Real life and death in the virtual world
Posted by mofembot Sat, 28 Feb 2009 12:32:00 GMT
I was in tears earlier today, having learned via A Siegel’s diary on DailyKos this morning that one of my favorite diarists, JohnnyRook, is not expected to live through the weekend. JohnnyRook has been writing about “climaticide” (his term, as reflected on his website, “The Climaticide Chronicles” at http://climaticidechronicles.org) for a while now, and I have found his articles to be well-researched, compelling, superlatively illustrated and documented… and totally scary.
JohnnyRook has AML—acute myeloid leukemia—the same wretched, fast-acting cancer that killed my old boss and friend Janet Mattei a few years ago. Barring a miracle, he will soon leave behind his wife and teenage son, many “real-life” friends, and many more virtual friends like me. He is, I believe, 55.
I hate thinking of his voice going silent, his website material archived…. I’m not a scientist, and I don’t think I’d be able to continue his work to inform people about the critical state of our biosphere, but I would be willing to help if I could. Given all the craziness of these past few years, the chaotic economy, the rapid disappearance of so many species of flora and fauna, devastating wars (and so on, infinitum ad naseam), it’s been easy to think that there is really nothing that I as an individual can do to counter such overwhelming entropy. But I think JohnnyRook’s reaction to learning about his cancer is a right and proper way to respond to the global mess:
My initial response to learning that my life was likely to be shorter than I had expected was, not surprisingly, rather selfish. I thought about the time that I would lose with my family and friends, of the traveling that I would not get to do, of the books that I would not get to read. But something else happened too: the world became more poignant to me. I’d always thought of myself as a caring, empathetic, compassionate person, but now I found suffering, cruelty, and abuse to be intolerable regardless of the form it took. Debeaked hens crammed into tiny cages and stacked in factory-farm warehouses, infants shaken to death by their parents because they wouldn’t stop crying, genocide in Darfur, my countrymen in Appalachia and on the Gulf Coast treated as if they lived in a Third World Country, Iraqis bombed by us and by Al Qaeda… It was all too much. I was feeling the world’s pain. And I realized, pardon my presumption here, that I didn’t want to die with the world in such terrible shape, which, finally, brings me to global warming. Of all the insanities that bedevil human beings on this planet none is greater than global warming.
From this realization, the Climaticide Chronicles were born, supplying information and arguments to counter the willfully ignorant claims of the naysayers and deniers. Our biosphere is in desperate trouble, and still there are individuals and groups and corporations and even entire nations that put their short-term comfort and profits ahead of any hope of long-term survival.
We have largely been, both individually and collectively, such poor stewards, preferring dominion and exploitation to conservation and selflessness at every turn. I have asserted in religious forums that if Jesus were to come again, he will not wave a magic wand and presto!—all will be clean and pristine; rather, he’d look around and in righteous wrath and disgust tell these “faithful” types, “You’ve got a thousand years. Clean up this mess!”
Well, anyway. To cry real tears at the thought of someone dying whom I’ve met only through his words and occasional exchanges in the comments may seem overblown to some, but oh, the grief is real. Very, very real.
I hope writing this is completely premature, but — requiescat in pace, JohnnyRook.