Living in a Bubble

I’ve been curious as to how people haven’t caught on to the fact that we’re all interconnected. I see that people do things that damage the environment. The truth is, no one individual does anywhere nearly as much as the few corporations who have systematically and without any remorse done things that have wreaked havoc on water and air and even the dirt. I hear about them, read about them and have been dumbfounded. Now, I know. 

Thom just got back from a conference and stayed in a resort. This is not a criticism of resorts, properties, owners, or management. I readily admit I don’t have access to people this rich, but I think I see where this could be a plan for resolving the problems of pollution. Rich people are going to put a dome over their little corner of the world and live within it. They’ll extract all the minerals, oil, and other resources that they can because they can and no one will hold them accountable because they’re all knocking on the door and begging for a room in the hotel conveniently and perfectly situated under glass. There are trees, gardens, waterways, and thoroughly filtered air. Thom could actually breathe in this environment and he has pretty severe asthma, which is getting worse by the day as summer approaches. He said he would have stayed within this constructed space if he could have somehow figured out how to pay for it. I can see that if someone were truly wealthy and not the fake kind that most of us know about, but the Koch Brothers rich, the Saudi prince rich, that person would be tempted to remove himself from the consequences of any actions he or his corporation might take that could potentially destroy the world as we know it. He’ll just go inside his little protected space and take his family with him. He might even take his friends. He’ll definitely take his dog. Since most assuredly he’s a carnivore, I bet he even takes cows, pigs, sheep, and maybe even animals to hunt. He can have his own little ark. I mean these places are huge-- 70 acres up to 300 acres. Meanwhile, the rest of us will be on the outside dealing with the thick air and the green water. 

Buzzards sat on the rail of Thom’s hotel room balcony and looked out over the lake where the water from the resort’s “river” dumped a fluorescent green stream. I asked him what they were doing. He said they were eating the fish kill before the resort management cleaned them up so others wouldn’t see it. He stayed in the cool filtered air and sipped his Mother’s Little Fracker beer while watching the buzzards, the green water, and the heat rise off the pavement. I told him that was obscene. He laughed. Ok, so maybe it wasn’t obscene to drink a beer made from water that is potentially polluted by fracking. At the very least, it was foolhardy. It makes perfectly good sense to laugh in the face of what those of us on the outside would judge to be risky behavior. The irony is not lost on me that I get to grow most of our own food and write because he does what he does, but we agree that whatever he does can’t be at the cost of the environment. There has to be integrity in what we’re doing as a couple and as part of the community. So I bow up when people with enough money and intelligence flaunt both by being cavalier with our shared space. Just because they have the money to build a protected environment doesn’t give them the right to trash mine. Their plan may be to retreat into their little bubble, but that doesn’t work for most of us and why should it? God created my bubble-- it’s called an atmosphere aka air. Why should they get to play god and decide who gets to breathe and who doesn’t? And the truth is, their plan isn’t sustainable. I doubt seriously if people are going to continue to breathe polluted air and drink polluted water, even if it is named after the poisons in it without eventually going all Pakistan. One day that kind of bravado won’t seem cute, but pornographic. I think we need to help them change their minds about this particular plan. Rather than see their actions as admirable, we need to see it for what it is-- a perversion of the natural order. We need to admit that they are defiling God’s space, the one that is equally available to all, the common space, the public space. Next, go ahead and own up to the fact that we are part of it all. No more denying. That just makes it ok for “them” to live inside their bubble while leaving their trash behind for us to clean up and it allows “us” to continue buying lottery tickets as if that would somehow be enough to buy our way into their protected place. It won’t. Why not just name it and claim it-- what you do matters. What they do matters. What you do has an impact on others. What they do has an impact on you. We can’t all live under glass. I’m not sure most of us would want to. I know I don’t, even if they do have in-your-face named locally brewed beers made of suspect water. I can see the buzzards circling.