Song of Planet Earth

2013 Leighton K. Chong. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 6/17/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-5899-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-5900-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-5901-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013909871

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Table of Contents

Prologue: Song of Planet Earth

Chapter 1:   Japan: The First Ground Zero

Chapter 2:   China: A Global Disaster in the Making

Chapter 3:   Mongolia: Once Upon the Eve of Destruction

Chapter 4:   Turkey: Shadow of a New Menace

Chapter 5:   Istanbul: East Versus West, Again

Chapter 6:   Edinburgh: From Enlightenment to God Particle

Chapter 7:   Barcelona: Hope is Our Sacred Family

Chapter 8:   New York City: Ground Zero Revisited

Chapter 9:   San Francisco: Home Is Where the Heart Is

Epilogue: The Song Will Go On

Acknowledgments

Dedication

To my children Tyler and Lauren and their next generation of Earthlings who will be stewards of our Planet: that they may see the Earth as a whole, know all there is to know, then do their best for all the world.

Foreword

The alien scout reported to his commander, Sir, I have confirmed that the Earthlings possess nuclear weapons.

The alien commander asked, Are they a threat to us?

No, sir, said the scout. They have them pointed at each other.

Prologue:

Song of Planet Earth

[An Alien Song]

I.

By the galactic straits of Orion Arm in Milky Way,

On a spiraling wave of space-time curvature,

Shines a yellow Sun afire with nuclear starlight.

Born out of vast nebulous dust of supernovae

Sol’s gravity disk swirls silently in deepest night.

From a cloud of star matter slung into orbits tight,

Coalesced as planets waltzing on a far-flung plane,

Bright and hard are these jewels by Sun enflamed.

II.

A third planet Earth glimmering like lapis lazuli —

Its bright blue orb framed by the deep black sky

And banded in white whorls of cloud-like sinter —

Basks in a temperate zone of Sun’s extremity

Where land, water and air can co-exist together.

As Earth spins in pas de deux with Moon as partner,

Its inner core brims with magmous roiling heat

To warm its surface layer to a vibrant beat.

III.

It was by chance elemental carbon of valence four,

Joining with covalent elements in water and air,

That built amino acids into functional proteins

Enabling biologic energy to be made and stored.

It was by chance the stability of nucleotides

For amine encoding of genes that replicated

Into nuclei of cells and made enzymes rife

For all the functions needed for biotic life.

IV.

Over a billion years passed in lush chemistry

Of biotic soup boiling in Earth’s thermal spumes,

Permutating in organic structures of every kind

Engaged in pathways of ever growing diversity.

Biding another billion years of cellular complexity

Flourishing in rich hosts of slime, mold and fungi,

All flora and fauna emerged in genera diverse,

Producing the richness of life covering Earth.

V.

Fungal yeast captured life’s basic cell best,

Encoded in DNA the same today as in man.

In paean to this cell life, humans now bless

Bread and wine fermented by ancient yeast.

Across a billion more years in waters still blue,

From Cambrian genus of worm emergent new,

Fishes filled the seas and came on land amphibian,

To rule as dinosaurs then gave way to mammalian.

VI.

For mammals sex enabled opposites to mate,

Rewarded by orgasm propelling sperm to egg,

Diversifying their gene pools with each offspring,

Selected by nature for the fittest to procreate.

Through fighting, hunting, mating, and providing,

Nature chose the strong, wily, sexy and cunning.

From tree shrew to lemur, then gibbon to bonobo,

Last emerged the upright tool-user, genus homo.

VII.

In mankind, a new order of mind emerged,

A reflection of life-affirming spirit of universe.

Man learned to transform thought into matter,

What no mind could foresee, no desire imagined.

Migrating out of Africa to far places ever greener,

Man the wise learned to seek food and find shelter,

Creating art and invention, language and writing,

To tame the wild, his knowledge ever growing.

VIII.

But man’s pride led to greed, and lust to domination,

Till all the world was subject to man’s deadly bidding.

In great suffering has mankind’s misfortunes grown

In every age with death, disease and devastation,

From hands lifting a black flag of Mongol khan

To the same fitting krytron trigger to nuclear bomb,

Casting a dark side to what man has accomplished,

With a loss for every gain, a price paid for every wish.

IX.

What shall be the outcome of mankind on Earth?

To fall under the weight of hubris unrepentant,

Burdened by many evils on which life was spent,

Or to live in greater grace to life’s true worth?

The need for warmth that desired fire to be lit,

Now burns fossil fuels clouding Earth’s climate;

While the rich and powerful hoard ill-gotten wealth,

The poor and sick dwell in hunger and ill health.

X.

Already consuming Earth’s resources with undue haste

Faster than can be replaced, man’s seven billion

In number may double in only fifty years time,

Speeding resource depletion and mindless waste.

Can man waken from stupor and change his mind

To take needed steps and avert the end of his kind?

These are the questions to be probed on Earth today

To answer: what better nature in man will hold sway?

[Exploration Log: Milky Way Galaxy, Orion Arm, Local Bubble 8K Parsecs GC, Sol S, 3rd Planet, Earth CE, 158ºW, 21.5ºN, 05.15.2013, 10:30:01 AM]

Call me Alvin. Some years ago – never mind how long precisely — I decided to travel around Planet Earth to experience it as a whole. I thought I should know what it is like to be an inhabitant of Earth not limited to any one country, race, religion, ethnicity, or family. I wanted to experience the existence of all human beings as a whole, as I believe that Earth is a unique blessing bestowed on all humans, and that they have a responsibility to live on it and use its bounty accordingly. While my viewpoint may seem alien to most humans, it may in fact be important to their survival on Earth.

Planet Earth has a richness rare in this Galaxy, or almost anywhere else in the Universe for that matter. In a temperate habitable zone gently warmed by the Sun, this planet’s breathable atmosphere, cool surface waters, plant-rich land masses, and magma-layered interior core all co-exist in an harmonious balance. Biologically perfected and intelligent life forms have emerged from primordial cellular life through genetic evolution driven by sexual mating of species. An upright walking hominid species with large brain capacity and dexterous appendages called man or human has developed to high self- and other-awareness.

Humans engage in diverse social interactions with each other, mostly by making differentiated verbal sounds called speech. This enables humans to continuously communicate their state of being to others and, consequently, to monitor the status of others. Speech has positive effects, such as expressing love or caring for others, and also negative effects, such as exhibiting fear or envy of others. The history of humans reflects this duality of consciousness, positively through altruism, charity, and cooperation, and negatively through domination, war, and genocide.

In a recent global cataclysm called World War II, some sixty to seventy million humans were killed, and the conflict was ended in part by American use of its newly developed nuclear weapons against the Asian power of Japan. Following the war, the Americans and the Russians developed large arsenals of nuclear weapons as superpowers engaged in a global arms race with the potential to destroy themselves and the entire world thousands of times over. A dozen other societies sought to develop their own arsenals of nuclear weapons. In reaction to superpower dominance, rogue states and clandestine stateless combatants have also tried to acquire weapons of mass destruction to destabilize or intimidate dominant societies considered as enemies. The untoward use of nuclear weapons appears on present human course to be a risk of high probability.

Humans have a highly developed capacity of mind that, when combined with free will learned from their evolution for species survival, often causes them to act in ways contrary to the needs of their objective circumstances. Whether humans will act to avoid destruction of themselves and Earth depends on their state of mind. I decided to take a trip around Planet Earth for a study of humans to understand their ways of thinking about the dire risks they face. My trip was taken by inhabiting the mind of a world traveler as a dual consciousness surveying diverse human viewpoints around the world.

1

Japan: The First Ground Zero

[Exploration Log: Earth CE, 140ºE, 34ºN, 05.16.2013, 02:30:01 PM]

Analysis of paleontological evidence and recorded histories of human beings reveals that the modern hominid species Homo Sapiens originated in Africa and began migrating out of the African continent about 100,000 years ago onto the Eurasian continent. With their adaptive physical and mental abilities for tool manipulation, discovery of how to make and control fire, and development of speech and symbol manipulation for social intercourse and status ordering, modern humans established themselves as nomadic tribes of hunter-gatherers in fertile, animal-rich regions across the Eurasian land mass, driving out and eventually exterminating other hominid species such as Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon.

With warming climate and receding glaciers ending the recent Ice Age about 20,000 years ago, human tribes grew in population and began to exhaust gatherable wood and plant resources and diminishing animal herds in their locales. They adapted by learning to raise cattle and plant and irrigate crops to produce food. In consequence, they began to organize larger human societies for controlling and managing land and water resources for food production and human habitation in established settlements.

To promote cohesion among growing populations, psychological adepts, such as shamans, advisors, and seers, took on the role of providing inspiring stories of the origin of their people, their place in the larger world, and assurance of their future survival. These priests became powerful stewards of the codification of societal tenets into religions, often requiring patronage, gifts and other tributes in return. A religion was useful for keeping social order, codifying status systems among people, and promoting cooperation among the various classes or castes within a society. In conflicts among competing societies, religion was also useful for branding others as infidels or evil ones, and therefore justifying their killing or subjugation. The more virulent a religion is in justifying killing or subjugating others, the more successful the society is likely to be.

Among the many religions extant among humans today, Christianity is practiced by 33% of the world population, Islam 21%, Hinduism 13%, and Buddhism 6%. The major religions all share the common vision of people aspiring to be at one with the great spirit of life in the Universe. Yet, to promote their own specialness, each religion typically advocates its own unique set of beliefs that are adopted by their followers and are used to exclude non-believers. Exclusionary beliefs make interfaith dialog and mutual understanding difficult if not impossible. Islam, now the fastest growing religion on Earth, is the most virulent in asserting that non-believers are to be converted or subjugated. Human religions, like human nature in general, tend to express high aspirations, but the actions of their believers tend to follow their own self-interests.

For my world survey of typical human states of mind, I have identified a passenger in Seat 33A