[A-List] The Plastic Generation's Transformation ...

[Bill Totten <shimogamo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

and the demise of the religion of techno-worship

by Jan Lundberg

Culture Change Letter 107 (August 02 2005)


The people are being murdered but they don't know how. "Surely, the chemicals
and radiation that fetuses and children are exposed to are safe, or else they
wouldn't be allowed, right?" This convenient attitude seems to belong to the
majority, who indeed have little choice.

Yet, the idea that the world was flat was common enough until dispelled, and the
Christian church's view of the solar system was trashed as well. Those flips in
world view are considered historically momentous, but an even greater departure,
perhaps, from conventional thinking and spirituality is about to occur in our
lifetimes. The coming changes in dominant viewpoints will accompany an
involuntary, massive, radical shift to living within the sharply reduced bounty
of the natural environment.

A growing number of victims of both the greed economy and the religion of
technological "progress" are quite aware that things are not right. In addition
to being poisoned, they know the top dogs are getting something like 450 times
the pay of the minimum-wage earner. Angry feelings are suppressed for the time
being, as long as order is maintained thanks to relative abundance of material
essentials.

A rebellious response to the irresponsibility of today's rulers could be along
the lines of China's current anti-pollution unrest whereby the police are routed
by outraged citizens suffering from lies and stillbirths. The US public has
additional resentments such as the bogusly launched War on Iraq, although the
people here share complicity due to their petroleum consumption.

The American people are a mix of docility and violence. The abuse they have
taken has only grown, while they are told this is the pinnacle of any nation's
success. But everybody knows that quality-of-life indicators are overall still
going downward after decades of consumerism and loss of pristine nature. What
people don't know is how much worse the raw deal has been all along, and that it
is all going to come crashing down - the good and the bad.

The two necessary steps for completing a 180-degree change for modern humanity
are petrocollapse and culture change.

Die-hard defenders of the dominant system adhere to the money-is-the-answer
dogma. They will be least prepared for coping with deprivation that outlasts
their hoarded supplies and useless cash. These hapless folk may even be the
object of retribution when most people see that sharing must be the order of
the day. When sharing the Earth is fully accomplished, except among holdouts
who may try to enforce an extension of today's capitalistic/feudalistic model,
retribution may be considered outmoded and pointless.

Here's why this column's position is correct that a comprehensive cultural
change of values will prevail for peace, equity and nature-protection: anything
less, and we have a good chance of not making it for long as a species. There is
little time to waste muddling along, let alone continuing to destroy the planet
and millions of innocent lives every day.


The Plastic Generation

The Me Generation of the 1970s was a disgrace, with its rapid evolution into the
Yuppie syndrome. But The Plastic Generation is even worse, and includes almost
everybody living in modern society because of the constant, rising diffusion of
petrochemicals through plastic consumption. The same goes for the religion of
technological knowledge and application: like plastic, it's stuck in the brains
of the whole population except for some precious traditionalists and endangered
primitives. Can one easily discount or gainsay the possibility that until the
diseases of plastics and techno-worship are wiped out, our world remains on its
disaster course? Let's see what we can do to hasten their demise and save Mother
Earth.

Anyone over thirty years of age in the year 2005 can easily see the increase
of plastic objects surrounding us. I am writing this at an upscale outdoor
microbrewery where all the chairs are solid plastic of a single mold. This was
not so commonly seen several years ago except at McDonalds, for example.

Worse, the presence of plastic particles and associated toxic chemicals in
modern people makes for weak genes, congenital diseases, and a rotten feeling in
my soul when I think of the human race's physical deterioration. Looking at an
apparently healthy person, seeing him or her licking a plastic utensil, one must
imagine the chemical contamination in the person's body and brain.

It starts with the baby pacifier. Some pacifiers are possibly still made of
latex of the rubber tree, but subsidized petroleum is replacing every natural
product conceivable, from hemp rope to straw hats. For a couple of decades we
have all marvelled at the high fashion of wearing a backwards baseball hat with
the plastic size adjustor smack on the forehead.

Going back to the baby, why not give the baby the breast? Besides the mother not
being always available or of a mind to breast feed, the breast milk is of lower
and lower quality due to petrochemicals (pesticides, plastics, and other poisons).
Eskimos who have little petrochemical contamination in their home environment
are getting poisoned breast milk from the sea and the air which we all share.

Another simple example of petrochemical poisoning is PVC wrap on food. Known
sometimes as Saran Wrap, the migration of chemical molecules into food is as
certain as the migration of phthalates into blood from soft plastic blood bags
in hospitals. Things like this are unquestioned by many and thus persist, and to
change the situation one must await some major news media attention. But this is
quite unlikely when car bombings and Hollywood marriages dominate our programmed
consciousness.

So, it would appear that people are basically trusting and unthinking, and as a
result the plastic plague goes right on climbing. The movement to wake people up
and get rid of plastic is admittedly young, but we are competing with heavy news
such as climate change, petrocollapse and nuclear proliferation.

The question should be, "What do we do about this plastic disaster now?" However,
before one can even ask the question, people are apt to offer up excuses for
persisting in their ecocidal habits.

Even people old enough to have shopped in US supermarkets in the 1960s without
ubiquitous plastic bags, offered since then in unlimited quantity, are now quick
to wonder out loud", What can we do instead? What's the alternative to the
plastic?" - as they claim there is little likelihood of giving up plastic
convenience. To improve their feeling of powerlessness they save and clean
plastic bags to reuse, but they do not know the plastic is toxic and should not
be touched. It is much easier to be in denial and just hope that year after year
of touching and ingesting plastics does absolutely nothing! Oh, what's that you
say, your sister has breast cancer?


Plastics are Forever

Petroleum is the source for perhaps 99% of plastic, and it does not biodegrade.
Only 3.5% of plastics are recycled in any way, and the resultant products are of
low quality after much loss of material into the environment during recycling.

Sixty-three pounds of plastic packaging goes to landfills in the US per person
per year. Twice the weight of all US humans is produced each year in the form of
plastic resin pellets, the raw material for consumer plastics.

Four hundred to five hundred years of "photodegradation" (from sunlight) will
break down disposable diapers, six-pack rings and plastic bottles into tiny bits
of plastic, but this only makes it easier for fish, birds and mammals to ingest.
It has been found in sea water that with the tendency of other pollutants in the
surrounding water to stick to plastics, the effect of biomagnification up the
food chain gets to you and me. Many of these pollutants are endocrine disrupters
which act as incredibly powerful hormones. These chemicals throw a switch that
triggers diseases and birth defects that are on the rise in modern societies.

Plastic particles in the Pacific Ocean have tripled in the last decade from
maximum densities of 320,000 particles per square kilometer to one million
particles per square kilometer. Scientists predict a tenfold increase in ocean
plastics by the year 2010, bringing the ratio of surface plastic to zoo-plankton
in the North Pacific Central Gyre to sixty to one by weight. It is now "only"
six to one.

Half the varieties of fish once commonly fished are gone, as are ninety of big
fish. This is due almost entirely to human overpopulation and the use of plastic
nets and fishing lines, and the sheer magnitude of over-fishing enabled by
petroleum fuels. Aren't we modern humans clever by feeding ourselves at any cost?


The religion of techno-worship

Any oppressive religion is a good reason for advocating major cultural change.
Going back to Isaac Newton and the replacement of the church with "science" in
England in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, history witnessed the
near complete and ruthless elimination of the ancient worship of the Earth by
pagans and witches.

The process began to permeate what was becoming mainstream culture. This
eventually occurred to the extent that a white-cloaked priesthood - eventually
represented by television characters - convinced people to ingest poisons
because experts said it was okay. Only now are a few people learning that,
for example, there is no safe dose for radiation, and that mercury in vaccines
may have spread autism far and wide.

Mathematics and chemistry have come a long way from the ingenious ancient Greeks
and the later Muslim scientists who tried to understand their universe. Today,
the sophistication of these disciplines, along with physics and biology, have
unbalanced humanity when we consider people's lives are under attack and are
arguably less beautiful, at least on a mystical level, than ever before.
Knowledge is not bad in itself, but it is increasingly pursued almost always for
selfish and questionable reasons in today's globalized corporate economy.

I believe that humanity can get along with enough mathematical ability so as to
track seasons and calculate some angles, and ideally dispense with all else.
After all, the innate mathematical aspect of music is a hell of a lot of good
funky math, at times. Do we really need vast storehouses of (commercialized)
knowledge, which just happen to be the key to destroying the biosphere?

Whether we need this age's knowledge or not, it is certain that many people
have a closed mind about even considering that the pursuit of technical and
scientific-reductionist information is perhaps not worth the effort. I am of the
small camp that says it is not - for more "growth" anyway, at this stage of the
game.

The point of my focusing on the questionable religion of technical
knowledge/application is that future survival may actually have to be without
much technical ability anyway. With the imminent tsunami of peak oil's global
effects, no one can assume that vast technological activity can persist at least
indefinitely. Pursuit of vast technical knowledge itself, just for learning, is
not inherently bad, as most of us say. There is truth to the need to utilize
technical knowledge to do a better job of mitigating pollution. However, the
idea of using high technology to solve technology's legacy of problems is
doubtful to some of us heretics. Will the attempt be perpetuated until some
bitter end?

My form of sacred mathematics happens to be music. My participation in cosmic
vibrations and beats could well be my most religious practice, especially if it
counts as meditation. One can also consider the alternatives to such a "holy"
pursuit: hanging out in bars, although that's much better than designing weapon
systems that can't or shouldn't ever be used.

I don't know why anyone should care if I dig music more than the "average"
person. But I'm making the point that the many intellectual and technical
"strides" we have seen as hallmarks of the ultra-scientific consumer culture
have not been entirely "forward"! And there are other ways of living better.
It so happens that people lived for over 99.9% of their time on Earth in a
low-tech and non-material knowledge base. The other .1% represents only a recent
foray into science fiction made into industrial reality. One may argue that now
we are stuck with it. We clearly need to have a conversation whereby everyone is
involved, because some people have made up their minds to deal with technology
and its abuses short sightedly as always. Polluting via utilization of water
filters made in large part of toxic plastics - for landfill dumps - can be a
detail brought up when the world must change direction. Could that time possibly
be now?

The change will not be voluntary, as history and the current picture tell us,
but don't say nobody had alternative strategies. The alternatives today can be
traced back to the 1960s and even previously. If the hippies were in some ways
like native American shamans, and the politically minded hippies were cultural
revolutionaries, a look at their strong and weak aspects is in order.

The influence of the 1960s endures and was alive at the G8 summit protests in
Scotland a few weeks ago. However, the various minds and philosophies giving
their all, when the Powers That Be did almost nothing but protect the unfair
status quo, were not interviewed by reporters for a billion consumers of "news".
To find out more about the lifestyles and value systems of those who are
fighting, with love for the most part, to bring about a sustainable future for
the whole word, read past and future issues of Culture Change (and check those
great links).


"It Better End Soon" by Chicago:

Can't stand it no more
The people dying
Crying for help for so many years
But nobody hears
Better end soon my friend
It better end soon my friend

Can't take it no more
The people hating
Hurting their brothers
They don't understand
They can't understand
Better end soon my friend
It better end soon

Hey, everybody
Won't you just look around
Can't anybody see?
Just what's going down
Can't you take the time?
Just to feel
Just to feel what is real
If you do
Then you'll see that we got a raw deal
They're killing everybody
I wish it weren't true
They say we got to make war
Or the economy will fall
But if we don't stop
We won't be around no more
They're ruining this world
For you and me
The big heads of state
Won't let us be free
They made the rules once
But it didn't work out
Now we must try again
Before they kill us off
No more dying!
No more killing
No more dying
No more fighting
We don't want to die
No, we don't want to die
Please let's change it all
Please let's make it all
Good for the present
And better for the future
Let's just love one another
Let's show peace for each other
We can make it happen
Let's just make it happen
We can change this world
Please let's change this world
Please let's make it happen for our children
For our women
Change the world
Please make it happen
Come on
Come on
Please
Come on
It's up to me
It's up to you
So let's do it now
Yeah
Do it now

Can't stand it no more
The people cheating
Burning each other
They know it ain't right
How can it be right
Better end soon my friend
It better end soon my friend

"With this album, we dedicate ourselves, our futures and our energies to the
people of the revolution ... And the revolution in all of its forms".
- Robert Lamm and Jerry Kath, 1969. Aurelius Music.


References and Links:

Algalita Marine Research Foundation and its new brochure "Plastics are Forever"
http://www.algalita.org/initiatives.html

Dead on Arrival: The Fate of Nature in the Scientific Revolution - from Culture
Change magazine #20 (never printed):
http://www.culturechange.org/issue20/deadonarrival.htm

G8-protests photos by Berkeleyan from Scotland on Indymedia:
http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/07/1752466.php
http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/07/1752483.php

War on Plastics, by Jan Lundberg (syndicated on Truthout.org, Rense.com,
BlueGreenEarth.com and elsewhere):
http://culturechange.org/e-letter-plastics.html

Beyond Oil - Philadelphia: Teach-in and Conference, September 18, includes
speakers such as the son of Ken Saro Wiwi, the martyred Nigerian anti-oil
activist, and Jan Lundberg. See http://phillybeyondoil.org/

7th Annual Sustainable Communities Symposium, in beautiful Crested Butte,
Colorado, September 28 2005 (Jan Lundberg, keynote speaker):
http://hccaonline.org/page.cfm?pageid=2655

Peak Oil and Community Solutions - second annual conference, September 23 2005,
Jan Lundberg and Richard Heinberg among speakers. Yellow Springs, Ohio
http://www.communitysolution.org/05conf1.html

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Bill Totten     http://billtotten.blogspot.com/