My Dear Children:
I was blessed with very comforting thoughts at the end of last year, 2007. It has put to
rest all concerns about health and environmental concers. There is nothig left except
happiness and bliss. I will explain.
At the beginning of man’s appearance, he lived in total harmony with his mother, Earth.
He accepted the gifts she had to give, and lived with great respect and appriciation. Life
was simple, though harsh at times, but man saw the great dance of all life and accepted
all events as contributions to a great harmony. Life was given to support other life in an
endless interaction of give and take.
When man began to play with the game of life, inventing, manipulating, controling the
land, the sea, the sky, other life forms, he had no regard for balance, or the injury he was
causing to all. As a result, his numbers have increased to the point of pushing out and
killing numerous life forms that are not recognized as necessary components of the
intricate, delicate web that conprises life itself. Man can not exist as an island. Life is a
cooperative venture and all the parts that make up the whole are necessary.
When one looks at the accomplishments of man, they are truly marvelous. We have
flown to the moon and back, we have eradicated many diseases that have plagued man
for centuries, we have settled areas of the planet that were inhospitable by developing
technology dependent on fossil fuel. The list of achievements is too vast to note. Man is
truly a species of genius.
There is however, one problem. Man is so good at survival, that his numbers threaten to
overwhelm nature. Of course, if nature can no longer support life, man is the loser, for
the planet will once again enter a dormant stage, process the conditions that interrupted
the expression of life, and after perhaps 3,000,000 years, once again begin the dance of
life, with one exception, man will be absent.
At this moment, it appears that we have too many people. Resources, land, and air are
being pushed to the breaking point. Wars are raging, and the same issues that cause
annimosity still remain: different interpretations of what existence is, and opposing
forms of philosophy, religion and politics.
Through the tampering of nature’s controls that maintain balance, man has extended life
through his technology, using drugs and invasive surgery to prolong life. With
identification of the roles of genes, we are now attempting to eliminate death altogether.
Man is overpopulating the planet both by increased birth rates as well as prolonging life.
Man has partnered with nature to assure man’s survival. But if we take on the
responsibility of promoting life, we must also take on the responsibility of destroying life.
Nature has many techniques for controling the numbers of any species. At any time, an
earthqualke, forest fire, tsunami, hurricane, tornado, monsoon, disease, blight, or drought
can eradicate miliions of people. On a personal level, disease and organ failure due to old
Sickness is Health, P.2
age have been tried and true methods for controling numbers. Man stands on the
threshold of becoming a god, though, he may be a lonely god. Not to worry. We are
doing our job at controling our numbers, and I believe we are on the brink of doing so on
a scale only imaginable by a collision with a meteor.
We have introduced chemicals that alter the DNA of numerous species rendering them
into freaks, mutants, and very often, incapable of reproduction. We have damaged the
ozone layer that protects us from harmful rays. We have produced chemicals and
introduced them into the foods we eat that promote cancer. We smoke tobacco products
laced with cancer causing chemicals. We produce and consume foods that lead to
obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. We have invented the most terrible weapons
of mass destruction ever conceived, capable of killing millions and millions of people.
We blow ourselves up in selfless acts of population control. We sell high-powered rifles
that are used by courageos individuals to kill others while at school or filling their car at a
gas station. We fly planes with high explosives and drop them on each others cities. If
some cannot afford such expensive weapons, they steal planes and fly them into buildings
in selfless acts of kindness. We insight anger and rage directed at each other by
exploiting racial, ethnic and religious differences. We invade each other’s countries to
steel their resources. We bomb anyone who disagrees with our polocies.
We are truly the hand-maiden of nature. We are such a hard-working species that
understands the responsibility to balance all this living with great waves of dying.
Therefore, I have wonderful advice for all. I will start with parents.
Encourage your children to play with matches. As soon as they’re two years of age, for
their birthday, buy them ‘strike anywhere’ matches. Encourage them to light the clothes
of their playmates. If they are truly precocious, they’ll set your house on fire killing the
whole family. If they (and you) survive their childhood, buy them a carton of cigarettes
for their twelfth birthday. Smoking is good. It kills many, many people. Do your part.
Bring the earth into balance.
For Everyone: Exploit each other. Insight rage, anger, murder, and riots. Kill everyone
who frustates you. Drive over the speed limit. Smash into other cars. Get as inebriated
as you can and drive your car very fast. Try to jump off a very high bridge. Grab
someone walking by and take them with you. Poison your dinner guests, and claim that
you didn’t know the corn starch you used to thicken the gravy was rat poison. I can go
on and on, but you must be in the spirit of my suggestions by now and can add to the list
on your own.
More ambitious projects for the truly courageous: Remove a section of track that is used
by high-speed passanger trains or chemical freight trains, poison the drinking water of
large cities.
For the truly heroic: Fly a plane into a nuclear reactor. We will elevate you to sainthood.
Sickness is Health, P.3
For Governments: Argue, argue, argue. Start many and bigger wars. Use that nuclear
arsenal. Why pussy-foot around? We spent all that money in developing the big ones,
use them!
The mistake we make in being hesitant to take what may appear as extreme measures is
simply a result of that annoying tendency toward moral judgements of our actions. We
must come clean. We claim to be compassionate and to commit these acts that result in
the deaths of millions from righteous beliefs, and we are right! But we don’t understand
that the beliefs we act from are not the true ones. Obviously, if we want to stop killing,
we stop. If we want clean air and water, we stop dirtying it. If we want to have healthier
people, we stop growing and selling garbage. We are either hipocrits, liars, naive,
studpid, or deluding ourselves. If we would only accept our role as nature’s partner in
population control, we would not only accept our actions that results in the deaths of so
many millions, but we would be proud of ourselves.
We would finally understand the profound service we are providing to nature in helping
her bring the great dance of life into balance.
Come now, Mr. President, don’t be shy. Push the button and help the planet do its job!
David McHugh
3 January 2008
Winston-Salem, NC