Itogon, Benguet, viewed from Ambuklao Road. Zoom for details.
The mountains as viewed from the road going up to Bobok, Bokod, Benguet. Ambuklao dam and the community below it Ambuklao Dam and part of the lake it forms. Fishcages and Fishermen’s huts, Ambuklao lake. The delta formed by a river feeding Ambuklao lake.Heavily silted Agno River tributary above Ambuklao Dam.
The past century, specially the latter half of it, showed humanity’s growing concern the destruction that it has wrought upon the environment. Habitat loss, ecosystem destruction, species extinction and endangerment, and pollution are among the many concerns raised by environmentalists and like-minded people.
At the start, those who espoused these concerns were voices in the wilderness, literally and figuratively. Policy-makers largely ignored them. Later on, environmental advocacy gained many adherents, and policy-makers could no longer ignore their calls.
Now, there is global concern about the environment, what with the perceived escalation of human-caused environmental problems that threaten to accelerate climate change and threaten the very survival of the human race.
The survival of the human race is the core of the issue.
While we mouth slogans about saving the environment and nature, what we are really doing is trying to save ourselves.
This planet we call home has already witnessed many cataclysms that have radically altered its environment. These cataclysms include several ice ages, global warmings, meteors that affected the entire planet, and a host of other changes that we could only imagine.
Climate change is constant, and has been happening since the beginning of Earth.
The constancy of change has caused the extinction of species, and the evolution of others able to adapt to the changing environment. In fact, our species, Homo sapiens, has evolved because of these changes. Other species, humanoid ones included, became extinct as they failed to adapt to environmental changes. The dinosaurs are a well known example of this phenomenon of extinction.
All the creatures on Earth are part of the environment. We all play a part in the evolution of the planet, either as causes of the ever-happening-change, or products of it as we adapt to the changes. If we fail to adapt, we become extinct, or we evolve into another being altogether to be able to survive in the changed environment.
Nature and the environment can very well take care of itself. Even if humanity unleashes its most destructive activities on this planet, nature and the environment shall go on. Many of the species as we know them might become extinct, and the human race might itself become lost, but life in this planet shall go on.
The direction of the evolution of life is always to improve upon existing species. Should humanity succeed in destroying the planet as we know it, we might become extinct as a species. But even if we do become extinct, life shall continue on this planet, and new forms of life shall appear. Humanity itself might evolve into another race more adaptable to the changed conditions. Perhaps this planet will even become a better place with us out of the picture.
If we continue to make this planet inhabitable for our species, we are threatening our survival as a race.
This is the reason why humanity is now concerned with the environment. It is only in the interest of self-preservation that we are overly concerned, even if only belatedly, about environmental destruction.
We are not saving the environment or nature. We are simply trying to save ourselves.
If we fail, we shall merely become extinct like the dinosaurs and the dodo. In our absence, nature shall continue, and surviving species shall continue evolving.
Our species has only existed for less than a hundred thousand years. If we manage to engineer our extinction, our presence in this world would be a very tiny speck in the billions of years that the Earth has existed and the additional few billion years that it shall continue to exist when we are gone.
This space does not say that we should stop being concerned about the environment. On the other hand, we can never be overly concerned about it. Let us find ways to keep it habitable for our species, for, as is oft repeated, it is the only planet we call home.
Let us try to save ourselves, hopefully for a time long enough for our race to do away with our frailties, hopefully for a time long enough that a better human species evolves from our flawed existence.
But we should not delude ourselves into thinking that nature or the environment needs us.
Nature and the environment have survived before humans walked this Earth, and this planet shall survive even without us.
A previous piece on shit has produced some feedback, making this writer rather elated, as it is an indication that this space is being read after all. Other topics discussed in this space did not warrant any response from readers, so I presumed that nobody reads my pieces, or, even if somebody does, my spirited thoughts did not deserve feedback at all.
It’s nice to know that somebody reads what I write, and I thank those who do so, even if they think I am a shithead.
The reactions tothe piece were generally funny. One unknown texter, to whom I apologize for not knowing who he or she is (even as I asked who it was, the texter did not identify him/herself), said that what I wrote was “full of shit but it was nice.” The texter quite obviously thinks shit is nice.
I posted the piece on the bibaknets email list, and some members of the list recounted other stories of shit. I suppose shit at anytime makes for interesting conversation.
For this reason, I would like to oblige shitheads like myself by recounting another shitty story.
There was a foreign visitor to our shores back in the eighties, and I accompanied her to one of the villages in Sadanga so that she could observe conditions there. As in many other villages at the time, there were no outhouses or toilets, and one had to defecate in pigpens.
When the visitor had to move her bowels, we informed her of the age-old waste disposal system of feeding the pigs with our aromatic faeces. The foreigner quite naturally did not like the idea of squatting at the edge of the pigpen, with a couple of grunting pigs beneath her buttocks. I suppose she was also rather embarrassed that she had to do it in the open.
After we told her of how she has to do it, she lost the urge to defecate.
Unfortunately, we had to stay overnight in the village, and even though she ate very sparingly that night, her stomach and intestines resumed the pressure on her anus, wanting to rid her body of fecal waste, battling with her sensibilities. It was around nine o’clock at night that her insides won the war, and she finally went out to the pigpen.
Our hosts and I supposed that she waited until dark to defecate, for then at least she would be able to deny the pigs and voyeurs the spectacle of her bared buttocks and her other hidden anatomy.
Inconsiderately and insensitively, we had a few laughs as we listened to the pigs grunting outside the house, trying to stifle our laughter lest our visitor be offended. When at last she returned, visibly very relieved to have gotten rid of body toxin, we became embarrassedly very quiet.
Our visitor proceeded to her assigned sleeping space immediately, with just a murmured good night. She was probably as embarrassed as we were.
As things turned out, I had to move my bowels the morning after. As I positioned my rectal end at the edge of the pigpen, I noticed I was doing more grunting than the pigs. The pigs in the pen were unusually quiet, and quite unnaturally kept their distance, instead of waiting directly underneath my anus waiting for the manna to fall.
I eventually finished, still puzzled as to the odd porcine behavior.
When I was done, I remained near the pigpen, trying to solve the mystery of the quiet pigs. I noticed that the pungent delicacy that came out of my rectum was just lying there on the floor of the pen. The mystery got even more mysterious. The pigs’ behavior was not only odd; it was a total betrayal of the nature of their species!
Then I noticed that beside my pile of shit was a much bigger pile of shit, obviously untouched by the pigs. It must have been the deposit of our foreign friend the night earlier. Now, even as the pigs wanted to get to the food I deposited, they could not find a way around the mountain of the foreigner’s faeces.
Our hosts in the village noticed the very same phenomena when they deposited their own shit. It became a conversation piece. The whole village was talking about the mystery, trying their darnedest best not to do it in our visitor’s presence, and trying to hide their mirth.
Everybody was relieved when we finally left the village at midmorning. Now the villagers could puzzle over the mystery in all hilarity, and their foreign guest could finally set aside the shitty ordeal she has been through.
She did not mention anything about it in the long quiet ride we had back to toilet heaven.
I did not have the heart to tell her of the prevailing theory the villagers had as to why the pigs acted oddly: that even as the guest hated her ordeal, the pigs hated her shit more.
