Jay Toups

Want to see who your real friends are? It’s simple to lose some or all of your “oinker” friends. Just start trying to live your life more sustainably. Just start talking about it. Step away from the trough of materialism and see what happens. Cleave yourself off from the herd and learn how to reduce your carbon footprint. Start making needed adjustments in your lifestyle, and then start actively encouraging other people to reduce, reuse, recycle. Or no-cycle, as in do without.

Talk about being green and do the walk. Bring up environmental issues and explore the topic in earnest as if your life and theirs depended on it. You’re not an expert on being green, but you don’t have to be an expert to understand what is happening to this planet and what we need to do about it. But be ready for some good old fashioned blowback. And the occasional oink.

In some cases, you’ll be treated like a religious fundamentalist or a rabid sports fan, with a mix of open hostility, ridicule or misinformed amusement. Mostly you’ll be ignored, as I have. Very likely most people you consider to be friends and acquaintances will not ever take your efforts seriously. Some will even as far as to sever all contact with you just for crossing the line and talking about something that makes them extremely uncomfortable.

Why is that? Could it be they’re oinkers with snouts firmly planted in the trough who’d rather die than give up their place in line? Is there a “selfish” gene?

Being green is a personal decision that requires good self esteem that isn’t derived solely from what others think of you. You are more than the sumof your stuff and other people’s views of you. Oink. Nobody can decide for you that you will be a good environmentalist from this day forward. It’s your decision. It comes with a price in the social realm.

In this country, the default mode of environmentalism is switched to off or “bad” as people go about their daily business of consuming, traveling and basically trashing the earth’s resources. It’s up to you to take a stand and do something credible or not. But it’s easy to see why you probably won’t. You don’t care enough to lose friends who are stuck in trash mode and wish to remain there. After all, if you’re not consuming in lock step with them you’ll be kicked off the island because you’re no longer like them.

Of course you care about the environment, just not that much. I get it. Go get a double-bacon cheeseburger and make sure to fill your gas tank so you won’t miss a thing at the trough next to your beloved buddies.

Oink.