ATTENTION ! .... there's a crow at the door...and he wants you to listen to him.

 

There is a crow who has decided to 'communicate' with me.

And he does so very loudly (!) and at the most inopportune times.

As far as bird calls go, his, is not musical, rather, he sounds obnoxious and petulant.

"Hey, can I get some attention here!!! Now!" seems to be his message, however, I don't speak crow so maybe I am totally misunderstanding his message.

Not long ago he decided to make sure he got my attention, ....which he did by hopping up to my glass door and start to tap on it with his beak. (The sound he made, almost that of paradiddles on a snare drum.) What did he want??? And why was it so urgent?

This carried on for a week or so, and then, as suddenly as it had started, it ended.

Apparently crows are commonly associated with life mysteries, insight, mischief, audacity, fearlessness, and often, they are viewed as tricksters. (Since ancient times the crow has been used as a religious/cultural symbol.)

Then on the other hand, some view them as noisy, aggressive, ugly, and destructive birds with perhaps an unusual and often somewhat comedic, capacity for problem solving.

Since I do not speak crow, it occurred to me that perhaps I could use it as an analogy.

Perhaps the noisy, obnoxious crow could be likened to the "noisy, obnoxious" people who try to get our attention about any number of issues they consider to be of great importance.

Global warming, climate change, food shortage, increasing pollutions, an over populated planet, holes in the ozone layer, bleaching barrier reefs, melting glaciers, new strains of deadly viruses, animal species becoming extinct, languages disappearing, cultures disintegrating, starvation and yet also obesity issues, and the list goes on and on and on.

In the beginning the crow cawing loudly every morning was hard to ignore, but, strangely, when it finally stopped, I had become used to it. Are we getting so used to the "cawing" of the people warning us of how our insensitivity towards our planet is beginning to show serious effects, that we now barely notice them? We may still hear the cawing, but we no longer are affected to the extent of trying to understand the 'message'?

What we call "progress", is it so for everyone, everywhere, or does progress for some rest on the retrogression of others?

Besides, what do we mean with "progress"?

Some say, progress is when the economy grows, and the economy is said to grow when the value of a country's economic output (Gross Domestic Product=GDP) increases. (In other words, a country's income per person is increased, which is believed to indicate a "better" lifestyle.) However, one may ponder; does not the benefit of economic growth depend on "what" is growing?

(Oil spill= people get hired to fix it; a spike in employment/income for "clean-up" companies,

but fish and other creatures in the hydrosphere die and some of the resources are diminished.)

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have little." (Franklin D. Roosevelt)

Many voices are rising up trying to get our attention as to the impact that "progress" has on

the hydrosphere, geosphere, biosphere, and the atmosphere.

We may chose to ignore what they are saying, but in the face of increasing numbers of tsunamis, devastating droughts, life threatening floods, deadly viruses, the decimation of wild animals (of many kinds), et cetera, it becomes harder and harder to pretend that all is well with the planet. The people who are trying to get our attention, may I suggest do so because they are trying to find possibilities of minimising the impact humankind is having on the planet.

Although, perhaps it is no longer a question of how we can minimise our impact, rather, how we can intervene, and if such is the case, we may need to listen more carefully to those "obnoxious, insistent" voices (cawing) trying to get our attention.

Caw, caw, caw......

 

                            "Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth... these are one and the same fight.

We must connect the dots between climate change, water scarcity, energy shortages, global health, food security and women's empowerment. Solutions to one problem must be solutions for all."

(Ban Ki-moon)