Saving the world one fad at a time.

Now I have nothing against these causes, let me be clear. It’s all well and good. What I wonder about is the nature of activism in America. It all seems inextricably linked with commerce. If you aren’t being basically guilted into going to a TV or corporate website to be sold their products, you’re basically just buying something for status or fun and being told that a portion goes to something. Why doesn’t a corporation just donate their product to the needy group? Nope, sorry, they have to donate one thingy they plan to donate for every widget you buy!!  Look at Lance Armstrong’s yellow bracelet fad….there was a time when it was a must-have fashion accessory, but why couldn’t the money to make those bracelets have just gone to the cause instead of only a portion? Yeah, yeah, human nature…economics, advertising, blah, blah.

What about the rallies? Are they really convincing anyone, or just making people feel like they have control. Sometimes (like with tea party rallies) I hope it’s just the latter. But then make it a big event. Get the celebrities to show up! Get the corporations to donate free widgets for the attendees! Get politicians! Get Sting to sing a song! Make signs and chant chants! But in the end, what’s been changed? You’ve rallied for the environment, and maybe got some media attention. But what if each of those 50,000 attendees just went to the EPA website and told their electric company that they only wanted to buy green energy? What if they each got 2 friends to do the same? What if those corporate sponsors switched their companies to only green energy? Or what if they invested in green tech for their corporate offices and factories? Or what if they encouraged their employees to do the same? Or if they used that cash to pay the difference in price for every employee who switched?

What if, instead of having an environmental walk/run for charity, where everyone showed up and walked/ran and drank their bottled waters and generated their trash, and had their after-party, or whatever, all those people just changed the way they lived? Maybe if they walked/ran home instead of driving to work? No, let’s drive our cars to the event where we walk in a big pointless circle to help someone. I confess, it doesn’t make much sense to me. If you want to donate to a charity, donate. If you want to help the environment, help it. What the hell does a bracelet do for anyone? What’s the point? And now social netwoirking is bringing a whole new level of conspicuous slacktivism. Today I was invited to a “1 Million Strong Against Cancer” group on Facebook. Come on…does anyone like cancer? Can you think of anything more pointless? The only thing I can think of are the “viral” status updates that say things like “change your status to this pointless glurge for a whole day to irradicate Muscular Distrophy!” In fact, allow me to present the Golden Sheep Award to those useless slacktivist pages.

Seriously, here’s a litmus test for you. Think about what you do each day, think about what the results of those things are. Now ask yourself, “if everyone did that, what would the world be like?” Is it better or worse? I find I come out pretty good on that scale when it comes to environmental, economic , and (I think) political issues. Now social health, that’s another story…..I have no clue there. Don’t look to me for advice on dealing effectively with people.

                          

The myth of the NYC Park.

Picture a serene scene. The most serene scene you have ever seen. One in a park of lovely green. (Forgive the Dr. Seuss treatment. I’ll stop.) Anyway, the grass is soft, the breeze light. Above you, the Brooklyn Bridge stands like some granite colossus, straddling the East River. It is majestic and powerful, enhancing the beauty and serenity of the surrounding park through it’s monumental architecture. A tugboat sounds a wistful horn in the distance. A gull soars overhead, starkly white against the bright blue of the sky. You are alone in a city of 8 million….lying cradled between the soft, cool grass and the warm midday sun.

Now, as you picture this wonderful scene, picture also a family of five. They stomp onto your soft delicate lawn, bickering, dropping litter, and dragging an assortment of towels, loud radios, kids, toys, lotions, hats, smells, and Teddy Grahams. They are a hurricane ravishing your oasis. They are a monster truck, tearing across your field of wildflowers, leaving a scar of mud and a cloud of diesel fumes. They march across the vast openness, and plop down, still bickering, right beside you. Your fortress of solitude is invaded, and you have been rendered powerless by the red sun of Krypton. (Okay, nerdy metaphor, but stay with me.)

Soon, a young couple arrives. They are ill dressed in spiky clothes and gothic makeup. They lie mere feet away from you, alternating between sharing a 7-11 slurpee and making out luridly. They smell funny. Their uncomfortably-tight yet trendy-in-some-circles clothing slips about to reveal rolls of fat and unsettling bulges. They grope and straddle each other openly in simulated love-making poses. You become sandwiched between them and the family of five.

Now imagine the entire park filling with more and more people. It’s overflowing. A sea of bodies covers every inch of grass, leaving each blade matted and struggling for life-giving light beneath some mass of flesh. The previously warm sun has been made sweltering by the combined body warmth of hundreds of glistening, sweaty, people. They jostle and grunt at each other like so many walruses sunning together on the rocky shore of some coastal inlet. The only oasis is a steaming concrete path that picks it’s way among the corpses, and meanders to a parking lot of weeds poking though cracks in the surface, broken bottles, and upturned garbage cans…a paradise of quiet compared to the populous garden of adipose tissue that it leaves behind. You run-walk to escape the clamor.

To be fair, at no point was my experience at the park today as idyllic as I described in the beginning of this post. It was gross from the get go. I thought I would go try to enjoy some nice weather, get some air, some sun, maybe relax a bit. No dice. The citizens of New York City will never cease to amaze me in their ability to be around one another and be seemingly oblivious to each other’s presence! It boggles my mind, because I am painfully aware of every person around me at all times. Meanwhile, they all seem to long for it! At a nearby ice cream parlor, New Yorkers happily queued patiently in a line that must have stretched 100 yards out the front door of the parlor. No ice cream is that good. I was repelled, but tot he contrary, New Yorkers seemed to instinctively join the line.

So, is solitude dead? Has it come to a point where we can only escape one another by locking ourselves away in our closet-like rooms? Even there, we jostle, and stomp, and make ourselves known to each other through a series of movements, noises, and actions…intentional or otherwise. The world becomes more and more populous, and I can’t help but think of the scenes in Soylent Green, with stairways littered by bodies, and streets so crowded that people need to be lifted into garbage trucks to clear space. Are these images to be prophetic?

The most frightening thing, to me, is that the crowds which I face daily here in New York City are nothing compared to some other places. India and Japan come to mind. The thought of a world rapidly filling with this kind of population density is anathema to nature. Will the State and National Parks of the US someday be the last remaining empty places? And will they be empty? No doubt vast throngs of tourists from overpopulated cities will surge into them upon their daily opening, leaving behind their tattered picnic blankets and single-serving meal cups. Worse, will the world sooner remove their protected status in favor of an unfettered population? Can mankind ever be saved from himself?

This post brought to you by Trojan Condoms.™