Thursday, December 1, 2011

Time

Because I am Oggy and I can not see everything happening at once I sometimes wonder if I have it all wrong. For instance, this spruce tree is planted inside an old 100 Caliber Land to Sea Gun emplacement at Fort Foster in Kittery. Now, I like to pat myself on the back and think that the hippies of the world have replaced guns with ploughshares but I don't think that's true. I think I don't get to see enough of the world and enough time on the world to make an intelligent comment on the state of the world. I can make comments all I want but they aren't intelligent. There are either reformists or there are engineers. When I read that the South Platte River in Colorado has been polluted by pipeline fracture from hydrofracking methods, then it's easy to become enraged. North Dakota's current employment boom (which I want to exploit by opening a strip club/brothel for illegal Mexican hookers (who lost their Alabama cabbage picking jobs recently) and make lots of money so everyone can be proud of me) also relies on Hydrofracking and is inconveniently located at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers. Basically, any problems or even the natural result of hydrofracking and everything downstream of Williston, North Dakota will be as polluted as a Nascar ice cream cone when it falls on the asphalt. But is that bad? Because if you crunch the numbers in the right way then you could suggest that even murdering everyone in St. Louis via pollution would greatly benefit mankind because the gas profits exceed the value of the residents of St. Louis. And in 100 years we might not miss St. Louis, even though the Lewis and Clark expedition that went up the Missouri River and past Williston began their journey from St. Louis. You could look at it like the American wolf or Bison. No one misses them. The Grizzly Bear is extinct from California. Does anyone care? So, eventually, the lack of St. Louis would be something we adjust to. Short memories are good! And since it would be an accident then it doesn't really count as genocide. It's collateral damage in the war against the Earth. Nature deficit disease will be dispelled as a myth.
All this debate would be solved if I could see all history at once. So I must speculate that continued oil exploration will succeed in providing fuel and will continue to enable development of alternative fuels which will eventually be the only sources of energy in a land of compromised rivers and radioactive fish, but no one will remember fishing in rivers so that won't really be a bad thing because all judgement is a matter of perspective and once perspective is adjusted to warfare and pollution then there will not be hippies who question it. Thoreau, for instance, who is my hero is looked at like an oddball malcontent who didn't get along with society and was a crybaby and hypocrite and dirty. Eventually, he will be seen as an urban terrorist. Does the ends (cheap fuel) justify the means (polluted rivers)? This is a puzzle I can't solve because I don't see enough time to judge. I suspect that with time comes an acceptance that Native American Indians were impediments to the natural expansion of the white man, and "failed to adapt" and were thus exterminated. It's justified this way and we don't miss their arrows or teepees. Or, more likely, that is now water under the bridge and to cry over it and demand justice (which can't be quantified) is silly and a waste of time. The living's responsible is to live and not drag our feet through social justice. We got this far by ignoring social and environmental justice as much as possible and only throwing crumbs to their memory when absolutely necessary. So, if the internet is our ultimate goal and discontentment is merely a sign of Mal-adaptation then I'm completely wrong and no one should listen to me.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You may be right on this one, as far as pollution goes, but the unempoyment rate in N.Dakota fell to 3% as families are flocking there to fufill jobs that are paying six figures at the minimum. As Sarah Palin would say "Drill Baby Drill!"

Creative Commons License
Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.