In June this year, a thick smog shrouded the place I reside — the Washington, D.C. area. It was ten times worse in New York City. Smoke from wildfires in Canada that I wasn’t even aware of had blown its way down to the major metropolitan areas of the Northeastern United States. I went out in it for sushi with a friend because we’d planned it several days ahead of time. We found no reason to cancel our plans.
I walked through the yellow air among other young people who were also out and about, attending happy hours in their corporate work clothes. The air was surprisingly cold and the sun had disappeared from view. I kept thinking that this was how the dinosaurs must have died millions of years ago. Then, I went into the windowless sushi restaurant and forgot what the world looked like outside for a while.
I can’t help but wonder — will there be a day when we simply can’t do this anymore? Will I one day make plans with a friend that we can’t keep because we will finally be going extinct that day? What’s the future of humanity?
I mean, how dumb is humanity? Well, you’re getting a chance right now to find out. We continue to attend happy hours and sip on our martinis as we watch the world literally burn.
Humans are wasteful assholes. We are destroying nature so we can build luxury apartments and wear designer flip-flops. And the less privileged of us have little choice but to participate in the mass destruction because we are brainwashed by the people in charge to think that this is the right way to live — by completely disconnecting from the natural order of things. The rich and the poor will all go extinct together, and we all have an equal share of responsibility, but the fewer financial resources one has, the less freedom one has to choose sustainable living.
The people in charge are the dumbest of us all because they actually have the power to save the planet and its living creatures, but they choose not to. They don’t care about trees, insects, sea creatures, or land animals. But most importantly, they don’t care about other humans, and they don’t seem to even care about themselves. Their descendants will suffer the same as a polar bear when the climate changes so drastically and suddenly that food can’t grow anymore.
Now, I actually despise cliched terms like ‘climate change’ and I veer away from angry mobs that throw insults at people they deem ignorant. This is just another form of self-hate because when you hate another human, you’re hating something that is deeply connected to you. It causes separation and fissures in a society where we dearly need oneness and cooperation. But we really are destroying our own species, guys, and whatever label you want to put on it, we are all affected. And we are the dumbest species on Earth for doing this to ourselves.
We have such an incredible capacity of consciousness in our minds, but we use it to create a fantasy world where nothing is wrong as we slowly die together.
I will point out that the city in which I live is something like ninety percent liberal, so don’t tell me that it’s all to be blamed on conservatives. I saw it — the young liberals were all out trying to continue their privileged and silly lives in D.C. that day in the smoke. I was one of them.
We all have a hand in this, and when you choose to go out to have drinks with your friends to talk about your petty problems for an evening instead of worrying about your existence, you are at fault as much as anyone. If you’re looking out your window literally witnessing the end of times and then making sure you get to your high-end workout class on time instead of running into the streets and yelling “What the fuck are we doing?!” then there really is no hope.
Now, I wish I could say that I don’t mean to scare you, but I can’t. I want to scare you. I want to terrify you. That’s the only way you’ll wake up and change something. We all have a part in this. The future of humanity is in our hands.
It starts with you.
Think about every single object that passes through your hands each day. Ask yourself some hard questions. How are your clothes made? How is your food produced and what resources does it take for it to get to your fridge? Are you about to move into a brand new apartment building that stands on land that was a thick forest a few months ago? Where does that plastic bag go when you throw it in the trash? Do bottles actually get recycled when you put them in the recycling bin?
Maybe we need to shop for groceries only at farmers’ markets — or grow our own food. Maybe we need to shop for outfits at thrift stores. Maybe we don’t need to have a bigger house or a fancy apartment and we should be grateful for any shelter at all.
I try my best to do these things, though sometimes I get invited out for happy hours, too. Maybe we can start to have happy hours in our homegrown organic gardens, wearing our best thrift store garb, sipping on homemade drinks with all the butterflies and birds — inviting all of life to partake in it. That would be the happiest of hours for me.
As long as we are still headed on the same trajectory, I am going to be losing my sanity little by little. It’s inevitable to feel out of touch when you see the truth but you’re the only one in a sea of humans who sees it. When I go out in public now, I cringe. I wince. I look away because looking too closely at people sitting in well-kept office clothes at sidewalk bars enjoying luxuries as if they are entitled makes me want to cry.
We are not entitled; we must earn life. We must restore balance on this planet.
We have to cultivate a connection with each other as well as nature. We have to understand that we are merely travelers here, and we will carry with us the consequences of our deeds to the next destination – the future of humanity. It’s the only way we will truly wake up and understand the destruction that each and every one of us is causing, willingly or not. It’s spiritual.
This madness must end.
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