I’ve been writing every day on this blog. Maybe it’s because I have something to say. I should probably go on another rant today, but what can I rant about next? How about the automobile and it’s destruction? How it turns everything around us into a blur? How they make cities in such a way that it is nearly impossible to get where you need to go without owning one of these behemoths. A two-thousand pound machine going 60 miles an hour is just insane if you really think about it. How many deaths have been caused because people had no real choice but to drive their car?
Most people don’t question the invention of the automobile because it would be against their interest to do so. It’s turned our forests into pavement and moved all our stores further and further apart. It’s the whole reason we’re at war with Iraq. We need the oil or else we won’t be able to get around anymore. It’s kind of funny how one aspect of society breaking down can ruin the whole system. If we completely ran out of oil and had no fuel to replace it, can you imagine the world we would see before us? People walking everywhere or biking towards their destinations. I bet that people would be much healthier. We would be more resilient. There would be much less carbon monoxide in the air. There would be no concern about global warming. And I bet things would start moving closer together.
Travelling is something that hasn’t been done in automobiles except in the last century, give or take a few years. Before, all our needs could be met in a small radius of space, maybe one mile. How many people today live near a supermarket or a doctor’s office that they could just walk to? The only way to bypass owning a car is to move to a city like NYC where you merely use other people’s automobiles to get where you need to go. There really is no choice in the matter. And because of this, we keep hurting the world’s atmosphere and paving more and more roads until the whole world, viewed from space, will be nothing more than a big gravel rock.
I just feel like we could be doing better as a steward of our planet. We are supposed to be the most intelligent beings on this planet, and we’re the ones that are doing the most harm. There are some people who realize that, but there are others who never even take one second to think about it, except maybe on Earth Day, one day out of 365 where we pretend to care about the planet and maybe recycle a couple of plastic bottles. The problem with most Americans is they want to preserve the lifestyle they have now at any cost. That comes first. Saving the planet comes second, third, or fiftieth. Better not change their way of life or you may be considered a terrorist.
I remember Jimmy Carter giving some speech about how Americans are overconsuming and need to limit what they buy when he was president. He talked about sustainability and how we can’t keep living like this forever. What happened to him? He lost the next election and was shunned by the American people for enciting such ideas into the American way of life. I believe it was Ronald Reagan who succeeded him and he said, “We can keep progressing in the manufacturing of goods indefinitely!” He was elected by a landslide. By telling what is an irresponsible lie. Anyone with half a brain knows our way of life is not sustainable. But most of these people put it out of their mind because it’s easier to go along with the crowd and buy, buy, buy. If you don’t do what everyone else is doing, you have to constantly explain yourself to those who don’t understand. Most people would rather just become what the world says they should be. It takes a lot of courage to get out of that box.
But how far back to we have to go to become sustainable or even better again? I hate how people think in the terms of back and forward. They act like if we were to start building straw houses, we would be going backward. Time only goes in one direction. Forward. We can go “back” to a less destructive way of life, but with our current consciousness. We can live like every other creature on Earth, even though we are much smarter than them. We can explore the depths of our mind without extracting more resources. We can create abundance to meet our needs, all our needs without having to feel like we’re missing out on the newest gadget. We can shift to becoming more self-sufficient. We can create small villages again. It will take time because who’s to say that another village won’t develop weapons and overtake us again, causing us to go along with their way of life? We need to guard against that.
What we need to do is go back to living like “primitive” people, but with the mind to never go back to the world we have today. We can’t be like the Native Americans, who said, “We don’t understand why you don’t hear the Earth screaming.” We have to say, “We understand why you’ve detached yourself so much from nature that you could never survive in it. We know how dependent you are on civilization, but if you come and live with us, we can show you the way to become self-sufficient.” It’s a dream for humanity and the rest of the creatures who inhabit this planet. We try and serve the greatest good that we can perceive and move in a constructive direction instead of a destructive one.
Where are the other people who write about this sort of thing? I know of a couple of blogs like this. One is by Dave Pollard, called How to Save the World . Another is by Ran Prieur. I don’t really read Pollard’s blog anymore because I find the language he uses is too complex and the diagrams he makes could take hours to fully understand. Every now and then I go back to it to see what’s going on with him. Ran Prieur writes eloquently as well, but isn’t afraid to hold back. He doesn’t hide his feelings about civilization and is a mastermind at writing what everyone is secretly thinking. Check out his essays and zines. He is very intelligent and also very sane. He reminds me of an older me.
I just feel like many people just don’t think of the world the way it is, but the way they’re told it is. And we’ve all heard the old adage, “If we don’t stop now, it will be too late.” I have the feeling it is already too late. They said it would be too late 30 years ago. The acid rain and pollution we get today is from 30 years ago. Just imagine what the pollution will be like 30 years from now. It takes time for the greenhouse gases to swirl around in our gigantic atmosphere. Even if it is too late, we can at least slow down the bleeding. We can eventually stop it. But it is going to take the wills of everyone. And I don’t see it happening anytime soon. Call me a cynic, but it is going to take a massive shift in consciousness for us to heal the Earth. This can’t be a grass roots movement. It has to be a collaborative, multi-faceted movement that encompasses everyone in the world. I’ll keep writing until it happens. I’ve got a good 70 to 80 years left to get this message out. I hope I can reach some people and then they reach more people and it starts a chain of events that makes this world a better place to live.
If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to donate to my cause(s). I feel that giving is so absent from our society today. What we need is a gift economy. Or even the barter system, but even that will lead to the printing of more money. I say, “Give because it feels good. Those who give get back tenfold.”
