What’s the problem?
Earth. Big place. Small place. Paradox? Relative?
Civilization. Just getting started. Verging on finished. ???
Social problems. Soluble. Insoluble. Comprensible. Incomprehensible. Indeterminate. Imaginary?
No one can understand the whole world, but at the same time, everyone is dissatisfied with the status quo. Aren’t they? Most people? Some people? Me? You? Nobody?
We all want everyone to be happy, right? Some of us want some of us to be happy? We each want to be happy? Some of us want to be happy? We’re really happy already? Happiness is out of our hands?
It’s all just a bunch of chemical reactions and neurotransmitters in a bunch of wet brains. When I feel nauseated by the stench of diesel exhaust, or the sight of yet another Wal*mart, or some obese person eating McDonald’s, or some rich jerk’s Rolex, or a dozen other sources of disgust at human degeneracy and blind self-satisfaction and self-serving self-importance, it’s just a bit of electro-chemical juice zapping around inside my skull casing. It’s not real. It’s not “me”. There is no “me”. There is no you. The esteemed value of your designer jewellery, the fat-dripping pleasure of your fast food burger, the delightful convenience of your big box store and the impressive power of your gigantic internal combustion machine are all just whimsical inventions of a lump of meat with bio-wires running all through it.
But as absurd as it is, it’s what it is. Reality isn’t real, but it’s all we’ve got. And I don’t like a good large bit of it, and the parts I do like are under attack by the armies of ignorance inside us all. I don’t want to blame anyone, but I do. I want to blame myself, and I want to blame you, and all your ancestors, too.
It sucks to watch the ugliness slowly, resolutely spread itself across the whole of the earth, literally or figuratively, or imaginativel and electro-chemically. I don’t know that it’s real, but I see it in my mind’s eye, and I’ve experienced it with my senses. The sea life is going extinct. The oceans are turning into sewage. Slowly, but inevitably, choked with our shit and piss. Metaphorically and literally. Constantly. Relentlessly. Your effluent. Your convenience. Your wealth. Your pleasure. Your satisfaction. Your happiness.
But don’t listen to me. It’s not real, anyway. It’s all just a wash of information, a storm of sensation, a brew of imagination, and I’m not really here.
But just pretend I am, for a moment, and the picture I paint is accurate, to at least nine tenths of a degree, and the world is a mess and getting messier, with all the Bhopal and Shock & Awe and Exxon Valdiz and Chernobyl and coup d’etat and insidious shadow governments and ravenous corporatism and general public ignorance and a perpetual and abiding hunger that never ceases. I know, I’m waxing mad shack-in-the-woods bomber again, but just indulge me for one minute. I’m as upstanding citizen as any Joe Average, after all. I still have a steady job. I still pay my taxes. I have a valid passport. I don’t smoke. I don’t drink too much, or take drugs hardly at all. I have a neat hair cut (this week) and a trimmed beard and I only pay my rent a day late, generally, and might even be on time if I get off my ass in the next hour and fifty-six minutes starting now.
Why the hell aren’t you doing anything about it? The problem. Which one? Right, that’s the hard part, isn’t it. You have enough of your own problems, without taking on the world’s, too. You’ve got bills and bosses and hungry children and itchy loins and asses and faces and tooth decay and frayed stockings and pet stains on the rug and other stains on the linen and appearances to keep up and lies to tell and bogey-man to fear and habits to indulge and shows to watch and deadlines to face and all the other assorted crap of modern life that makes you feel important while you sell snow to the Esquimoux and otherwise engage in fruitless production and act like a drone while conning yourself that you’re a free man or woman or other barnyard animal. Moo.
Hey, did you hear about this global warming thing? Wow, it’s real after all? Does this mean it will be warm and sunny all year?
I’ll start you with something smaller, although I’d still appreciate it if you drove a responsible car instead of that tank you pretend is a family vehicle. How about education. How about the public school system. How about getting involved in the future of the future of the world, vis a vis our collective offspring, of which I have none of my own, but there’s plenty around. Oh, but you’ve got private schooling. You’re kids are too good for the public school system. Could that be because you’ve let it go to hell for so long? And what about public transit, public health, or public damn anything? What about government?
What about the dangers to your vaunted civil liberties, your oh-so-precious personal freedoms? What about equality before the law? What about corruption and getting away with murder?
I don’t know. Is any of it real, or is it all part of the great Liberal conspiracy? Are my eyes clouded by the propaganda? Or is it all this ozone I’m breathing finally curdled my brains? Maybe it’s all the oily orange stuff in the water, or that funny smell I smell in the shower. Or maybe it’s the list of broken promises longer than my arm, in fact, exactly the length of my short but inexorably lengthening toward its end excuse for a life. Maybe it’s the stress of irrelevance couple with the pressures of being so essential.
Open your eyes. There’s things to do. And I need a little encouragement. I need some bloody hope for more than just another hunk of dripping red meat to take the edge off.
Oh. You’ve already gone elsewhere. Well, that’s OK. I’m good, here. I listen to myself real good. Me and my buzzing brain cells will just keep each other company. I can hear the sound of my own nerve impulses in my ears even now. Oh, wait, that’s just my computer.
I miss the quiet nights in the Summer out in the country. Yeah, I definitely miss those.