Behavior, Excuses, and Hope

Photo by Miriam Espacio on Unsplash

I'm an alien space probe thrown into a human body. I'm going on the ride just looking around, observing, and learning all I can. I'm not sure what I'll do with all this acquired knowledge because I'm now in my "twilight years," as they say. In 20-30 years tops, the oxygen will get cut from my brain and all this "stuff" swirling in my head will simply cease to exist. It will be like pulling the plug on a computer. But, what the heck, for right now I'm a curious little beaver, walking around, and soaking up every morsel of knowledge that I can get.

Behavior
As I sail on the ship of life, one thing that continually trips me out is how people find a way to justify ANY behavior. People mainly do this to make themselves look good, feel good, or protect someone they like. Sometimes their rationalizations border on the absurd, but the story sounds good to them, so they stick with it. Some of my favorites: "I smoke to keep my weight down." Or, "We want to settle the New World to save the Indians." Or, "The Bible says slavery is okay." The list of absurdities goes on and on. I'm not sure how to solve this problem of self-deception, but I believe it plays a key part in our dysfunctional society.

Excuses
It amazes me how people use excuses to justify DOING NOTHING to help our deteriorating planet and society. When I did my first Sierra Club tabling event in 1998, I remember a guy saying to me, "There's nothing that can be done about it." Then, there is a large group of people who say, "We're going to be whisked up to Heaven anyway, so why me worry?"

As for me, I occasionally fall into the pits of the cynics and jaded people. These are the folks who say, "HELL, I tried to do something and they fought me every inch of the way. I'll just do NOTHING and let them learn for themselves." Well, I TRY not to feel this way, but this feeling tries to creep into my soul every day. I think about all the times I went to Washington, DC to lobby. I think about all my phone calls to legislators. I think about all the tabling events I worked at, all the PowerPoint presentations I made, all the traveling I did. And what did I accomplish? I feel that NOTHING has been accomplished. Except, maybe I've kept things from getting worse. There is a mild environmental movement that has reemerged in this country. Gay rights has made major progress, so at least we are advancing socially. But in the environmental arena, things are going slowly.

Hardly anything has been done to slow carbon emissions and to wean the nation off oil. Oh, maybe some baby steps, but it's a drop in the bucket. It's hard to stay focused. I often think that market forces and social evolution will simply determine our future. Changing public policy is nearly impossible. Our Congress members simply respond to the squeakiest wheels, and the environmentalists have neither the dollars nor numbers to compete with the passionate Christian fundamentalists and their corporate allies. Or Big Oil, Big Coal, and so on. I can't afford to buy a Congressperson, and I can't make enough noise to scare one, so I'm screwed.

Hope
But, regardless of all the above, I know I can't just have the "we're screwed anyway" mentality. I have put children in the world and have an obligation to them. I love nature, and have an obligation to the natural world. I love my planet, and want to protect it. But the short-term market forces are so massively powerful that I'm not sure we can protect the long-term. I feel overwhelmed, and I stay in a constant state of melancholy over it. Part of me just wants to get the hell out of here because I can't stand looking at the daily destruction. It hurts. And then I live with the constant guilt of being a part of the industrialized system. Even with the many green things I do in my personal life, I am still a locust, doing my share of devouring our resources. I still have to fly in gas-guzzling airplanes and drive global-warmer vehicles. I stand before Mother Earth and cry that I am GUILTY.

Okay, I will try to get back up and bury my cynicism and jadedness for another day, but I feel strapped down. Just trying to survive, trying to hold a job, trying to be a support for my children, and then finding time to save the world? Yeah, I know, I just have to be more disciplined.

Ultimately, I do have hope. People who talk of doomsday scenarios are just shirking their responsibilities. After all, it's easier to do nothing than something. It's easier to justify a bad behavior rather than change it. Humans take the path of least resistance — we evolved with the concept of conserving energy. And now we have gotten lazy. And, heck, God's going to burn the whole place up anyway, so, let's just watch reality TV and have a brewskie. Let's just party like rock stars, and maybe we can get Nero to play the fiddle.