My loyal readers will know by now that I live with my wife Monique and our two kittens, Rose and Joey, and our puppy Pip in the beautiful, wooded area of princely Baarn. This is a place in the Netherlands where part of the Dutch royal family also resides. It is a picturesque, wooded area nestled between the more famous Dutch cities of Utrecht and Amsterdam. In the past, the old nobility who lived in these big cities liked to retreat here to escape the stresses of urban life. These wealthy individuals preferred to travel by horse and cart, turning a journey of thirty kilometers as the crow flies into a trip that could sometimes take days.
Do you ever take a trip to green nature?
Baarn boasts many colossal houses and castles from this affluent past, where these noblemen used to reside. Practically speaking, we are almost neighbors with Princess Beatrix, the former Queen of the Netherlands. Just one garden away lies the world-famous Soestdijk Palace. In earlier years, King William II lived here with the beautiful Russian Grand Princess Anna-Paulowna (1795-1865), whom he was allowed to marry by the Russian Tsar Nicholas because he had outwitted the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte at Waterloo. Did you know that her father, Paul Romanov, died when this beautiful princess was six years old? His brother Alexander was part of the assassination plot.
Indeed, a great Romanov in the beautiful Baarn nature. The landscape looked very different in earlier years. Many of the forests around Baarn were planted to provide timber for building large galleys for naval battles. Nature, in my eyes, is our greatest treasure. The oxygen factory that we, as humanity, so desperately need to survive on our insanely beautiful Earth.
Do you ever worry about oxygen deprivation?
Oxygen seems to be becoming increasingly rare within our draughty circle. Listening to this beautiful Earth, which can take such good care of us, is often foreign to us as human beings. We have cultivated this world further and further according to our desires. If you pick up a history book on a beautiful sunny summer day, you can read that through the influence of you and me, and our "beloved" ancestors, much has been adapted to this beautiful planet in practical ways.
Does survival come at a price?
Currently, new insights are constantly emerging about humans and our Earth. The latest insights tell us that there were not very few people living on Earth as always thought, but that the people on Earth simply did not know of each other's existence. In many cases, "primitive people" "just" lived alongside each other. There is evidence that ancient man could pass each other without noticing. They lived in places where they could hunt well. Hunting was a way to survive. When the game became scarce in the place where they were staying at that time, they simply moved on to another spot.
Yes, that was the way of survival until a certain group discovered how to grow crops. As a result, they had to settle in a certain place to maintain these crops. These places became stopping points where more and more people settled. These people, in turn, cultivated these environments. The cultivation and development are still ongoing, because we, as humans, are driven to reproduce further and further. Why? Probably because our parents said so. So, man continued with his self-serving behavior. You know the rest: "Man adapted the earth more and more to his wishes."
Has man taken too much from the earth?
Man had to and wanted to survive according to his own ideas and had no time, and probably no insights, into what he was causing. The earth was deteriorating without these people from prehistoric times and those in the further development of time consciously noticing this. But you and I, currently? Well, the "economic powers-that-be" tell us through the best marketing messages that we must eat and live differently. The Catholic Church still believes that having children is one of the most important things in life. So, the world's population is expanding, and no one outside the Catholic Church knows why. The stock market is partly about turnover, but people mean more turnover, and rising shares.
"The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer." Healthy and "well" grown vegetables are becoming more and more expensive, and the food-producing companies based on the African mainland produce for the West. Contraceptives are also forbidden by the church there, so humanity continues to grow. Humanity continues to bend everything to its own will; it cultivates the earth according to its desires. I always learned from my parents that you must be content with what you have, but does the rest of humanity feel the same way? Survival and cultivation seem to be in our genes. We shape the earth according to our wishes, but was the earth ever meant for this? And is having children one of the most important things on our planet?
