Post Industrialism

Brandon Christopher Warren / Foter / CC BY-NC

Even if we stopped polluting the Earth today, the artificial poisons we've placed into our air, soil, and water will haunt us for milleniums. Our planet is a rare, pristine jewel, floating through space, and we've already fouled it, perhaps forever.

So, no wonder I go through life melancholy. I have to live with the guilt that I'm part of the problem. Although I've tried to become part of the solution, I'm sucked into and enslaved by this industrial world and I can't seem to escape it.

I think about all the shampoo, household cleaners, and other chemicals that are going down my septic tank and straight into the soil. Yes, I do try to buy plant-based cleaners instead of petroleum-based products, so maybe I'm helping a little. But then there's shaving cream, face cleanser, and dozens of other products we all use — going down the drain where many of the artificially made chemicals will remain forever.

Do the Evolution Dance, Baby

Since I began my blog in 2004 the dominant theme has been environmental sustainability, but lately I've expanded it to the topic of social evolution. The subject fascinates me.

First and formost, I see religion, the turning of mythology into hard beliefs, as some sort of odd byproduct of our evolution. Somewhere in our early development religion must have provided some evolutionary advantage. For instance, maybe the social order provided by religion provided tribes with a stronger hierarchy and gave them an edge in war or general survival.

But the great irony of religion is that while it helped us get through the early years of our development it's now on the verge of destroying us. This is quite possibly why our radar satellites are not picking up intelligent life in the Universe. For, the religion that evolves us and leads us to intelligence ultimately kills us.

The daily newspaper is full of articles about religious violence. The Big Three religions fight one another, and even factions within the same religion, such as Shiites and Sunnis, kill one another. Religion is synonymous with violence, but then I have had Christians and Muslims look me straight in the eye and say they follow a religion of peace. What the fuck? Our only hope is to eradicate this destructive social disease from our culture.

New Beginnings

I'm hopeful that with the election behind us we can begin focusing on our environmental problems like global climate change. Reducing our carbon emissions will require a major realignment in the way we live. We simply arrived to where we are at today through a sort of industrial evolution, with no plan or thought for how we would impact the future. We just started driving cars in the 1890s with no worries that there would be billions of them 120 years later. We had no idea that our global population would jump from 2 billion to 7 billion in just a handful of decades. It all just happened. We didn't think it out. And now we live in a totally unsustainable world. There is NO WAY we can continue dumping all sorts of crap into the trash, flushing chemicals down the toilet, and then expect to live like this indefinitely.

It will be exciting as we re-engineer our lives and find a way to live peacefully with each other and our world in the post-industrial age. I envision a slower, quieter world with lots of small, local farms, solar panels, and wind turbines. People will get out and start walking again. Right now, the obesity epidemic should tell us something is deeply wrong with our society. I hope I don't offend too many folks by saying this, but I'm tired of looking at fat people — they are a living symbol of a society gone totally bad. In the new, green world people will again be walking and working with their hands. And they'll be eating healthier.

And as for the end of Hostess Twinkies -- good riddance! The old age of obesity, laziness, and stuffing whatever tastes good into your mouth is going away. And a new, healthier, happier age is arriving.