Boxes. We fall asleep on them, and wake up in them. We trudge into the kitchen in the morning, open up the door to a box and pull out our breakfast in a box. Then we walk over to the refrigerated box and pull out a box of milk. Then we get in another little box with four wheels, merge out onto the roads to sit in snarled traffic next to a bunch of other little boxes with wheels, all driving into the city to go work in a big giant box. We ride a box up to our chosen floor, walk down the hall toward our own private little box, sit down in front of an electronic box for 8-10 hours, and work all day to sell other things in boxes to other people sitting in front of their own boxes trying to push boxes back over to us to compliment all the other boxes we have to work all day to play with. Then we drive home again in the wheeled box, stop for some takeout food served in boxes, sit down in front of a different kind of electronic box to be entertained until it is time to crawl back on top of the springed box and repeat the whole thing again the next day. What the hell happened to us? When did we decide this was a good way to live? And why do we wonder, without a hint of irony, why we’re so tired and unsatisfied.
The Iraq War. Maybe it’s the boxes. Perhaps they’ve made us dull and kind of moody. But how quickly and readily we bought the lies. How desperate we were for a defined enemy who dared have the audacity to challenge our ‘values’ and American ‘way of life’. How easy those lies would have been to reveal with 15 minutes of our own research into the subject. How quickly we signed off on 500 billion dollars to fund a made up war that has killed more that 100,000 Iraqi civilians. Innocent men, women, and children who were the very VICTIMS of the tyrant we claimed such offense to. And now that these lies have been revealed, now that we know the systematic strategy of deception our country’s ‘leadership’ used to drag us into a war that has resulted in the illegal mass-murder of hundreds of thousands of human lives and American soldiers, are we in the street, marching, demanding impeachment and imprisonment of men who knowingly orchestrated mass-murder and crimes against humanity? No. We just sort of shrug our shoulders and take it. Oops, missed that one. On to more important things. Like illegal immigration. Or all the social programs for single mothers. Important stuff that is costing taxpayers so much money. As opposed to, say, half a trillion dollars funneled into the board rooms of Halliburton, the Carlyle Group, et. al.
Hurricane Katrina. God’s juxtaposition in regards to Iraq. A chance at redemption. A predictable and predicted national disaster. Water flooding into the homes of poor citizens unable to fend for themselves. Our chance to prove and justify the worth of a government so unbelievably rich and powerful as ours. A chance to display our quick-strike reactive powers. A chance for the government to display the lofty standards of moral and equitable values we trumpet so loudly to the world. And where was this federal government in August 2005? Oh right. Gorged and drunk on Iraq. Bellies so fat they were rendered unable to move. And so instead sat up on their high and mighty horses, tsk-tsking that the citizens of New Orleans should have left town. Oh really? In what?! And by what means? A situation like Katrina is what a government is SUPPOSED to exist for. That is what the Department of Homeland Security was created for. To protect and serve our citizens in and for EXACTLY this situation. To bring in the buses and helicopters and tanks and troops and ships and barges and money and resources and the creative fortitude that made this country unique and strong.
9/11 was supposed to have changed everything. That’s what we’ve heard ad nauseam everyday on every news cast and every speech and every public appearance by every federal official since September 11, 2001. In response, huge vats of public money and resources poured into the government’s coffers to ensure that a ‘hostile’ power would never again have such easy access to the lives and well-being of our citizens. They would protect us. They had a plan in place. If attacked, Homeland Security was supposed be able to instantly mobilize a total emergency response - evacuation plans, medicine, doctors, food, water, shelter, transportation, troops, police, air power, sea power, land power, tactical units and resources trained and ready to deal with any combination of unforeseen circumstances.
And here comes this big giant lumbering storm, utterly predicted, the consequences well-known and dire, and our ‘leaders’ in the federal government just sat there. With no plan. Somehow mustering the gall to keep on with the tsk-tsking, blaming the state and municipal governments for the inept response and lack of leadership. Last I checked, the US of A was a federation, and the federal government has veto power to act and behave in whatever way it deems fit. State and municipal support being wholly insignificant. And there sat thousands of our fellow citizens huddling on their rooftops for four days baking in the summer sun without being floated a single bottle of goddam water. And we the citizens were left to organize the fund drives and telethons. We were left to cover the relief costs. You know what, where’s my fucking money? Where’s my 500 billion dollars they took for Iraq? Why is the Canadian Mounted Police wandering around New Orleans? Where are the billions of dollars given to this glorious Department of Homeland Security? They are in the boardrooms of the multinationals. They are in the off-shore bank accounts of CEOs and government officials left free to continue to rape and pillage our planet. And we just kind of stand around with glazed looks on our faces, shift back and forth on our feet a couple of times, and shrug as if there is nothing we can do about it. Muttering some half-truth rationalization about it being a brutal and unforgiving world. Might as well buck up and get used to it. Well, yes, it is a brutal and unforgiving world. Because we make it that way.
9/11. Officials tell us that 19 Arab hijackers, armed with box cutters and under the direction of a bearded man in a cave in Afghanistan, breached a multi-trillion dollar defense apparatus and flew giant unarmed jumbo jets into the most heavily fortified cities and buildings in the world. Including our own military headquarters. Is this some sort of joke? This is a bed-time story for children. How did four lumbering jets fly around the most restricted airspace in the world for an hour and a half without eliciting a single military intercept? How did three giant high rises, one of which (WTC 7) was never hit by an airplane, all crumble at near free fall speed because of damage from fire when carbon based fires cannot burn hot enough to sufficiently weaken steel - as evidenced by scores of other high rise fires throughout the world and history that burned equally hot and produced no such free fall explosive collapse. Why did President Bush remain sitting in a well-publicized locale for more than 20 minutes after the first plane hit if the country was under attack? Why did every intelligence warning regarding 9/11, from both international and domestic sources, get systematically brushed aside by our government in the lead up to the attacks? Why have the more than 80 videos confiscated by the government capturing the actual footage of the craft that hit the Pentagon never been released? Why did NIST, the government agency appointed to study the collapse of the WTC, never explain in its 10,000 page report how the tops of the two Towers reached the ground within one second of free fall speed – despite the fact that there were 47 massive central steel columns, 250 perimeter steel columns, thousands of tons of concrete, dry-wall, metal joists, plywood, and 80 floors of building in the way? Why are we all just sitting around pretending it happened the way they said it did? At the very least, the entire military, defense, and intelligence infrastructure in this country is some kind of ludicrous joke. And we should get our money back. To, say, feed people who don’t have enough to eat.
Capitalism. We have all agreed to create and perpetuate an economic system whose stability and vitality is dependent upon the natural greed of human beings to check and balance its direction and course. We sit idly and watch and feed a system whose health is dependent upon infinite growth, infinite production increase, and infinite access to an infinite number of natural resources. And even though we know we live in a finite world, with finite limits, and finite resources, we’re all just sort of standing around again, shrugging our shoulders again and making half-witted comments like, ‘The system’s not perfect, but it’s the best one we’ve got’. Well, yeah, maybe. But if we have to make a long journey over open water and are given the choice of three separate crafts in which to sail - one which will sink in one week, one that will sink in two, and a third that will sink in three – and we know the journey will take at least six weeks, there is no point in lauding the virtues of the third craft. It’s still going to sink. Obviously a new craft has to be built. But we’re all standing around with hands on hips, waiting for someone else to start the project.
The Environment. We have fished the cod out of the sea. And the salmon are next. The world’s forests, which convert CO2 into the oxygen we need to breathe and provide habitat for the species that make the planet vibrant and alive, are disappearing. Coal plants spew mercury into the air. Cars buzz like swarms of locusts, not even to go anywhere anymore, just to keep busy. To shop. And pick up the kids from school who, ironically, used to be able to walk the ½ mile home. Improved fuel standards and clean energy technologies are blocked and parried into Congressional sub-committee research programs for ‘further study’ as industry lobbyist snicker and tighten their grip on our leadership’s nether regions. Temperatures rise and the weather becomes erratic. Yet global warming and climate change are still debated in official circles because to admit their consequential existence would be ‘bad for business’. Which begs the question, how about a planet that cannot sustain human life? Is that bad for business? And even though we know all this, even as you perhaps right now roll your eyes, notice again how we are just kind of standing around. Checking our email. Like the Germans in the 1930s, looking up now and again from their newspapers with that innocent blank look, blinking once in a while beneath the gathering storm. As if we were not, right now, contributing to its building mass.
And when the wholly predictable firestorm comes raging down the hillside to finally collect us all, we will stare in horrified wonder. We will shriek protests of mock confusion, staking claim to an innocence that is not ours. We will claim that we did not know, that we had no solid warning. And this is the highest in the order of our collective bullshit. The warnings are all around us. The growing gap between rich and poor, leading to the social injustice and its wholly predictable backlash in the form of terrorism and violence. The greater and greater sophistication of our weaponry growing at a pace far beyond our powers of diplomacy and reconciliation. The warming planet and melting ice. The dying off of our fellow animal species day after day. The grime and pollution of the oceans. The disappearing marine ecosystems. The shrinking forests. And our endless greed for more and more crap we don’t need. All in an attempt to bring meaning to a life from which we are, no surprise, becoming further and further disconnected.
WE have created the world in which we find ourselves. Me and you, and our shared ancestors. And that world is burning. The proof is all around us. Whether this is cynical, whether pointing it out constitutes ranting, I do not know. All I know is that the world is burning, and unless we change our current habits, unless we open up our minds to a clearer consciousness, unless we become the change we want to see in the world, it will continue to burn. And we will die. We will leave nothing for our children except a promise of extinction and suffering.
Trying to be positive or optimistic about this situation will do no good. Acting and gesturing positive optimism will do nothing but perpetuate the status quo. We have to BE the positive change we want to see. As I write this, it is Christmas time. And instead of running around buying a bunch of useless crap for each other, perhaps each of us can be assigned to buy one charming, evocative, creative, fun gift for a loved one. And give the rest of the leftover cash to some organization working for that positive change. Instead of cutting down a living, breathing tree, chucking it in the corner of our living rooms for our own entertainment, and then tossing it dead out onto the street to be collected by a burping, spewing diesel truck, perhaps we can all agree to purchase a live tree. Still standing in a pot of its own soil in the corner of our living rooms. And when the time comes to remove it from the house, perhaps we can take that tree into the back yard and plant it. Starting a living stand of old Christmas trees in our own yard. For the squirrels. To create summer shade for our children. And air for our lungs.
There are an infinite number of ways to be in the world besides the one we have collectively chosen to animate. Look around. Our current choices are not working. The world is burning. We are disconnected, separate, and unhappy. A radical change in our own minds and our own lives is needed. Otherwise we will parish and suffer. The great irony of the predicament we have conjured is that the radical change we so vehemently resist will not only put out the fire that we started. It will reconnect us, and plug us back in. It will bind us back into the single living family we have forgotten we are. And the happiness we have sought for so long will no longer need to be pursued. For it will simply radiate as the natural state of the new way we have chosen to be.
All of which sounds, to me, positively uncynical.
