Why we’re not going to make it
In the James Cameron movie; Terminator 2, there’s a scene where young John Connor is helping the programmed-to-protect terminator fix a car. Nearby they see two kids playing with realistic toy guns, and the game becomes so violent that their mother has to intervene. Conner asks the robot; “We’re not gonna make it, are we?” The matter-of-fact answer: “It is in your nature to destroy yourselves.”
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| From my photo album FAIL |
I had that same feeling when I saw this table in our local Wal-Mart. Not because of violence, but because of our national inability to delay gratification. There’s no doubt in my mind that the store manager knows his customers, and if they can get a credit card, they’re old enough to vote. As someone once said; “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”
A recent study found that the ability to delay gratification is crucial to personal success and I can’t help wondering if the same is true of societies. Might a cultural commonality of analyzing, thinking ahead, and investing resources wisely not help a nation as it apparently does an individual? We’ve pretty much made a national pastime out of ignoring connections between our concerns and those of the rest of the world starting with our doorstep. Starting sometime back during the Reagan administration, we became convinced that rainy days just wouldn’t happen if we didn’t acknowledge them.
Deficit spending comes to mind, but it’s only a symptom of something much deeper, which is the tendency to wait for emergencies before doing anything. We just can’t seem to conceptualize sustainability in our use of natural resources, the health or education of our citizenry, our national infrastructure, our environmental infrastructure, or our relationships to our allies and enemies.
Or to apply that conceptualization to anything as simple as consistently recycling aluminum or refilling a water bottle from the tap. We seem to have erased from national memory the concept that big problems consist of accumulated small effects. We are the snowflakes that feel no responsibility for an avalanche, the raindrops that know nothing of flooding. Being stuck in traffic means it’s everyone else’s fault.
Just for one example, how long have we known that we need to get off the foreign-oil merry-go-round? Or fix decaying bridges, upgrade our power grid, or equalize schools in poor neighborhoods? Some problems can be addressed on an emergency basis, but it’s the one (or several) that can’t which bring down empires. Those problems are much better addressed by the rule of nukes, which is: don’t ever let things get so bad that you need to use them.
Sorry to be pessimistic. Can anyone tell me why it’ll all be OK?
I feel the same way from time to time and I think of the same scene from T2. Sometimes I wonder how we made it this far and what the tipping point will look like. What I usually envision is a president stepping forward and saving the day. Doing things no other president would ever do. And thus not getting elected to a second term. And younger students learn what happened in a future history class. Then those students sit there and a few wonder, “So why isn’t anyone doing anything? Why do things seems the same?” And the cycle repeats.
It’ll be OK cause I gots my Pringles!
I can’t tell you why it’ll be allright, because I don’t think it will.
Conflicted. But. It will be alright. Can’t explain, though.
I want to expand, just a Wee bit, on my comment.
Not that I said “it” will be alright, not “we”. I don’t think anyone can be certain that we/humans will survive/be all right. But the planet, the universe, will survive. Our species is, after all, inconsequential. Yes, I do have deep feelings for the future of my children; they are brilliant individuals and I want them to enjoy a beautiful life on a beautiful planet.
But in the scheme of things, if we are nearing some sort of apocalypse, or at least major, global crisis, I cannot single-handedly avert that, nor do I know for sure if we can “rally” like-minded friends in a campaign to do so.
Yet universal truth and consciousness WILL survive. What that means, I really don’t know. All I know is that if enough of us just sit and breathe, if we just detach from thought and illusion and allow truth to fill an empty vessel, we will be OK.
At times I see hope for that. At other times, I don’t, but I just do what I do to be in the present moment. What else is there?
One more thing: Stop going to Wal-Mart.
It’s hardly a way to brighten one’s day. The only time I go is to drop of Kodachrome. They send it to Dwayne’s and get it back in less time than the mail, and it’s a bit cheaper. I do it for friends in Toronto as it makes a big difference in cost for them. Once I shoot the remainder of my K25 & K64 at Superior this summer, I’ll have no more need to go to Wal-Mart.
I even go out of my way to go to a store a about 10 miles away as opposed to the closer store, 2 miles away. Why? Because I’m afraid that in the nearer Wal-Mart, I’ll get knocked over. Literally. The “clientèle” there are totally unaware of anything, or anyone, not in their immediate interest. That store is so densely merchandised that there is little room to navigate. So I have to keep my senses keen to avoid being steamrolled by those who believe the universe is centred on them.
I regard it as a metaphor for Wal-Mart in general.