There have been many 'techtonic' changes in my lifetime. By techtonic I mean ground shifting in a metaphorical sense. Although with the number of tragic earthquakes and tsunamis we've had lately and person-made disasters maybe techtonic in several senses.
One example I thought of recently - what did we do in our rooms when I was a student? When I was a student some people had little or big stereos, a great flat was one with a microwave (although I didn't know anyone who lived in one of these), and one person I knew had a VHS - the rest of us used to rent them with the videos we hired. A room in a student hostel or flat might have a tape deck, radio and a torch. Now a typical student room has a desk top, iPods, games consoles, stereos, cell phones......
Actually I do know what I did in my room; drink. And entertain young women. Playstation does seem lame in comparison.
But the more important change is the domination of our lives by scarcity.
When I was about 6 or 7 I had a friend who's parents were supporters of a political party called Values - more or less the Greens but before them. They recycled, reused and ate bean sprouts. Among the many interesting things they had was a board game based on zero sum philosophy. As I remember it if you did any business development it killed trees or animals and made it harder to live. It was an odd game with a long apology from it's inventors about using cardboard to make the game. In those days progress was a good thing, as was science, so this all seemed like it was from another planet.
In those days we tossed everything in the rubbish, (except organic material that went into compost). My grandmother on the other hand, shaped by the great depression and WW2 hoarded and reused everything. When she died around 1000 neatly folded paper bags she'd got from the bakery (long since closed by this stage) were sent to a 'nice farm in the country'.
I grew up sending everything to landfill and with no worry about the planet - the ozone layer, the air, the ground, the oceans, food supply or anything else. The big issues were nuclear or chemical war which oddly now seem benign in comparison to oceans rising, food running out, the planet frying in it's own juices and being buried in a pile of rubbish which has leached through and poisoned the very ground we walk on.
In my most conscious moments eating a tin of tuna, for example, I wonder how many tins of tuna the planet can support and whether this may be the last one I'll see. Eating anything I consider the impact on the environment in terms of pollution, poverty and things running out. World population explosion, greenhouse gases, toxins, animal extinctions.... it's exhausting.
I saw some footage of hotels in Las Vegas on TV the other day and although I've always thought the way they spend squillions to get water pumping all over the place ludicrous I now consider it obscene. Here I am washing and recycling tins (is washing them worse for the environment than just recycling them dirty? why are they in cans? why do these products exist at all?) yet very rich companies are pumping water with lights through it around for effect in a desert, and if the water is recycled what about the power? Swimming pools are starting to provoke a similar reaction in me now.
There was something beautiful and foolhardy about the 70s where, like the fool, we danced by the side of the cliff unaware of the disaster and catastrophe that awaited us all. In those days we believed we could eliminate hunger and poverty. Bono thinks we still can.
My thought for today is, yes the planet is in a huge mess, yes we're all going to die, and yes it's all our own fault but if I'm careful about my own practices, (in some areas), can I just not think about it today? I want to just pretend it's going to be all right and we do still live in paradise.
No comments:
Post a Comment