A Word...

So, as I blundered about this past week, shuttling to and from my job slinging pizza, I couldn't help noticing the Earth Day festivities shaping up in town.

It was a gigantic crock of egregious bullshit... as anyone with eyes could have seen.

We had a bunch of middle-class, upper-middle class, and upper-class intellectuals feeling guilty in their shirts with collars, ties, and fashionable dresses, and a bunch of smelly, unwashed, dreadlocked hippie white kids feeling smug and self-righteous in their grungy t-shirts and hemp pants.

Neither group is one I'd trust to accomplish a simple act like tying its shoes without fucking up, and I know what the view from the inside is like.

So, while the least competent people in town got together to listen to speeches on how their responsibility as stewards of the planet is immeasurable, the rest of the world just went about its business. And why not? They have theirs.

My disgust with and for my fellow man is hard to chart, and it's not like I'm appreciably better.

But God damn it, I don't lie to myself about it. I don't pretend that getting wide-eyed and nervous for one week out of the year excuses all the fucked up, wasteful things I do.

Living sustainably is going to require a cutting back in so many areas it's simply beyond what most of us- fat, happy, and easily distracted- are willing to give up.

In part, this is why I look forward to the next year or three of living in a village of fewer than 150 people.

I will HAVE to give up some of the things I take for granted. I will HAVE to be careful about what I throw out.

Because yeah, you can recycle your glass jam jars... or you can turn them into glasses and save us all a lot of goddamn trouble.