Not true actually. It's hardly just been lately. I dropped out of college eight years ago having found the University of Cincinnati to be nothing more than high school with a bigger yard. About once a week I do regret not having a degree in something but I'm sure if I did have one I would regret not having a degree in something better. Like Lego engineering. But because it's what I would've spent most of my time and money on in college anyway, I've tried to remain a reader. Which, while I don't find it to be a particularly darling feather in my cap, people I barely know always seem to want to know what book I'm reading. As I'm reading it. Their interest immediately going on an Ambien drive as soon as I say something like "It's a history of water politics in the American West." I may need to start making up fake premises for the books I read just to keep anyone from trying to come to conclusions about my personality.
(Warning. Snarky content.)
"What's your book about?"
"It's the story of a local news anchor and Applebee's franchisee who discovers that the agribusiness who supplies his ranch dressing is dosing it with sedatives (from and even bigger pharma-company) to pacify suburbanites into becoming drooling mega-consumers. And while trying to get to the bottom of the conspiracy he is stymied left and right by his corporate media bosses (even bigger still) who are hell bent on influencing the subdued masses into electing their CEO as emperor of the Northern Hemisphere."
"Oh, that sounds good. What's it called?"
"A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius."
I've poorly utilized a lot of blog space to make the follow simple statement. Lately I've been reading much more. And while most of it has been fiction, I took a break to read The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. In it the author imagines, with the help of dozens of scientists and conservationists, what would happen to the planet if all human life vanished. The 'how' of the human extinction is beside the point but to satisfy my Sci-fi nerdliness let's just say it was a nano-bot apocalypse. The book catalogs of all the crap we are currently and constantly venting, dumping and leeching into the natural world. Then describes how many of those releases wold stop instantly after we had vanished. While other sources of poison would slowly start to gurgle in our absence as giant oil storage containers failed and each of the 441 nuclear power plants on Earth either burned or melted down. I'll let you ponder which option is preferable. And as scary as it all is nothing in the book chilled me quite as much as the following.
Explode the acronym VHEMT and you get the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. No kidding, it's exactly what it sounds like. And, while what it sounds like is pretty fucking grim, a visit to the VHEMT (pronounced, yep, vehement} reveals some alarmingly rational thought about dealing with the Earth's number one problem. Us.
Despite the name, no one in this group seems to be promoting Futurama-esque suicide booths or fascist, government imposed child quotas. Merely, that if people, of their own free will, chose to have no, or at most one child they may be doing one of the more green things any family can do. While thought provoking, as the youngest of four it saddens me to think about a whole shitload of kids growing up without siblings. Until I think of how many people's lives would be enriched by a family of three adopting a fourth or a family of two adopting two more (like my Mom's brother and his wife did). The more I think about the intentions of this group the more I wonder why I found the idea so shocking in the first place. Except that I simply never considered the well being of the planet as part of family planning. It's always weird to think about something you've never thought of before.
Based on what is obviously intended to be a shocking name for their organization, I went to the VHEMT website expecting to find comic book levels of madness and villainy and instead found smart folks thinking radically and even whimsically about a very serious problem. Like opening a door menacingly labeled 'BEARS!!' only to find it filled with the gummi variety.
Fear not friends of mine who are recent parents, I'll not show up at your door wearing an "Extinction, it works" tee shirt mumbling about diapers in landfills. My shock regarding the Extinction Movement has more to do with the shock of accepting a seemingly bat-shit crazy idea as more valid than at first glance. Here's hoping I can continue to treat all ideas presented to me fairly regardless of their outward appearance.
Whew! Congratulations to you for getting through what is so far my most tangent filled post yet. And congratulations to me for doing it without bringing up that stupid octuplets lady. Today's blogging lesson is FOCUS. I'll try harder in the future to keep things on one note.
That book is awesome but I still haven't finished it. I spent many weeks driving around picturing the roads caving on or sitting in my house looking at the walls and thinking what it would look like as nature reclaimed it as it's own. You're snarky.
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