WALL-e

[Wigwam Jones]

Originally Posted by Fast_Eddie

I don't know the right way to say this so it doesn't sound like something I don't mean it to, so I'll just say it and take it for what you will.

That really makes me sad. Not like in a condecending way, but in an Elanor Rigby kind of way.

Don't get too teary-eyed. My question is more of a philosophical one, really. I have concern for future generations - my question is intended to ask the legitimate question - why should I?

Three themes that run through "we're killing the planet" themes consistently are these:

1) We Americans (OK, USA-ians) own, consume, produce, spend, output and in every other imaginable way create or use 'too much' of whatever *it* is. We're bad.

2) That we (humans) actually possess the capability to destroy the planet through our presumed overuse and abuse of it.

3) That we should - or must - care.

It could be that all three are true (although the first is a value judgment and difficult to attach an objective value to). I don't know. I suspect no one else knows, either.

BUT, I tend to challenge those three assumptions whenever I hear them - on the basis that such assumptions need to be challenged.

If one is to assess that I 'own too much', then they must really be prepared to tell me how much 'too much' is, who decides, and what they intend to do about it. Otherwise, it's just talk, isn't it?

I mean, how easy it is to proclaim my (or your) ownership of 'too much stuff' as the cause of the ills of the planet. How difficult to detail in what way that is actually true.

The same can be said of the assumption that we are, in fact, breaking the planet. People observe effects and ascribe them to factors without a great deal of evidence. I liken this type of thinking to 'end of the world' religious thinking. In every religion that has an 'end of the world' scenario, predictions are made so that one may know when the end is nigh. And lo - we seen the 'signs and portents' constantly - the world insubordinately and stubbornly refuses to end. This, to me, is not unlike the type of mawkish claptrap being peddled as science that tells us the earth is being destroyed and we're the ones who did it in (in the pantry, with a candlestick). When the growing season refused to give rain to our primitive ancestors, they sacrificed a couple virgins to appease the Gods for whatever offense we might have given them. Nowadays, we merely try to make everyone give up their SUVs.

And finally, that I should care. Well, in point of fact, I do care - but I fail to see any compelling reason why I should, other than that I choose to. It is not unlike (to me) my 82-year-old mother-in-law being urged to stop drinking and smoking heavily. Her response? "What on earth for?" I get it - there is no point, so what purpose does it serve? If one presumes we do not possess the power to break the planet, or that the planet is not actually being broken, or even that the planet is in fact drying, but that there is nothing to be done about it, then there is no point in getting all broken up about it.

The flood, as I stated, will come. What comes after that? I won't be here to know.