By Mary O’KEEFE

The other day I saw a post from rah_cosmic_force #heresthesoup. It shows an individual standing in a forest holding a bowl of soup and a vial of “poison.” He uses a dropper to place a small amount of poison on one side of the large soup bowl. 

“If I poison this side of the soup, you probably wouldn’t feel comfortable eating from the [other side],” he pointed out. “We can all agree whatever is happening on this side of the soup before long will be on this side because the poison can travel. Soup is clearly a continuous flowing entity with no gaps.”

He goes on to explain that everything is connected. 

“But we spray our lawns with poison, dig for oil, chop down rain forests and dump raw sewage in the ocean and then struggle to connect the dots when we get ill. And that’s because we’re taught to believe that the universe is made up of individual objects separated by empty gaps of space,” he added. 

This is something that seems to be a constant – sort of “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” kind of thinking in society. However, the fact is there are consequences. Isn’t this what we teach our kids, after all? We tell them that if they don’t do their homework or don’t study for a tests they will have to deal with the consequences, which can mean failing a class. 

There are other lessons: If you don’t put gas in your car, or charge your car, it will not work. If you don’t pay your bills or don’t get a medical checkup or overeat or overdrink … there are consequences for those actions, too. These consequences may not be faced immediately but they will eventually be faced. 

So this soup metaphor seems perfect to describe how some think we can do anything to the Earth and it won’t matter; our lawns will still be green, our weather is still perfect, we aren’t seeing a lot of flooding in California and, yeah, we have an increased number of wildfires that spread faster than ever before – but that’s just the way it is. Nothing we do on this side of the soup bowl really has any effect on the other side. 

“Under this illusion, it’s impossible to see the hidden connections between things. The discovery that trees can communicate with each other is all the rage right now, but that’s only really a surprising headline to somebody who thinks the universe is made up of separate bits. One day we’ll remember that everything can communicate with each other because, in reality, all things are one thing. It’s all touching itself and communicating in all directions all the time. It’s all just soup.”

The weather will be warm on our side of the soup bowl this weekend. Today, Friday and Saturday will have highs in the upper 70s and lows in the high 40s/low 50s. On Sunday, Monday and Tuesday it will cool down a bit with temperatures in the upper-to-mid 60s. 

There is an Air Quality Alert for the area, which means a mandatory ban on wood burning, until midnight tonight.