Nuclear

Threats of catastrophe have shifted during the past several decades.  While the continual existence of nuclear weapons makes it impossible to ignore the possibility of nuclear holocaust, the nuclear threat that is actually effecting global calamity today is much more insidious.

Today is Earth Day, which means more to some of us than it does to others.  I am not opposed to giving the earth a holiday.  But celebrating earth a day a year is an insufficient means of campaigning for a conscious recollection of the diverse ecology that supports our livelihood, our economic ventures, and our hope for future sustenance.  In America, holidays tend to draw people together as occasions for cellular celebration.  We celebrate sometimes with our communities and most often with our nuclear families.  No harm done there.  Family reunions and community gatherings can be enchanting.  At the same time, however, our national fixation on the nuclear family poses as great a threat as the Cold War era nuclear arms race.

Trying to meet our family’s needs is one thing.  Privileging the excessive satisfaction of the desires of our nuclear families is another altogether.  Whose comfort are we willing to neglect in order to extend excess to our closest relations?  Who are we willing to cast as “them” in order to ensure the opulence of “us”?  This nuclear threat, seeing our small collective of relatives as an insular unit, distracts us from engendering the consciousness we need to survive and thrive as humans and as members of our earth-home.  By focusing on nuclear home-life, constructing our own tiny empires, we have forgotten the actual house-rules (eco-nomy) inherent to our earthly home.  Our excess, our surplus, our capital is not taken from the vaults of an inanimate bank.  It is mined from the sources of the livelihood of others.

I am skeptical about the possibility that a shift in individual behaviors would bring about any great amount of social change to the contemporary patterns of global relations.  I doubt that a great enough number of those of us who are privileged and excessively comfortable will recognize the calamitous impact of our luxurious expenditures.  It’s far too easy to coddle our consciences by comparison to others who are even more opulent than we are.  But I am hopeful that the catastrophe we are invoking (and it is primarily we privileged who are invoking it) may demand its own change.  In that sense the apocalypse (nuclear or otherwise) may be inevitable.  This inevitability (and current reality) of catastrophe does not necessitate resignation or despair.  At the very least let's prepare ourselves and be ready to re-craft society without the ignorant and myopic elements that dominate today.

In the meantime, as you’re celebrating with your families today try to think radically about the sources and costs of your sustenance.  And figure out someway to express gratitude.