Posted on July 20, 2009 - by Rasham

PLASTIC

YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION…

Our beachfronts are littered with armies of plastic byproducts, resting amongst the decaying carcasses of black feathered birds and mutilated sharks. How odd and yet slightly comedic that on this day I should find a battered American flag buried beneath bottle tops and cigarette butts, visible to only those who are searching for a moment of understanding in an otherwise unforgivable circumstance. America the beautiful is swarmed by herds of an invading threat: ignorance sold individually in separate, plastic containers.

I’ve struggled for what seems like an eternity to make sense of my earthbound existence, and I have yet to come to a satisfying conclusion. However I have formed what I believe to be a hypothesis worth mentioning in the least:

Modern American society is an intricate construct of a poor and struggling people, aimed at the achievement of short term pleasure and false senses of fulfillment and gratification. It is encouraged to be maintained as such on behalf of two known theories of truth:

1. that a large society of individuals is best maintained when the individuals themselves are isolated, being that unity amongst individuals is made almost impossible to achieve

2. that in addition to being isolated, the individual must also be maintained in an infinite realm of ignorance regarding the truth of his own existence, and thus the individual mind should be sculpted from an early age in government funded educational institutions which are designed to stunt the individual’s natural creative resources, and guide the individual as he grows into an inevitable process of absorption into the mediocrity of his surrounding environment without a mind capable of revoking or questioning his authorities.

I began writing this in response to the despicable amount of plastic responsible for most all of the waste on the shoreline of my home community. In pondering the why’s and how’s and from where’s which flooded my thoughts regarding the waste, I was led by my own consciousness into an abyss of confrontational and uncomfortable truth: in order to arrive at an end in thoughtful understanding of the problem of plastic pollution that currently haunts our health and livelihood, as well as the health and wellbeing of all organic life with whom we share this earth, I would have to start from the beginning, indeed, from the birth of European civilization. And what an undertaking that would be, although not impossible, as Jared Diamond has proven in his magnificent published works. I am not interested in launching my investigation from such a mark. I could just as easily beg you to believe me when I say that the most honest display of human parasitic behavior initially presents itself most clearly in history with the early European growth of civilization, where populations of people flourished in response to booming agriculture and consequent industrial revolutions. Where there is power, there is destruction at whatever cost in order to preserve and maintain that power, and history shows this to be true over and over again, and over and over again we see the suffering of ‘inferior’ populations of individuals and the environment caused by the development and instantiation of the concept ‘private property’, the ideal of wealth, and the misconstrued definition of the phrase ‘pursuit of happiness’.

Following the preservation of these aspects of humanity since their introduction, we find ourselves victims of our own blind obedience to the ever increasing demand for conformity, living in the materialistic mindset that the road to better living is made of plastic and lined with kiosks operated by corporate influence and money machines. Man’s potential to exhaust all his energies and resources in order that he may someday in the future hold in his hands the final result of his soul destructive and evolutionary disruptive patterns of behavior is greater than need be said. These patterns of behavior are deeply engrained in the fiber of the individual’s being, fortified by constant fear and the threat of humiliation and disrespect. Our modern world thus resembles an assembly line, where individuals are born as they are, and molded and constructed with consistency a key priority, punishing those who attempt to flee the monochromatic parade of identical methods of thought, and keeping the rest of the population in order by means of fear of punishment. Modern societies breed individuals, drill these individuals on the subjects of compliance and boundaries of action (via lessons plans of right and wrong), offer but an introductory course in moral responsibility and compassion (the bare minimum required to function as a productive member of society), and reward them for their cooperation with low, low prices and tickets to next week’s ball game.

Private property, wealth, and the pursuit of happiness: these abstract concepts form the base of our social construct, though we may be unaware of it.  We are informally promised that when we play by the rules in this game of life, when we are ‘good’, when we work hard at our jobs and pay our taxes and subscribe to the cable company and pray to our gods that these abstract concepts will somehow manifest into tangible forms of possession that will nourish our souls and warm our hearts.

But why? I believe there are two factors that describe the necessity for a world constructed as such:

1. for the politically powerful to maintain control of large populations of individuals, and

2. to promise the wealth to the wealthy.

What would happen if we no longer, as a collective entity, cared to drive our vehicles? If it didn’t matter to us what shoes we wore, or if fast food became suddenly repulsive? If everyone were to turn off their televisions and communicate effectively with one another? If, so to speak, everyone ‘woke up’, wrestled up from beneath the layers of fear, and learned the truth of their country’s operations and management, of the network within which they were intimately related, a small program in the larger scheme, mindlessly feeding the creator by continuing productivity? What would happen? Our society might fail, it might not. But herein lays the dilemma: is it possible to achieve a level of mass awareness?

Unfortunately, in order to undermine the actuality of our modern day society, a revolution of massive proportions would be necessary, and I am sad to say that the possibility of a revolt in our time no longer exists: the collective whole has built itself a magnificent web of protection and preservation, and beyond that, and most importantly, majority society is so unknowingly bound by fear that the idea of radical change is distasteful. You see, people like their ‘things’; they like that they can work an honest job, drive an honest car, attend honest meetings, and drink beer with their fellows. They like commiserating, caring for their personal wardrobes, shopping at bargain stores, enjoying dinner at a restaurant, smoking American brand cigarettes: although modern day society has its roots in spoiled values and egoistic ideals, it bears the fruit of ‘freedom’ ripe for the picking, a minimal reward disguised as a seductive well-deserved right to claim American citizenship, wherein the individual feels in debt to his country, continuing to sponsor and support its cause.

We have freedom, to a certain extent: we have the freedom to buy, freedom to sell, freedom to choose in which capacity we will best function in order to maximize profit, which is to be paid to the beast that rests easily in its golden castle adorned with rubies and gems.

The beast I speak of is the core of the web of power, those who sit at the head of the control panel and determine the course destined to be traveled by the collective whole of individuals within its boundaries. The beast I speak of is the class of peoples who act only within the extent of their personal self interest, and who guide certain aspects of civilized society in such a way as to increase and preserve their power and wealth. They are often unknown, hiding behind friendly marketing schemes and state emblems, carefully manipulated productions boasting colorful displays of patriotism and valor, or fancy language featuring religious references, to name a few. The beast I speak of, though seemingly a ghostly apparition of the paranoid conspiracy theorist’s mind, is very, very real, and very much kept alive by an all American diet of brainwashed citizenry, national and international productivity, and loyal consumerism.

All of which I have written thus far is by no means scientific evidence in support of a concrete theory of truth. It too, is a theory of truth, and as theories go it is incomplete and flawed in many respects. I do believe, however, that most of what I have expressed is as close to the truth regarding American modern society as it gets, and there are numerous other literary resources authored by accredited intellectuals that have in them similar underlying tones and concepts. In fact, to most individuals with whom I have had the privilege to become acquainted, these views are quite common and agreed upon.

I write based solely on my informal research and education learned by merely participating as a functioning member of modern American society.

My father is a materialist, expressing emotion through the giving and revoking of expensive tangible objects, satisfying the natural human instinct to provide for oneself the comforts necessary for happiness and fulfillment through the private ownership of material goods, big and small. My father offered me the best advice he could, repeating to me what I have discovered to be the tireless middle/low class American dream: go to school, get a good job, buy a house, start a family. Ahh indeed this advice is so appropriately linked to the grand scheme: the American design for living: create an individual, program that individual through institutionalized mandatory education, plug the individual into the workforce, have that individual become tied to the system through contracts of debt, and then repeat the cycle over again.

As I sit on the AC Transit, my worst fears for the fate of humanity are realized in thought: people operating like machines, without an ounce of creativity or awareness, completely self consumed, behaving in accordance with their false beliefs, no spark of wisdom or intellect, just pure nonsense: individuals who are nothing more than producers and consumers, whose lives are unknowingly devoted to the care of the beast.

“There must be something more”, I tell myself. Those spoken words are a reassuring wave of comfort, a hand that pulls me from the grave within which I have been resting. What is that something more? I have nearly exhausted all possible hypotheses through an extensive experiment of trial and error. I believed once that engaging in a revolt against the system to which I belonged was the road to enlightenment. It wasn’t. Many hours spent alone within the confines of a cell, and a white padded cubicle, and an institution designed for the treatment of mental disease are the societal consequences of my rebellious behavior. However degrading, lonely, spiritually devastating these real experiences proved to be, they are perhaps to what I owe my relentless inquiry into the nature of existence. Having been stripped of ‘freedom’, self-will, and all material possessions in those isolated instances of incarceration and institutionalization, I had only myself and my thoughts. For some, this would have led to an endless rampage of anger and thus further civil intervention. For others it would have meant a permanent installation of irrevocable nightmarish fear and subsequent submission to the demands of daily life. For me, it spawned a euphoric understanding of myself in relation to my environment. I survived, and was better for it.”

Of course, that which induced those divine moments of self realization was not divine in essence: I lived for a long time in a haze of alcohol induced consciousness and drug influenced interactions. Chemically altering my perceptions, I thought, would transcend me far away from the misery of modern living and down a sacred path studded with anointed truth and principles for a Zen existence. Of course, as such stories go, that path revealed itself at first as a mystical and adventurous alternative to the mundane and ordinary, but as I continued the stars began to slowly dim against an increasingly cold dark sky, and as the end drew upon me, a soft whisper of a permanent and absolute escape from it all was the only voice to be heard. No, this wasn’t it either.

Alcohol and drugs is a peculiar facet of our environment. People like getting high…but why? It is no wonder why alcohol is encouraged as a recreational outlet by the ‘beast’ and his corporate minions: it is not only taxable, but it has the incredible property of turning gloom into glee, of uniting the poor souls in song and spirit, however temporary and subtle; it is a magic wand gladly consumed to avoid facing oneself honestly and nakedly. For most its a form of reward, that the individual has successfully completed yet another work week and in accordance with the repetition of his schedule allows himself to ‘unwind and relax’ by ironically squandering his individuality, so that come Monday the reality of another workweek is made sweeter by the forbearing knowledge of the inevitable drunk weekend. Perhaps people drink and drug to destroy that internal spark of universal creativity that exists within us all but which is sadly neglected by the standards of our society, a phenomenon that causes wounds that are only temporarily mended by the use of drugs and alcohol. Maybe its to quiet that feeling of hopelessness one may experience when the spiritual void expanding in every fiber of his molecular being begins to cause him bouts of self pity and regret. Or perhaps one consumes drugs and alcohol in a self destructive protest of his sickening environment and the dying world around him, which brings him to his knees like a child crying to the man in the moon.

Whatever the reason for drink and drug may be, I had attempted to utilize these substances as tools in the desperate attempt to make sense of my existence, truly desiring a life of personal discovery, which led to the eventual painstaking abandonment of all outward expectations and of all earthly obsessions, including the abuse of poisonous consumables. The individuals who choose the path of discovery rather than the one of complacency are typically those social rejects and misfits, sometimes the perfectly lost and sensitive beings who decide consciously or unconsciously to devote their lives to the search of truth in spite of western societal standards of success and growth, that they may discover happiness in its most pure and basic incarnation in a realm of colorful creativity.

And so I stand on this waterfront, appalled at the catastrophic amount of plastic reminders strewn before me, reminders of the millions of people forever committed to vacant patterns of existence, reminders of the degradation of the human spirit which wanders the elaborate highways of the modern era, and reminders of all that is damaged and lost in the preservation of the American dream.

And in this bath of sadness and helplessness I soak, allowing the muddy waters to coat the vibrancy inherent in every man and woman who believes even for a moment that he can change the fate of humanity. Change the fate of humanity…and it is on this strand of thought that perhaps one of life’s most valuable teaching’s can be learned, simply and honestly: perhaps our society has become so incredibly obsessed with the material, so deeply misguided from the natural and harmonious design for living created by forces much greater than the wealthiest man. Even though we live in a place in time where productivity is valued over creativity, where the individual in order to achieve individuality must deny the sugar coated fruits born of the American ideologies and forever filter all that passes through his senses, even though a walk through a crowded metropolitan street reeks of foul odors and toxic waste, an odorous ode to the industrial empire, even so…the individual nonetheless retains within him that special aspect of his being which connects him to his natural world. It is this special aspect that allows the individual to form entirely unique relationships with all else that lives and breathes around him. We invite animals of differing types as members of our family, we are fascinated at the wildlife at the zoo, we attend to gardens and landscapes, and we quiet our mouths and our minds as a bird soars majestically over our heads. However, the most undeniable display of the sacred characteristic of every human being is an honest desire to escape the static chaos of modern societal rituals and find a place where the pace is as gradual as the rising of the sun and where no evidence of human settlement seems invading or disruptive to the balance which bleeds a soft melody into the eyes and ears of those spiritually awakened to the point of experience. A warm candlelit bath, a walk on the delicate sand illuminated by the reflection of the moon dancing on the water, scaling the cliffside of a magnificent mountain, quiet conversation beneath the grandeur of a twinkling sky: all activities that the individual, in an effort to name the energy vibrating through the channels of his body whilst engaging, might call heaven.

This particular connect between the individual and the external is ever so important in these modern times of environmental and moral need. Indeed, a mass revolution is unlikely to headline the evening news, and the American beast is ever too healthy to retire. However, the persistent efforts of selfless advocates and activists, committed individuals and ordinary comrades who have not their own interest at heart, but that of the collective greater good, are what bring the issues of global distress out from the archives and into the mainstream flow of information exchange, sparking the births of many organized coalitions directed at education and positive progressive change.  Acting with the knowledge of the history of real forces which have driven the modern state to these devastating circumstances, or simply acting in harmony with the basic laws of existence, these individuals offer aid when and where needed without any expectation of monetary or verbal praise or profit.  Truly we have entered a period in this chapter of our current existence characterized by tones of global awareness and an undeniable need for change. Even those who prowl the avenues at dusk in name brand shoes and electronic jewelry are not blind to the armies of sidewalk trash they must conquer in order to reach their destination, and now a day at the beach seems more accurately described as a visit to the museum of the byproducts of American imperialism, featuring the sea life graveyard and the exhibit of poisonous plastic products, sponsored in part by corporate expansion and funded by a history of neglect and ignorance. The finest technology and most recent scientific discoveries may not be able to reverse the effects of global pollution, specifically the problem of plastic, and American Big Business seems to have no primary interest in yielding their waste production in favor of typically more expensive but earth friendly alternatives. But not all hope is lost, as people begin to emerge from their cocoons dressed as warriors and voiced like true leaders, intent upon ending the cycle of negligence and passivism once and for all.

And it is here where the muddy waters of the bath of pitiful indulgence are washed away, and the vibrancy and enthusiasm is returned, as I take a moment to watch the girl, a garbage picker in one hand and a pail in the other, the tan of her skin glowing through the holes in her denim overalls, the youthfulness of her face barely visible beneath the bill of her ball cap, first picking up one piece of garbage ,and then another, a beautiful representation of the human potential to make a difference in one small corner of the world. I too bend my spine so that hands may greet the earth, and rid this beachfront of at first one piece of plastic, and I realize that change truly is possible however insignificant it may seem; it begins with the simple action manufactured on behalf of the ever so popular dream of a clean inhabitable earth, a dream in which every human operates under the philosophy that we should pay retribution to the universe that spawned us all.