There are cracks in the earth and holes in our hearts. The gusher in
the Gulf has dramatized in gut-wrenching fashion a set of values and
outcomes that comprise the underlying foundation of our lives. This is
no "reality TV" episode, even though the already-diluted news coverage
increasingly makes everything appear that way. No, this is "real
reality" -- an edgy, in-your-face, unexpurgated reminder of what we
have relentlessly wrought on the planet and ourselves. The question
now is whether it will be enough of a wakeup call to prompt us to
shake out the cobwebs, roll up our collective sleeves, and steer the
entire enterprise away from the precipice.
Early returns are not favorable, both for stopping the oil gusher (it
is not a spill, dammit!) and for Americans snapping out of their
doldrums and getting off the petro-sauce. Drilling into Mother Earth
at all is sinful in some cultural frameworks, but doing so a mile
beneath the ocean with no mitigation plan on hand is simply stupid.
Trying to then improvise various "kills" (aptly named though they
might be) after the inevitable disaster occurs has the now-realized
potential to further exacerbate the problem -- all based on the
innately flawed logic of "more meddling will solve our misguided
meddling."
Yet this logic effectively summarizes a baseline tenet of American
society, namely that more of the same will somehow remedy the problems
created in the first place. When a dictatorial president takes us to
ill-begotten wars, the solution becomes simply to find a better
president -- as if the problem were one of leadership rather than an
underlying structural impetus to make war. When those wars go badly,
both in fact and perception, we announce a "surge" that will escalate
an already-lost conflict in an attempt to somehow "win" it. Better
technology is the answer to too much technology. A new pill can cure
the ailments produced by the pills we've been taking. Weeds and pests
become resistant to our biocides, so let's make them even stronger --
and the same logic goes for our antibiotics. The economy crashes and
consumes vast resources, so we'll prop it up with an infusion of even
more resources. And on and on.
Indeed, this is the story of civilization itself, a process that
continually requires deeper interventions in order to sustain
lifestyles dependent upon initial interventions. It is fundamentally
unsustainable, since we cannot keep up with the consequences of our
incessant machinations. This is the gambler's paradox, attempting to
"double down" over and over again on a bad bet, hoping to someday get
level but merely digging a deeper hole each time out. Now, one of
those deep holes threatens to prove itself incapable of being made
level, exposing the harsh realities of our cavalier logic and raising
the prospect of an apocalyptic scenario in which, ironically, we could
drown in oil while thirsting for water.
This is a bona fide moment of truth for Americans, and perhaps further
for humankind as a whole. We either wake up and smell the methane, or
continue sleepwalking down a path to seemingly inevitable
self-destruction. Shall we live as servile cogs in obeisance to Moloch
as we stoke the perverse machines that maintain the apartheid
apparatuses of Petropolis? Or will we choose a new path and refuse to
serve our soulless masters, instead demanding that they account for
their misdeeds and dismantle the hardware of devastation and despair?
It is a clear choice ahead, a societal fork in the road: continue on
toward the madness of mutually-assured destruction, or take a real
chance on an unknown journey toward self-discovery and collective
innovation.
We cannot afford to hit the snooze button and go back to sleep, no
matter what the final outcome of the Gulf oil disaster turns out to
be. Maybe an ingenious solution will emerge that snatches
business-as-usual from the jaws of imminent annihilation. More likely,
it will be an inexorable and ambiguous seepage that has innumerable
ruinous effects on the habitat, only some of which will legally be
traceable back to the oiligarchy, swirling together with various other
incipient atrocities to hasten our societal demise like some oblivious
frogs in a planet-sized vat of slowly boiling water. Humankind,
marinated in oil, literally stewing itself to death in an ultimate act
of self-fulfilling consumption....
Will we double down again, or cut our losses and walk away? Sometimes,
not playing the game at all is a winning streak unto itself. Either
way, the first step is to wake up and answer the opening bell. Destiny
is calling, and one way or another we will have to account for our
recent whereabouts. That time is now.