But, since you’re asking –
and since I’ve been thinking about this shit
for about as long as I think I’ve been able to think:
All of our seemingly unrelated issues
can really be traced back to a handful
of fundamental human errors,
both of theory and of practice.
One. The “bottom line” always seems to be
a monetary one. What price can be affixed
to humanity – and to the biosphere that it is
merely a subset of?
Two. There’s been too much emphasis on praying,
pontificating, and protesting and not enough
willingness to get up off our asses and our knees
(and down off our pulpits and our soapboxes) and
put our heads, hearts, and hands together to do
something about all the shit we keep blabbing about.
Three. In all our escalating hyper-consumptiveness,
we seem no longer to be able to distinguish between
niceties and necessities. How much do we really
need – and are we even willing to go out and earn
that? There was a time when hot-and-cold running
water and flick-of-the-switch electricity seemed
almost more than we should expect. Nowadays, we
can’t be content until Alexa draws our blinds and
our bath and breakfasts us in bed. Do we really
need some fake female cybermaton to wash our
dishes, take out our trash, play our music, tuck us in,
wipe our asses, and jerk us off? I guess if you’re
some sleazy misogynistic good old boy who happens
to be an Apple, Microsoft, or Amazon alpha male exec
the answer is yes. The rest of us should be ashamed.
Four. We’ve been too wasteful for too long –
of time, of resources, of energy, of labors, and of
lives – and our propensity for throwing things away
instead of rebuilding, repurposing, or renewing them
has left us wallowing waist-deep in our own waste.
We continue to choke off our airways, to fill the
land with landfills, to shit in the fountain of use, so
drunk on our detritus we just keep on flushing the
toilet as if some gigantic high-tech benevolent turd
fairy will just make it all disappear. We’ve got to
get over this fantasy-laden corporate business plan
of unlimited growth potential, wanton discardliness,
and the premature obsolescence of last year’s model:
“How will we ever keep up when all the ‘Joneses’
around us have smarter phones than us? We’re still
5G, fer chrissakes!” We don’t even allow our own
dead bodies to relinquish their nutrients back into
the biotic reservoir they originally drew them from.
Think of all the resources being dammed up by this
practice and the toxicity of all that embalming fluid
that will eventually leach back into the soil.
Five. Our increasing idleness and heightened sense
of boredom with ourselves feeds our growing
expectation of perpetual amusement and
entertainment. Blame that on all those wonderful
labor-saving devices the Industrial Revolution
bestowed upon us, and now on all the poison apps
that are eroding our ability to even remember,
navigate, perform simple calculations, or come up
with original ideas of our own. Have you been to an
airport lately, watching whole families panicking
around you because the batteries in their phones, pads,
pods, and laptops are running low? “How will we
make it through four, maybe five hours without being
plugged in??”, as you just smile and pull out an old-
fashioned paperback, a stack of papers to grade, or that
poem you’ve been working on for a couple days now.
Six. We’re so hung up on our tribalism, we’ve long
been rendered oblivious to who the real enemies are.
Your genealogy, your gender, your generation: None
of these matter in and of themselves – and they never
really did. Do you honestly think humanity is seated
squarely within any one ethnicity, era, or sexual
orientation? Have you not seen that every race and
every sex and every historical timespan have had
atrocities attributable to them? Can you wrap your
head around the idea that it is class that draws the
line between right and wrong? That no one should
be having seconds until everyone has had firsts?
That prosperity begets poverty? That the enemy is
the one who would take (1) what they don’t need,
(2) what they’ve not earned, or (3) at the expense
of someone else? That the very desire to be one of
“the haves” is as criminal as being one of them?
That religion, patriotism and which team you’re
rooting for are even more irrelevant?
Seven. Brace yourself now ‘cuz here’s the one that
almost no one really wants to hear: We expect to live
too long and too well to be making this many babies.
There’s a simple formula for it: Fecundity plus
craved affluence equals runaway hominism. It is
the single most pervasive human problem. None of
the above would be as problematic as they are were it
not for this one. I have to continue to ask this (it will
likely be one of the questions I’ll be asking with my
last dying gasps of breath): How can we even think
about bringing more hungry mouths into a world where
millions of us are so deeply mired in poverty, disease,
and starvation?? Can you name five more heinous
crimes against humanity (and all of life) than this one?
So what the fuck is the point? We might as well just
give up any hope and simply eat, drink, and be merry
until the whole infrastructure collapses on us, right?
The envelope, please: Well, as always, there’s some
good news and some bad. The good news is that it
ain’t rocket science, folks. None of this shit is that
hard to figure out. The trick is in the implementation.
Yes, we are pretty stupid animals (sapiens, my ass)!
But, though stupidity is an equal-opportunity
affliction, it is also entirely curable by simply
choosing to allow one’s self to be confused long
enough to achieve some genuine degree of
understanding. Thinking is a lot harder than knowing.
It’s also as essential for progress as are perspiration,
callouses, and aching muscles. Authentic answers are
even more difficult to come up with than earnest
questions. Which brings us to the bad news: First,
we’re going to have to be willing to tighten our belts
(which may just be the toughest part of all) and do
without some of the unnecessities we’ve all gotten
used to. Then we’re going to have to mule up and
strap in and pull together ‘cuz ain’t none of this
gonna get done by election, delegation, or decree.
We’re gonna get sweaty and smelly and sore. We’ll
grow hungry and thirsty and tired and cranky and
argumentative and maybe even a little resentful. But
as long as we’re committed to the common good, to
being able to go to sleep with a clear conscience, to
shouldering as much of the burden as everyone else is,
there’s just no way we can’t make this work.
I’m up for that.
I’m down for that.
How ‘bout you?
