Response Essay

“Dryball”
A response essay to “Hardball”

Think of the Earth as an apple tree with some of the biggest, juiciest and most beautiful apples your eyes have not yet seen. How did someone manage to cultivate such amazing piece of nature? Well, start thinking of it from the very beginning of its life, the seed that gave birth to such glorious tree, that provided that perfect fruit. Then, all theyears it took for it to grow, the apple tree getting filled with leaves and all kind of insects and animals, from birds and spiders to squirrels and owls, living on it just as the earth gets filled with life. But for it to grow as majestic as it is, it needs good attention, perhaps the best care from everyone and everything. It needs all living things on it to follow an order of life, to know thateach and every decision they make affects them and everyone around, even where a woodpecker decides to make a hole on the tree. The hole can get to be the shelter for some flying squirrel or it can be the cause of a broken branch. The tree needs all animals on it to take care of their living space as if it was no other like it, and indeed, there is not. Yes, there are predators and prey, butthose predators only take what they need to survive. They are not greedy animals, or they have learned not to be. They are conscious that consuming more than they need would end all life on that tree.
Then you have the apple, that one fruit provided by the tree which is the base of the food chain, the source of life for that tree. Can everyone eat these apples? No, since these apples are the basisof life for the animals in that tree, only the ones who know how valuable it is can eat it, and for those who don’t appreciate it, it shall become the forbidden fruit. It would matter if someone were to take advantage of this tree and its fruits for his own benefit or greed. They would end the circle of life on the tree: No more fruit, no more tree, no more life on that exploited living space.
Ifpeople don’t take care of the Earth they’ll end up destroying it. Humans will end up living on a world as the text “Hardball”, from Margaret Atwood, describes. They have to help the Earth survive, take care of it and respect it, because it holds the basis of their existence. People eat what the Earth provides for them. If people are ridiculous enough to believe they have a lot of time to figureout how to save the planet, they will become living creatures on a rotten world. Mankind will end up without being able to choose what to eat or how much they eat. After a few years of living like starving dogs locked up on coffin with only enough to survive, they will perhaps enjoy a game about the one that starves the most wins! Or even better, the one who eats the most delicious, freshly cuthuman fingers in a year wins! How exciting! Mankind comes full circle, and just as cannibal ancestors, they will eat each other trying to survive.
What about consumerism. It is one of the most deadly weapons for the environment. Can people keep on buying things they don’t really need? Maybe all those TV advertisements have a huge impact on their way of seeing life, making them believe that the onlyway to become happy is to have everything, whether you need it or not. Besides that, there are all those cosmetics that create this big image of fake persons. They keep on testing them on animals, killing them, and killing themselves in a way. And then there are those sprays. These sprays are and will continue to be dangerous for the environment. Of course they work; they all destroy the ozonelayer in some way. Is that what humans are trying to achieve for themselves, for the future of humanity, and mainly, for the future of the whole world? To live in a small transparent bubble hiding from all of the outside trouble?
Last but not least, humans have one of the main sources of life and something they can’t yet create by themselves: water. This sometimes called “element of life” is...