What We Have To Accept
We have to accept
that we live on a ‘Spaceship Earth’
responsible and accountable for its conditions.
Earth is no longer the impenetrable background/horizon
of our productive activities.
It emerges as another finite object
that we can inadvertently destroy or transform
to make it livable.
This means that the very moment we become powerful enough
to affect the most basic conditions of our life,
we have to accept
that we are just another animal species on a small planet.
A new way to relate to our environs is necessary
once we realize this:
no longer a heroic worker expressing his/her creative potentials,
and drawing from the inexhaustible resources of the environment,
but a much more modest agent
collaborating with the surroundings,
permanently negotiating
a tolerable level of safety and stability.
Excerpt The Courage of Hopelessness by Slavoj Zezik p. 40
Today is labeled “Black Friday,” a code word intended to symbolize deep cuts in prices, inducing holiday shoppers to spend more than they otherwise would. This is not a good idea on any account. The purchase of goods ideally is a transaction which will enable both parties to the transaction to meet their fundamental needs. What we have instead is a vanity fair, a convulsion of commerce, shopping as a frenzied sporting exercise, where winning is buying unneeded goods in order to relieve the anxiety of losing to others, who are getting a “better” deal.
The real costs, hidden, externalized are to the resources taken from the earth, including the requisite energy to produce container loads of cheap, disposable goods that will soon fail, and end up in a local garbage dump. Then what of the fellow members of our human community, our spouse, children, kin, and the individuals working in retail that speed us through the line and out the door with our purchase? All are invisible to us in the hysteria of our shopping expedition, the tunnel vision required of us if we are to reach the imaginary finish line. No time enough for a brief conversation, the exchange of kind words renewing the bonds of our humanity.
Happy holidays!
