We're faced increasingly with this question - is everything cool? Well, it depends on you. Are you in touch with reality, and are you in touch with your own reality?
We're facing a great deal of violent, churning, fundamental change. It feels maddeningly frustrating, it can translate to feelings of hopelessness and anger, even rage. We're seeing our conventions and entitlements evaporate on a daily basis. How should we respond?
With gratitude. We are the most spoilt generation in the history of our species. To put our materialism in perspective, imagine if every dog in the world had a doghouse, personal dog transport, dog roads, dog phone, dog TV, dog music, dog reality TV shows, dog news etc deployed across the landscape. You'd think dogs were quite an arrogant and selfish species, let alone greedy. That's what we've become. And religion has licensed our sense of feeling entitled to everything in the world. Of thinking we have a right to have something for nothing on a scale that eventually amounts to everything at great cost.
But religion assures us: Make a mess here on Earth (you're born a sinner so you're expected to), pollute like there is no tomorrow, eat what you like, do what you like, and it's okay. As long as your intentions are good, and you make a deal with God, your soul (if you belong to an Exclusive Faith Club) is on the way to an eternal afterlife of bliss (as though life on Earth isn't enough for us) because we're saved by the Grace of a Superhuman God figure. Since we're immersed in this tradition it makes sense to us, but how would respond to your dog saying, I believe in the Lord our Collie.
Moving on. Literally. In the last 2-3 weeks I've moved house to a lovely stone cottage on a forested hillside. I think we made half a dozen or more trips in 2 vehicles to shift large quantities of accumulated stuff. Mostly clothes and books. The expense of living in suburbia for the ordinary person is astonishing. When you realise that each unit, each home, comes with its own television, computer, washing machine, stove, microwave, refrigerator, beds, lounge apparatus and what not you realise how ludicrous - and expensive - the project of suburbia actually is. Especially when you have to move.
This past week my car went in for a major service. I've not seen it for 2 weeks. My girlfriend and her brother stepped in to help me lug everything using their cars - all our stuff - a short distance to our new abode. Without a car such an operation would have been virtually impossible. And it is the car that allows us to get all this stuff (and plenty of junk besides) into our homes. Having moved I'm resigned to the idea that a home is really a personal storage area for human beings. And a lot of the junk tends to be unread magazines and doo dahs we bought on impulse and never really needed. And we fill up our living space with this stuff.
Our lives are cluttered. And this is a reflection of heads filled with the crazy chatter of endless advertising. This is reflected in the cluttered suburban sprawl and jammed motorways.
And against this background, of clutter, lurks the spectre of scarcer and more expensive energy (which some have forgotten about already) and an exotic flu (which some are starting to forget about) that is slowly snaking its way through the population. Right now a second American has died. It's early. And it's not a pleasant experience getting swine flu. Your throat passage swells painfully, making breathing very difficult and swallowing excruciating. People who should know better arrogantly dismiss the concern over pandemic flu as 'crying wolf'. This is because few people can now differentiate between fiction, illusions, delusions and reality. More people than ever are addicted to anti-depressants and distractions that range for entertainment to alcohol. We want to escape the world. The world we've made for ourselves. Because we've made our homes into our gallows.
What should we do? Be grateful for the gift of life. For sunshine. For youth. For health. Take our focus off 'having stuff' and shift it to 'being'. To moving our bodies, to exercise, to the experience of nature...an early morning and the sun coming up. All these things we can enjoy and used to enjoy before there were cars and suburbs and so many of us. All these things are still waiting for us whatever happens for those that are around when some of these catastrophic and convulsive changes have past. Get used to the idea of change. But expect to be surprised how that change manifests.
Personally, I think a lot of good things await us, but not the ones we're expecting -- not a return to buying slurpees on credit cards. It will be very salutary to leave behind the junk empire we've accumulated and move into an epoch of quality and purpose. For the moment, though, our hopes reside elsewhere. - James Kunstler
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