Women or men who didn't or don't get along with their mothers are generally enraged, but also spend their lives looking for replacements. That may be one way of describing mankind's relationship with mother earth. Those who cotton to the notion of the Adamic fall will account for the fact that 5000 years of recorded history have been a story of unremitting war. The more science minded may see human strife as devolving from the fact of man as chimera, an animal whose attendant consciousness creates an inner battlefield manifesting itself in the inability to live peacefully with others. But the real truth is that human beings have a love/hate relationship with the singularity which begot them. Earth gave birth to man and yet the creature she fostered rarely expressed gratitude for his or her condition. Instead he or she would eventually take their rage out by trying to explode the planet, through pollution and nuclear weapons rendering it uninhabitable, or seeking a substitute. The latter may account for at least part of man's fascination with the prospect of life in outer space. The fact is that the rage with the mother will never pass. Even after the earth is hit by a comet or becomes subsumed by its dying sun, mankind will still harbor a grudge. Despite advances which will enable humans to explore the furthest reaches of outer space, for example planets orbiting Kepler 62, which occupy the so called Goldilocks zone of temperatures amenable to life, the angry orphaned race will never find the perfect substitute or ideal image it's looking for.
{This was originally posted to The Screaming Pope, Francis Levy's blog of rants and reactions to contemporary politics, art and culture}