Humanity is at risk, says the UN, due to our lack of action on environmental problems that will flood/starve/thirst/heat us out of our HummersTacobellMacVisawwwCashbackVotingboothsNewShoes.
No idea how to respond to this: sincere fear (oh.my.god.) or ironic relief (well, goddamn, the world sucks anyway, put us out of our Two and a Half Men). All I can say is that we are inheriting a strange world. People always talk about the damn commies in the 50s or something and how they could have destroyed the world. Who the hell cares? They didn't. Stop crying, McCarthy.
Since then, in what some would call an ironic little twist, we've all united for the destruction of all being-kind (and by WE, I of course mean the heirs to the throne the World Bank has constructed with the flesh and bones of "developing" nations. WE, those few, proud, Western White people with lots of money, lots of confidence!, lots of teeth and God's blessing). How did we get here? Here's a theory that draws on Freudian subconscious and probably some other dead white guy who believed we all just really want the end: what if the insane level of capitalism we all devour/choke on was really constructed as a quick way out? Could those European leaders at Breton Woods have seen the chaos Man can wreak on His own self, and figured, either consciously or subconsciously, that large-scale globalization and its resulting CO2 emissions and repressed self-loathing was the most efficient bullet to our collective temple, the quickest way to that big mall in Heaven? But that's giving Truman, et al way to much credit. Closer to the truth is far less Romantic; it lacks the drama of Capitalist-as-Christ/Satan. This is a lazy Satan, a Christ who would rather shop. The rapidly deteriorating world in which we now exist was founded on the very real, and realized, belief that Whoever Dies With the Most Toys Wins.
"Capital, now in its imperialist stage, will only disappear with an ecological solution of production (and of consumption) which will constitute the only possible elimination of the outdated structures of dominance, aggressiveness, competitiveness, and absolutism in order to replace them with those of cooperation and equality between individuals (thus between the sexes) and of the species with the environment."
- Francoise d'Eaubonne
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ummm... YEAHHH. the most fucked up part about this whole thing is that our ADD generation born out of ipods/youtube/myspace gives us way too small of an attention span to even give a fuck about all these real, lasting problems because we get tired of hearing about global warming/oil wars/corn subsidies and just wait to hear what the next fad issue is going to be. are WE even capable of exercising our responsibility as educated/economically secure world citizens to try and fix It, or are we incapable of focusing on one issue for that long? And would WE even want to, when we have everything we could ever want at our fingertips? And can we, when the majority of America doesn't know what the WB is? DIOS MIO!!!
Wow, yeah. You're so right. It's amazing how the media is able to compartmentalize issues, so we're too distracted by the 8 million ways the world is ending rather than view them as an interconnected web of issues to be tackled all at once. Instead, in order to make ourselves feel better in the age of service-as-self-realization, we decided to crusade (i.e. shell out) for the environment, women's rights, Sudan, livable wage, etc., rather than realize that they're all one in the same-- the same 10 people are pulling the strings and profiting from the destruction, but WE refuse to acknowledge that because it's a) terrible and b) impossible to change. So we have blogs and bake sales instead, buy a "free-Tibet" t-shirt and off-set our flights to Central America. The one thing we can all agree on is that our greatest power is our purchasing power, and conscious capitalism will pave the way to peace.
I say fuck that, look into the dark and scary abyss that is the truth, acknowledge that there ARE nefarious powers at work and that we have to bond together to put an end to the madness.
Any ideas?
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