Tag: social change

Trending Now — AquaNots

waterThe question is, just who are these so-called AquaNots?  Apparently, AquaNots (media name: not mine) are people who refuse to use water in any form.  They believe that human consumption of water is not only killing our planet’s fish habitat, but, if left unchecked, will eventually destroy the Earth’s entire ecosystem.  Sounds legit.  However, based on the information I can find (which isn’t a lot) their practices including not washing their clothes, their dishes, their hair or themselves, not using flush toilets (according to their information sheet, American toilets alone consume 23 billion litres of water every day) not cooking with water, not using water-based products and, in some radical cases, not even drinking water.  Wow!  It sounds  pretty harsh to me, but before we rush to pass judgement, let’s see what the AquaNots have to say for themselves.

“We totally reject the accusation that we are extremist.  Desperate times call for desperate measures.  Our planet is in crisis, and if people are too stupid to understand that this is the only solution, then they need to be re-educated.

“We want to effect lifestyle change.  We need to end our dependency on the hydro-industrial complex.  Do you know the flush toilet is less than 200 years old?  Obviously, for the vast majority of human existence, people merely squatted in the woods.  We need to bring that natural experience into the 21st century and the urban environment.

“Fashions change so quickly these days it doesn’t make any sense to actually wash your clothes.  We just give our dirty ones to poor people and buy the newest, latest look.  This way, we’re always in style.”

“Eight glasses a day?  I’m laughin’.  People in desert countries don’t drink eight glasses of water a day.  They don’t have any water at all, and they’re always runnin’ around fightin’ and blowin’ shit up.  I seen them on TV all the time, and I’ve never seen them drinkin’ water.”

“It’s all about raising awareness.  An international Aquagarchy controls most of the world’s water, and their corporate profits are fueled by constant in-your-face advertising.  Look around!  Soap, soup, shampoo, tea, coffee, wine, organic gardening, outdoor recreation — I could go on and on — and their subliminal message is always “Use water.”

“Washing dishes is no problem for us.  Normally, we eat fast food and simply throw the wrappers away.  Of course, in the summer, we barbeque a lot and use paper plates.”

“We are definitely tolerant of other points of view, but we refuse to allow flushers and bathers to spread disingenuous information.  They clearly hate our planet and we must stand, as a group, to stop this kind of hate speech.

“We are a growing grassroots organization.  Yes, right now, our membership is mostly from private schools and universities, but we have followers –of all ages — on four continents, and we’re reaching out to get our message to people of less privileged economic backgrounds.”

“Our community has always faced discrimination.  Many of our followers have lost their jobs because of coworkers’ complaints about personal hygiene. We are all working very hard for the day when Mother Nature’s perfume will be accepted in the workplace.”

There you have it.  Make up your own mind.

* Disclaimer
It’s a sad commentary on our times that I have to even write this, but … so be it.
This is a satire.  It is meant to lampoon how genuinely good ideas get hijacked by idiots.  The AquaNots do not exist, and any relationship between them and any real activist group is purely coincidental.

What the Hell Happened?

I’m an optimist.  I really am.  I truly believe that eventually saner heads will prevail and much of the nonsense our world is going through these days will be swept away.  Unfortunately, optimists like me sometimes get too optimistic.  The rose-coloured glasses get a bit thick, and we lose perspective.  So whenever I’m feeling a little more “sunshine and lollipops” than is actually healthy, I stop for a moment, give it three deep breaths and take a look around.  It’s a great reality check, and it works every time.

––––––

But the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Aren’t these people going to feel foolish in 20 years?

The Modern Myth Parade — Part 3

Despite our agnostic protests to the contrary, we contemporary North Americans are controlled by our mythologies.  Like our ancient Greek ancestors, we honour our gods and believe they rule our lives.  The problem is our myths don’t work.  In fact, they actually have an uncanny ability of getting in the way.  For example, because we believe in a benevolent planet where all reasonable people think and act just like we do, when that literally never happens, we feel our world is chaotic, disjointed, out of step and out of control.  This confuses us, but rather than questioning our myths, we reason that somehow we just haven’t been faithful to them and now the gods are angry.  So, like all primitive peoples, we try harder to please our gods, sacrificing our common sense on the altar of appeasement.  To butcher Shakespeare: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars/But in ourselves.”  Thus, when people act in ways contrary to the wishes of our myths, we look for something or someone to blame.

Here’s the deal.  When Eddie, the local villain, breaks into our house and steals the iPod, iPad, iPhone and every other iSomething that isn’t nailed down, we want an explanation.  We want to know why, in a benevolent world, this could happen to us; how Eddie, another reasonable human being, got thrown so far off the tracks?  We wonder why our society has failed us, Eddie and the prescriptions of our mythologies.  When we don’t get any answers, we feel angry and frustrated.

Unfortunately, the answers are exactly what we don’t want to hear.

First of all, we do not live in a benevolent world.  There are people out there who actively want to do us harm.  Open your eyes!  The evidence is all around us.  We can ignore it if we choose, but that doesn’t alter the facts.  Secondly, under normal circumstances, people are not reasonable.  It’s only the constraints of our society that make them so. You don’t have to be Charlie Marlow to understand that the tapestry of our world is woven of very thin yarn which breaks easily and unravels quickly.  Finally, there are people all around us who don’t give a damn about the high-minded expectations we have for ourselves.  They don’t care that we believe we’re good people.  And this brings us to our final and most dangerous myth.

We believe that our mythology itself makes us morally superior.  Now, before you relax and think, “Finally!  I knew it.  We’re all racist jerks!” think again.  I’m not talking about racism.  Actually, racism, in North America, is just a silly little word game we play with each other when the media gets bored.  Compared to the tribes of Europe, Asia and Africa, we can take the Pepsi Challenge on racism any time –and come off looking good.  No, our belief in our moral superiority has nothing to do with anyone else.  It rests solely on the mistaken idea that our society has transcended its savage past.  We believe so thoroughly in our inner goodness that any storm cloud in our Neverneverland world is cause for alarm.  And that is precisely why we refuse to question our mythologies.

The truth is that if we do not live in a benevolent world where everybody is reasonable, then we are not the good people we think we are.  We’re just techno-Visigoths, struggling to survive, and nobody wants to be a barbarian.  Thus, when bad things happen, we think we haven’t been compassionate enough, or empathic enough, or reasonable enough.  We go back to our false gods, pray for forgiveness and redouble our efforts to appease them. Thus, the dysfunctional cycle begins again.

It boils down to this.  Either we quit sacrificing the way of life that got us here to a bunch of mythologies– and try to solve the reality of our problems, face-to-face– or our mythologies are going to kill our society dead as disco.  It’s that simple.