist in virtual worlds.
~DoomyPanda
