The Selves of Us · Letters
MENDING OUR POLLUTING WAYS— The Sermon
26 September 2026·1,225 readers
And he said:
“Would that you could live on the fragrance of the earth, and like an air plant be sustained by the light.”
- Kahlil Gibran
There has been no way for any life on Earth to thrive in a vacuum. All life in all its forms is interdependent and interconnected with each other and what all the gifts of the elements offer. But it’s astonishing how quick humans have been to discard the lessons that humanity and all those who have come before us learnt and knew to guard for the greater part of our shared journey of life.
We are a long way from the worship of the sun, moon and the stars and I’m grateful and appreciative for the strides in achievements of the quality of life. We are freed from such grinding toil, yet we’re none the wiser for the biggest of the tradeoffs that came with that freedom.
We have forgotten that with any power comes responsibility. That we too, like everything alive, are guardians of life. The machines we are so accustomed to, so dependent on, have eroded our sensitivity and sensibility to life so much so that plastic is now believed to be part of our biological make up. It rains micro plastics on Earth and it’s a part of normal life to see people cut down trees that have been alive for longer that they have been. We have poisonous chemicals that not only kills the insects we can’t stand, but it turns out they are contained in what we apply to our skins, hair, nails and our food too.
It’s hard to blame anyone really, including unfettered Capitalism with its extractive modus operandi for nothing but the bottom line— more money. Every single thing imaginable has been commodified, including us human beings (not that it’s anything new, but it does point to unrelenting idiocy with an unheaped helping of wackiness). In all truth, I wouldn’t be surprised if the very air we need to breathe will be chopped up in different market packages before my life’s curtain call ends.
The eternal hope in me smiles inwardly, though, at the awakening that sprouts from different pockets of people all over the world. The call to stand up for what we, the people, know is the change that’s overdue for how the dominant species, Homo Sapiens, interacts with all Life.
Having pierced the heavens with machines because we were busy looking down, we see communities stand up to the construction of the extremely thirsty AI Data Centres in other parts of the world willy nilly, without their input and consent. I don’t know if I can say the same for my corner of the world, though.
The remembrance and awareness dawns again that we are not apart from nature. We are nature.
And it’s been spoken and written before:
“Hope is a thing with feathers.”
- Emily Dickson
— Tshego
Editor's Note · Roy Hewett
The excesses of humankind have taken planet earth to the abyss of ‘no return.’ With little effort, those who seek insight into the scale of the challenge facing ecology, eco-systems and environmental sustainability - all intimately related in the crucial processes inherent in the survival of nature - will invariably be mortified at how little (or how much) is being done. What can be done?
There is little doubt in the minds of thinking and aware people that education is key. “The Sermon” is a step in the right direction … awareness must be heightened, realities of the serious nature of the threat to nature must be conveyed, and the urgency of the existential threat to our planet escalated from local to regional, national and international levels. Global information campaigns on television, social media, at universities and in schools should be the norm. Businesses and corporations throughout the world should be on board.
A sad reality - and fact according to environmental scientists - is that our global ‘sands of time’ are running out. We must ALL act now and do whatever we can to turn the tide of pollution, over-exploitation and denudation of flora, fauna and natural resources.