A Skybariffic summary

Are Humans Totally Stupid?
Either we're hell-bent on self-destruction, or we truly care about the planet. Or, you know, both
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Friday, December 8, 2006

They say that when gas prices drop, SUV sales surge.

Conversely, they say that when gas prices jump above three bucks a gallon and hover there for a while and everyone is slapped upside the head once again with the painful and obvious reminder that oh yeah we are in the midst of a brutal and losing war over waning petroleum deposits and we are heating up the planet like maniac monkeys and we are really really not paying close enough attention to what all those hurricanes and eroded glaciers and crying trees are trying to tell us, well, that's when our conscience finally kicks in and more people consider buying a Prius and maybe an organic salad, just in case.

It's just incredibly easy, in this painful, tragicomic age of Bush, to take the pessimist's view and think we are, as evidenced by the rather dimwitted formula above, simple as rocks. Stupid, even. Ignorant, reactionary, shortsighted as a Republican rubbing himself with a wad of tobacco lobbyist cash. Is it not obvious?

In other words, it's incredibly easy to believe, given the current planetary circumstances, that we really just don't give much of a damn, that simple decision-making equations like the above prove that we are a rather thoughtless species, reacting only to the most primitive of market forces while remaining hell-bent on serving our most immediate needs and screw the planet and screw the long view and screw what kind of burned-up oil-depleted storm-ridden water-deprived world your kids will be facing in a mere 25 years, just save me a few bucks on a tank of Saudi gas and let's call it an environment.

Sure we care, but we don't really care. Not enough to make significant or permanent change, not enough to radically refocus our agenda to a degree that might affect our mall-addicted oil-bloated American lifestyles. Buy a hybrid when gas prices soar? Pure economics, for most. Saves a few citizens from emphysema and removes a few million pounds of toxic chemicals from the air and hence in 2004 alone Prius drivers did the job of 9,478,000 trees? Just a bonus, really.

It's an ongoing and eternal question spawned of the jaded, pessimistic spirit: Just how stupidly self-destructive are we? How much longer can we possibly survive before we simply consume and waste and blow ourselves to smithereens? After all, the experts tell us that every culture prior to ours -- that is, all those that eventually turned into gluttonous warmongering insanely wasteful empires -- they all imploded. Every single one. Wiped themselves out, burned themselves up, abused their resources to death. Put it this way: If history is any lesson at all, we are just incredibly, deliciously doomed.

But wait, is this bitter view really true? Are we really all that dumb and careless and sad? Doesn't poll after poll and study after study say people really do care about the environment and the food they eat and the impact they have on the planet, and most people say they're willing to change and willing to pay a bit more for products that are environmentally conscious? Sure they do. Problem is, it just ain't that easy.

After all, it's a vicious, capitalistic world and hence common sense, intuition and true spiritual awareness are often merely the meek bitchslaves to aggressive marketing campaigns and soulless politicians and an instant gratification culture that values the immediate money shot far more than it does long-term slow-burn extended orgasm. Deep, soulful caring is often just below "replace smoke alarm battery" in terms of priority.

It's a convoluted and polarizing idea, this one about raising awareness and caring about the health of our pale blue dot and learning to take better care of everything around us lest Jesus/Shiva/Kronos comes back and says, "No, sorry but no, that's not what I meant at all," and turns us all into quivering microscopic amoeba and starts all over again.

On the one hand, we seem to be more destructive to the health of our bodies and our planet than ever before. War and disease and ignorance and prescription meds are plentiful as candy and millions still believe the entire universe was created in a week by some angry bearded spiteful grandfather who hates gays and isn't all that fond of women or sex or Hindus either, and if you just shut off your brain and close your legs and despise the right kind of people, you will get to hang out with him for all eternity. Joy.

On the other hand, we seem to be making huge gains across the board in terms of raising the collective consciousness about issues that we've essentially ignored since man first hacked down a forest to build a factory: global warming, organic foods, energy abuse, our impact on the world. Check the headlines, read the blogs and the magazines and listen to a few of the better politicians: There's more information and more empowering ideas available than ever before. You just gotta open your eyes to really see.

Maybe it's like smoking. Twenty years back, the toxic haze was everywhere. Now: Banned on planes and restaurants and bars and you can't even smoke near most buildings in most major cities in America, and despite what every bitter phlegmy smoker grumbles about lost human rights, there isn't a single non-smoking human alive who isn't grateful for the change, every single day. Sure, millions still smoke, the tobacco lobby is still nasty as an encephalitic pit bull, but something has shifted, something vital and deep and permanent. And we're the better for it.

Al Gore was on "Oprah" recently, doing his "Inconvenient Truth" thing. Oprah herself extolled everyone in the "Oprah" universe to buy and watch Gore's DVD. This is powerful. This is the mainstreaming of a very big idea. Will it make a difference? Will anyone really care? Sure they will. Global warming is in the news more than ever and people sense there's a severe problem and no matter what the naysayers and the idiot skeptics and the pasty enviro-hating Republican Congressmen say, people just know. They get it. Storms and hurricanes and bizarre heat waves and glaciers gone? Something's amiss and it ain't just Mother Nature's menopause. Are those big smokestacks really any different than giant cigarettes, jammed into nature's mouth? Nope. You just gotta learn to see it that way.

This much we know: The human race progresses in fits and starts and heaves and spits. While many of us like to envision some sort of big epiphanic transcendental whoop that will wake everyone up in a flash and a gulp and an orgiastic squirt, in fact, change comes in lurching sidelong waves, in oddly torqued perspective shifts, two steps forward one and step back and three steps sideways and eventually praise Jesus hi Allah thank Buddha, we get there. Maybe. If we're lucky.

And really, given our wicked fun-loving deeply conscious stupidly bipolar natures, that's probably the best we can do.