Life is like a big war, and I'm in the 52nd year of this great struggle. The struggle is not to survive, but to simply figure out what this massive, complex thing called life is really about. I am but a fragile mammal that could die at any moment, but while I am here, I will ponder.
Since I started this blog in 2004 I've gone through many phases of personal evolution. Life got a little harder when my work situation became difficult due to the recession. Since 2009 I've been in survival mode, and I'm beginning to tire.
My cynicism has gone to the next level, to the point where I just like to laugh and say, "See, I told you so." The global economy, climate change, and social deterioration are all going in the direction I predicted, in fact, exactly as I expected. What a hilarious irony that U.S. conservative Christians completely deny global climate change, and when the warming creates the more extreme weather events, they jump up and down and scream, "This is God's punishment for murdering babies and accepting homosexual marriage." So, this begs the question: Why does God get pissed off when two people of the same sex get married? I'm sure he's up on his throne saying, "NO, NO, guys, you have it all wrong. You were both suppose to marry girls. Shit, now I'm pissed off and I'm gonna send a hurricane to New Jersey, why, I don't know, I just hate the place." As for murdering babies, the GOP, you know, the Party of God, wants to starve them anyway once they're born, so why does it matter?
But I digress ... the point being is the daily grind, the continual fight to bring in income, the misery of living around illogical people, the constant witnessing of species suicide, well, it's all had an effect on me. On the surface, I want to be a happy, smiling little environmentalist and say, "Whoopie, yessiree, SURE, we can save this planet." But in my heart, I know that every day people are flushing all sorts of chemicals down their toilets and throwing all sorts of toxic substances in their garbage, and all of this is going out to the environment, where it mixes with other chemicals, and where it festers, and stays, and slowly destroys the Earth. There is no way that our planet can endure the savagery of industrialization indefinitely. We are simply bringing our world to its knees.
Yeah, but look what the immediate past generations brought us — lots of wars, in fact, WORLD WARS. And what did we, collectively, as a species learn from them? Nothing. The fact is that if you recreate the same extreme social conditions you'll get the same extreme results. Look at Greece, for instance, which has a political party that is strikingly similar to Nazis.
My frustration is always WHERE do I put my limited volunteer time and energy to make the greatest different for the planet. Well, I THOUGHT I did that back in 1997 when I became a global population activist. I thought, hmmm, I can just get a movement started again, we can flatten the growth curve, and save our species and planet from death. But then came the bitter in-fighting over immigration, and then came the resurgence of the Republican Army, who felt that birth control was in some way connected with abortion, and did their best to stomp out everything related to it — contraceptive insurance coverage, emergency contraception, teen health clinics, and the list goes on. What's more, they had to vilify Planned Parenthood, and put it on their "let's galvanize our movement around this enemy" list. You see, they do that sometimes when they get tired of beating up on gays, which is their standard target, but pounding on gorgeous male hairdressers all the time gets old, and even the righties themselves get tired after a while. The hate sort of digs at their last remaining pulses of guilt, and they give it up, as they kiss the head of their Mitt Romney statues, and renew their effort to destroy Planned Parenthood, Big Bird, and all other sources of evil.
So, so, I really don't know what to do. Why do I have this desire for self-preservation of the human species and the flying rock that sustains us. Is it important? Does the Universe really care? If we turn Earth into Venus is some astronomer a 100 light years away going to just say, "Oh shit, they actually did it?" Why would I care about what some green, three-eyed creature thinks. I'm sorry, man, maybe our amino acids will make it to another Class M planet, and we can try again. Maybe we'll just keep up this evolving-into-intelligence routine until we create something that is really beautiful and perfect, and they can be the gods that everyone keeps looking for.
As I grow older, I find life more and more boring. Even the things that were exciting have lost their zest. I remain simply because I've put children in the world. I remain simply because I might be able to make someone's life less miserable one day, but is the carbon footprint I'm making worth that benefit? Are all those hectares of land that are sustaining me WORTH IT just so I can make some restaurant server smile on occasion? And, hell, the only reason I'm doing that is so they won't spit on my food. So, really, as I look into the eyes of little Alfie, I say, is it really WORTH IT?????
