We Dropped the Ball

It hurts me to say it but my generation may go down in history as the most despised of any that came before. I was born in 1960. File me under the Boomer generation, one of the last to be labeled as such. We should, in all good conscious, spread the blame fairly. It wouldn’t be right to paste just me and my fellow Boomers with this ‘most despised of any’ moniker. You early GenXers are as much to blame as we Boomers. Humble yourselves and accept the shame with us. You knew better just as we did. We were given the brutal facts. We did nothing. We dropped the ball.
Let’s get real. I’m talking to all of you middle aged people living in modern industrial nations. We’ve known for decades that we were living unsustainable lives. We refused to let the party end. We could see the changes that we were making to the planet yet we continued to think only of ourselves and of our immediate desires. The scientist kept on giving us the dreadful numbers. The forecasts got worse as the years ticked by; rising temperatures, arctic ice melting, atmospheric carbon levels rising at alarming rates, 100 million barrels of crude oil burned every day, 200 species of animals going extinct by the day, plastic filling our oceans, unsustainable, industrialized mono-culture farming, more concrete poured over the planet every day, (enough now to encase the whole planet with a 2 mil. thick layer), deforestation, consumerism running-a-muck, environmental destruction before our very eyes and we did nothing. We separated the glass from the plastic, dragged it to the curb and thought to ourselves,’good enough’. Then we washed our hands clean and got on with our busy, little, distracted day.
Yes, I know, we can blame the Silent generation that came before us, our mothers and fathers who gorged themselves silly in the wealth and opportunity that befell them after WW2, a car in every driveway and a chicken in every pot. They had good reason to be optimistic. They thought that after having lived through the mass destruction and life loss of the war that civilization had reached a turning point. They had learned a bitter lesson. They yearned for peace and prosperity, democracy and free markets would take hold, technology would continue to advance and bring with it a better world for all. All that was needed was for America to give the rest of the world a little neo-liberal shove. They naively believed that then all the world would fall into a neat, little capitalistic line. To the detriment of future generations it did just that. For now we seem forced into a box of excess or bust. How can we not leave our children, their children and the generations beyond them with existential problems, problems that we have ways of fixing but cannot seemingly solve without causing hardships to the most vulnerable?
How could we have let this happen? In reality we have none to blame but ourselves. From the politicians to the populous that they are supposed to serve, from the religious zealots to the scientist themselves, (the very bearers of the bad news), Greed in all of its manifest forms ruled us. We all became obsessed with the novelties, the trivialities, the conveniences, the excesses, ever more hungry for comfort and material experiences above all else. Hyper individualized postmodernism seeped into our subconsciousness. Truth became evermore flexible and individual certainties more rigidly reinforced. We simply ignored the problems and reached for the gold. When that didn’t satisfy, we reached for other things, drugs and distractions, not for the sake of enlightenment, but to simply maintain, to cope with the whirlwind of meaningless activity that swirled in our craniums. We allowed ourselves to be dragged into the vortexes of unceasingly luxuriant wants and desires, most often to end up disappointed after we achieved them. We willed the material into becoming falsely sacred. We worshiped our bodies, our wealth, our intellects, ourselves above all else, unable to accept the fact that all of these will always, and will eventually, leave. We refused to believe the fact that we are not the center of the universe. Our very thoughts became inextricably and hopelessly drawn to irony and self referential cynicism. Sentimentality and sincerity were scoffed at. What became important became not the well being of all but the well being of me. Law became more important than virtue. Happiness became more important than the simplicity of contentment and grace.
All that said, we must have hope and we cannot stop striving for justice, including justice for those who are destined to inherit this broken planet. As Emmanuel Kant said, “If justice parishes so will the very meaning of human existence.” I don’t see anything getting better without a commitment from the majority. It must happen at a bottom up grassroots level and, simultaneously, at a top down level. The CEOs of corporations and government employees who have grown rich because of the environmental destruction must accept responsibility, as so should the individuals who supported them and reaped benefits from that same destruction, that includes almost everyone who lives in industrialized nations. An across the board downsizing is called for. Oil reserves should be utilized primarily for the building of renewable energy infrastructure. A coordinated world wide effort is needed. It’s going to take more than one country, more than one individual. These are global problems. There is not one fix-it-all solutions to solve them. A super hero God isn’t going to make it all better. It’s going to take action and take all of our creative forces to muster up workable solutions to make the world sustainable and livable for everyone. We live in paradise, my friends. There is enough for all. The resources are there to make it happen. We should have a commitment to being contented with less, less need to be frivolously entertained, less speed, less travel, less meat, less exoticism, less individual space, less of a need for wasteful experiences. Less will undoubtedly lead to more peace, more love, more security, healthy thoughts and healthier bodies.
There is no way things can get better without individual sacrifices and sacrifices made by the powerful, and the not so powerful. A redistribution of resources must happen. It should happen without malice and pride but with joy. Wealth must be universally redefined as not what one owns but what one is. Sacrifices may be the wrong word to describe what is needed. I believe doing with less will be in fact a way to empower people, all of us, as individuals and as a collective. It will give our lives more meaning. It will bring us together. build safer communities and a safer world, make us more conscious of our beautiful, tiny place in the universe, fill us with the pride in knowing that we really are intelligent, righteous and loving, that we are truly a wise species.