Perspective

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral Arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
“Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
“This planet has- or rather had- a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
“And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.
“Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should have ever left the oceans.”

“It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than the dolphins because he had achieved so much- the wheel, New York, wars and so on- while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man- for precisely the same reasons.”

-The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

You know how you look at a problem for hours or weeks or years and you can’t figure out what’s wrong? So you ask someone else who has never seen the thing before and they immediately say, “Well, there’s your problem right there,” and point out some simple mathematical error or flaw in your plan. That’s what Douglas Adams literally did, and Daniel Quinn (author of Ishmael) did through the eyes of a gorilla- look at our global situation from the perspective of an outsider.

So from within the culture, it's not readily apparent that so many problems stem from how far out of whack we are living from the way our bodies and the natural system were [designed /evolved] to be. Think about it. Why are we living in such advanced times, yet we're dying from so many diseases. Heart and vascular disease, diabetes, cancer... Biologically we are no different from animals. The difference is "all in our heads." Good and bad- from conscience and empathy to killing for sport. We are not exempt from the laws that govern nature. Our bodies are supposed to move regularly, not sit at a desk or on a couch all day. We are killing ourselves being over-nourished while others are dying from being undernourished.

The problems are so big that we may fail to see how they’re linked. GW, peak oil, pollution, extinction, hunger We look at each one individually and think, “Wow, that’s big. I could not possibly have any effect on this problem myself, much less other problems at the same time.” You despair and do nothing. Or you can think about what’s at the root of it and change that behavior. Picture this: you’re sitting down at Thanksgiving dinner with about 10 other people. Suddenly, the guy next to you grabs the bowl of mashed potatoes and takes half for himself. Taking more than your share hurts someone or something else, whether an American suburbanite or a big corporation. Endless consuming without appreciation of the consequences, exploitation without giving back. It all gets out of balance and we all pay in the end. The “American Dream” is the problem. The idea that we have some manifest destiny to take as much as we can for ourselves.

It's going to come around to bite us in the ass. And it's getting worse with each generation. The sense of entitlement evident in your average child or adolescent is inconceivable to me.

There is a shift in thinking that needs to occur. This happens naturally in smaller countries and societies where resources are not viewed as limitless. But here, people flip the switch and it’s like breathing the air. It’s just there. Little if any thought is given to how electricity is produced until someone wants to put a windmill in their backyard. I want to use electricity but not be affected by how it’s produced.

I had no idea that I wanted so much stuff until I went to Wal Mart. I walked in there, and suddenly felt the absolute need to have many things that I had no idea I needed moments before walking through the doot. It’s genius, really. You can be desperately poor but not feel that way- you can have lots of crap if you go to Wal Mart. You will still have faith in yourself as a consumer. And advertising tells us that our worth is defined by what we consume. It all seems so inexpensive, and not just harmless but wonderful and good to take home lots of stuff. It isn’t until you start realizing that each little harmless thing is the embodiment of vast wasting of energy and resources that you get it. That is the value of a changed mind. You can try to use financial incentives or disincentives, but we’re willing to make sacrifices, financial and otherwise, small and huge for the want of things.

We take it all for granted so we don’t get why the problem is so big. We are not involved in the process of making or obtaining things. All we do is go to the store, pay some money and it’s ours. We have machines that do an enormous amount of work for us, so we lose sight of just how much work it really is. I mean the physics definition of work. We have no concept of how much energy is required to travel from point A to point B, then bring stuff back from point B to point A. I walked a mile to the store then carried some groceries back. And I was amazed at how much energy I expended doing that.

We are insulated from how much all this is taking from a finite system, so we don’t really realize how much of a share we’re hogging. Air pollution is invisible and easier to ignore. It’s easier to blame fate for asthma and cancer than make the connection to something we could control- or make better by giving up something we don’t want to. We’d rather not think about it. Don’t want a windmill in your backyard? How about spent uranium rods buried there instead? But so many fewer people would have to make the choice to accept the nuclear waste than the windmills, so the perception is different.

If we lived in sync with the way we were meant to be, we wouldn't be so sick. Our world wouldn't be so sick. We wouldn't create substances unknown on this earth that react poorly with our bodies and cause cancer or birth defects. We wouldn't suffer from the physiological impacts of being in a constant state of stress, or have all the orthopedic problems from being overweight and sedentary.

There has been a push recently to return to "natural" ways from yoga lifestyles to parents' magazines. Everybody wants what's "natural." Be careful now, because sometimes this is just another marketing ploy. What if this went beyond what we buy to how we live? My husband was laid off in the spring and I have had the best summer- outside almost every day all day, growing food and hanging laundry. The cars sat in the driveway and we rode bikes. I stopped giving to my usual charities because we were broke. But then I got a mailing with a picture of a malnourished 3 year old and I realized that I do still have room to reduce my consumption. I could stop paying to drink chemicals (soft drinks etc.), drink tap water for free and use the savings to share with her. Great concept. Have I stuck with it? What do you think?