Go ahead. Surely, a word to describe your inability to lessen your impact on our environment is on the tip of your tongue. Drawing a blank? Figures. Okay, go ahead and ruminate on this for a minute or two. Chew your cud and spit out whatever comes to your mushy mind. Leave a comment if you would like. But it’s probably not going to be the same word I’d use. You’d probably say “busy” or “don’t care.” Or perhaps, “I can’t afford to have an opinion.” If you took the time.
Chew your cud some more.
Let’s take a look at what helped to create this cattle-like spectator attitude in you. This country and its people are largely stuck in the 20th century which gave rise to the American economic, social and cultural dreamscape that persists to this day. We wage war to create peace. We are Conservatives who conserve nothing and deny the need to conserve anything. We tighten the garrotte on the future as we continue being mindless and heedless today. Rolling around in piles of materiality that will become a tomb unless there is a dramatic shift in people’s everyday actions toward conservation of the real kind. All people. Not just some people. Conserving. As in resources unused.
Exhausting the Earth’s “Capital”
As the planet’s health declines, we’re on autopilot as individuals, pawns and rooks in the game being played by those who pull the gears, levers, and wheels of our Rube Goldberg-esque economy. We’re vassals, not of government, but of corporations. This headlong approach is mirrored by 1.3 billion Chinese people. And 1.2 billion Indian people.
All of us can read blogs. Not everybody can see the writing on the wall for our planet. The purpose of this essay is to point at human-manufactured pollution’s source: the average-income person living in a free country anywhere on the planet.
In this country, statistically speaking, you drive a car to work everyday. You eat some type of meat at almost every meal. You don’t recycle anything more than bread ties. You don’t have a compost heap. You may not even know what a compost heap is. You don’t have a garden either. You probably don’t like brocolli, just like George Bush. You probably don’t like me for saying so.
By any material, objective definition, you are a corporate tool. Look around you. How much stuff do you throw in the trash every stinking day? Give no thought to where it ends up. Do nothing to avoid using it in the first place. Why? Because you think it’s just too much to think about, this environmental quagmire we’re all in. You’re probably hungry. I know, you have your reasons and your priorities, and they’re not unique, obviously.
Go ahead, this weekend turn on your television and blot out any thoughts that might stir you into some. kind. of. action. So order in some pizza, turn on This Old House, or a NASCAR race, or switch over to a basketball game. It’s almost March Madness, remember. Have a Budweiser. Toss out the can. Have another. Cruise the net. Buy more stuff. Go somewhere for the fun of it. Fuck tomorrow. Fuck this topic. Fuck this blogger who sets himself up as some kind of pundit saying you should change.
You will change whether you agree to the changes or not.
So go ahead and follow your sports or cultural heroes and captains of industry today. Bow down and kiss the feet of those who have more material blessings and a lifestyle you covet. Aspire to be as like them as you can possibly be and little else. And make sure to studiously ignore dissenting voices that attempt to reach out or reason with you.
You, Mr. and Ms. America, cannot be reasoned with. You shut down easily as your brain and temperament overheat from any needlessly thought-provoking exertion. You have no spirit for dialog that asks for you to give something back. You get your opinions from CNN and Fox News. You give nothing back beyond your own dinner table. Therefore any opinion you come away with after reading this blogger’s appeal to you will likely remain unshared. Your judgment is sacrosanct. I have somehow impugned it. You want to kill the messenger for it. Fine, but this is the very definition of the selfishness that rules our daily lives. If you don’t want to watch or help, you turn away. In this country, it’s called class and style.
Have a nice day living with your eyes wide shut and being part of the environmental problems facing humanity and all living things. Thank you for reading and good luck pulling that blank out of your apathetic ass.
