"Man would have only four years of life left..."

...without song and without honey:

On npr the other day, they were talking about the sudden and rampant disappearance of bees in North America... one theory, not entirely implausible, is that the navigation systems of the bees is blocked or disrupted by radiation emitted from cellphones- which prevents them from being able to find their way back to their nests, resulting in what's called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Ow.

THEN,

Tom Ashbrook hosted a woman who discussed a similar thinning-out occurring in the songbird population:

"We are losing our migratory birds. ... Over the last 40 years, many
species have lost 30 to 40 percent of their numbers...a lot of migrants
are coming back earlier because in general springs are coming earlier.
Birds are tracking climate change and they are noticing"


The solution: to toss the phone, and build bird-habitats in the backyard?
Well, there's more at stake here...

For millennia, bees have been symbols of perfect polity. Pliny,
Aristotle, Cicero, Plutarch- they have all pondered upon the
virtues of the little buzzers... but that's wild bees. The disappearing
bees mentioned here are domestic. When man domesticates, he corrupts. He intends to be symbiotic, but cannot help but abuse. Bees have had enough, are leaving, going back to their own perfect, natural polities.

If man threw away his cellphones and went back to nature,
he'd corrupt nature all over again, in another way... we won't
settle for stasis, but will always seek progress. Being human is a
blessing and a curse, but for nature, the existence of humans is
definitely a curse. Humans doesn't need nature if they have
technology (which can make food out of non-nature), and other
people (to define themselves against); nature doesn't define
itself against humans, and doesn't take anything from
mankind, only loses to it...

The irony is that even man- who anthropomorphises
nature (as in the ancient symbols of birds, whales, bees)-
still corrupts nature.

The story of disappearing species is a metastory, a story that unites and transcends an already established tradition of stories, which use anthropomorphisation to express fundamental truths about man vs. nature. The new metastory restates and supercedes the same: humans are incompatible with nature, even and especially when they are doing their best to be compatible. As every man dies alone,
so does the species. There is no home to go back to, there is only us. As we stand.
Alone, together.

Hippies and druids and greens and others are right in their
actions, wrong in their thoughts; there is no balance between
man and nature that can be recaptured or recreated. Man has
been an anomaly, a sore thumb sticking out, ever since he
appeared in nature. Those who glory in being an anomaly say
the same thing, but in reverse terms: Nature is here for the
sake of man, for man is special. Man is the paragon of Creation,
Creation was created for man's sake. In either case,
the anomaly theme unites the greens and the priests.
So may as well stop pretending otherwise.

Hence the prophecy is wrong: when bees disappear,
and birds stop singing, it shows we're doing great.

And they're not.