RGVECB's Thought for the Day - Totems

After reviewing the previous "Thought for the Day", Ray's, which he actually had in the very wee-est of the hours this morning, we have collectively decided that his thought is not sufficiently Druidic. So we have decided to use Ray's thought in a lesson. To review Ray's thought it will be necessary to pan south, because as you may or may not know, this topic reads from the bottom up, mostly. In the instance of this thought and Ray's previous thought, bottom up reading is a definite requirement for proper cogitation. (Note: There is no such spell as cogitude, but cogitude should be a spell. Therefore, it now is a spell, and we should all have a cogitude for the upcomin').

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The troubling aspect of Ray's thought involves our concept of totemism. As you know, totems are very important in Druidism. Transmigration of form, in dream and vision, connects Druids with the WG and reinforces a fundamental principle of our religion: that all life is intrinsically important unto itself, the single thread, biotic connectivity, from which all else follows.

So..... why is what Ray spelled troubling? Easy that, maybe.

Ray's intent was to satirize gluttony and the headlong rush to transform the Texas landscape into a landscape imitative of the Middle East. But why did Ray feel obliged to include the Golden-cheeked Warbler (gcw) in the spell? The gcw is not, so far as we know, one of Ray's personal totems, so his thread to the gcw is general, but not specific. Of course, a great many little wonders were lost to this sphere on account of that particular house, and some of those may have included a Ray totem or two, but Ray doesn't mention those. Curious.

So we now come to the nub of the gist, as it were, the totem lie, a very bad lie, indeed. The totem lie shifts our focus on the human environment from our actions with repsect to the human envrironment on to, of all things, specific animals and sometimes plants; thus, the globe is treated to the "killing endangered species jokes" that have become so tediously familiar. And the reason people can not achieve some ambition, always in the proximal sense involving monetary gain, is an animal or sometimes a plant standing in the way of progress. So for some, these totem animals, or sometimes plants, become symbols (totems) for derision and the mechanism for promoting that derision is to contrast the needs and goals of people with the in situ recalcitrance of an animal or plant and its habitat. But of course, the target of this derision, since they are largely impervious to such, is not the animal or sometimes plant totem, but the people who have adopted these totems as symbols for their vision of the human environment.

With this in mind, how should Ray's satire be viewed? We have some obvious in yer face gluttony on display, and this contrasted with the upslope woodland which does happen to be part of a preserve temporarily set aside as habitat for the gcw. Both the house and the woodland are aspects of the human environment. Possibly the house was so located and its value increased due to the woodland backdrop. But the house, and many more similar to it, are the trend in the human environment while the woodland is trending towards oblivion.

Ask yourself, is it time to dispense with nature altogether, and dwell in a human environment with only human commensals and human parasites for company?