Normal, Regular, Natural, Blind

I meet a lot of "regular" people and talk to them about things like nature, sustainability and climate change. Everyone, like the good Canadians they are, is onside. Of course climate change is a problem; we need to help nature (wait, aren't we a part of the natural world); technology will help us become sustainable. Same shit, different day.

I'm amazed at people that take things for granted. It's natural that our lake is poisoned and that we can't swim there. It's normal to have smog days three or four times a week. Cancer happens to everyone and there's nothing we can do about it; so do diabetes and heart disease and countless other affluent diseases. We can happily look forward to a warmer climate in a few years. It's normal to cover ourselves in sunscreen every day.

Are we crazy? Why aren't we asking real questions about what kinds of lives we're living? Is this really progress? Even more importantly, do we dare ask these questions? What would happen to us if we did?

I'm really getting disappointed in people. Despite everyone's comments of support and concern, they aren't willing to do anything that will jeopardize their ability to drive, use Mr Clean, listen to their Ipods, upgrade that computer, douse their lawns in pesticides, eat meat with every meal and put out ten garbage bags. It's miserable.

The problem is that one person's choices effect everyone many beings', both human and non-human, lives. You smoke, I die. I drive, you get asthma. You put pesticides on your lawn and fish die in the lake. I cut down a tree, and more carbon is released into the atmosphere effecting us all.

Other beings understand this link between all things implicitly. Humans, civilized humans see each human as an island. We each have the right to do, say and think (but really . . .) what we want. This is a bad attitude. Even if we have supposedly good things like the Universal Declarations of Human Rights, we can't look at ourselves in isolation anymore; once again this philosophy is expressed in all those people's statements that nature is out there and we are over here, separate.

Something terrible is coming; a reckoning. Whether we like it or not.