Is This the Hill You Want to Die On?

This phrase has become popular lately. The implication is usually that whatever it is you are fuming over is not worth it. But–is ANYTHING worth making it that hill?

First of all, I would like to look at the language. I like to think in terms of things I LIVE for, not that I would die for. And there are a great many things in that basket. Love, beauty, good friends, the natural world, the critters, good food, work that I can love, curiosity over what makes it all tick, the future for our children and their children, and so much more. We all have a list like this. It is what keeps us going.

The thing is, there are strong forces trying to destroy all of these things. It started with a misrepresentation of Adam Smith and John Locke and other enlightenment philosophers. This was used by politicians, media, and most importantly, the plutocrats to create a corrupt modernity whose chief feature is capitalism unbound. And it is killing us all.

Given these circumstances, it is clear what hill I am willing to die on. The war for the future of our species and much more is upon us. I know where my honor lies. I hope that there are enough of us.


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The Puppet Show of the Apocalypse

I am sitting at my kitchen table.. It is early June, an election year. I can hear the television droning softly from the living room, bringing me the evening news. They are reporting on one of the men vying to be the presidential candidate for the out of power party. He has apparently just implied something insulting about women and rape. Cut to an ad for viagra. Outside my back door I can hear the soft hum of bees and the little screeches of birds looking for a nesting spot. Outside, in the real world, everything looks just fine–on the surface. Just don’t look to deeply or you would see a flower that is the main food of an important butterfly, which now blooms a week too early for the caterpillars to eat it.There will be none of that type of butterfly this year, or likely ever again in these parts.

Now it is late October. The evening news is on. If I were to look around the corner at my television I would see two men speaking about who said what in the latest scandal, and how they are not to blame for it, and how they would bring prosperity back to the middle class, one by lowering taxes a bit more and the other by cutting a few programs.There are a least 12 political parties in the United States that have candidates for president. But only two of them are allowed to speak publicly where it counts, on television. In fact, one of the “lesser” candidates is outside in chains. Her crime? Trying to enter the hall where the debate is taking place. In other news a hurricane just wiped out two small towns in the delta, foreclosures are up again, and there is unrest in one or another impoverished country.

The puppet show continues. The puppets may be politicians, or celebrities, or, quite often, news “providers” We see their lips move, and words come out. Meanwhile, in the real world, outside our doors, a million more pollinators died. A large American company released another organism into wild nature that will eventually cause a food shortage for a key species, causing an entire ecosystem to crash. On the streets of America, huddling under a freeway over-pass, two children are hungry. Their parents lost their jobs, first him then her. The house went a couple of years later.

In other news, the stock market is up by 30 points, and a Republican congressman just floated a bill to close down what is left of the food stamp program after the last time it was gutted. No one connects the dots. If the tax code were merely put back to what it was in 1950 there would be no hungry children, no homeless families. It is OUR children that are going hungry. Or they used to be before a culture of pure self interest took root and we all became individuals, divorced from any notion of a “community”. Instead, the puppet show drones on–” These welfare families are ruining the country–stealing your prosperity” they say. Who can remember the concept developed in Nazi Germany of the “big lie”? Make the lie big enough and repeat it often enough and it becomes the “truth”. It is the social safety net that is ruining the country, not the top one tenth of a percent that are hoarding sixty percent of our wealth. Repeat after me…

Outside in the real world 14,000 more hectares of rain forest fall. It seems that clear cut rain forest makes great pastureland for the cattle that another large American company prefers for its burgers. That and a bunch of filler, sawdust maybe.  Cut for a commercial. Happy kids eating happy meals. The kids under that overpass eat them, but no one would call them happy. It is all they can afford, and they are lucky to get that.

The puppet show continues. In Oakland another shooting, in Mississippi a flood. A Kafkaesque international manhunt for a whistle-blower. His crime? Telling the truth about criminal activity in his government agency.  Outside in the real world, there are forests silent as graves. Empty forest syndrome. The puppets drone on as we preside over the biggest mass extinction since the dinosaurs. And we are likely the new dinosaurs. Honey bees account for about thirty percent of the human food supply. Even the “food-like substances” that we in the developed world are receiving from the processing plants rely on some form of organic base. Cut to commercial for pesticides. Kills everything, don’t worry. We don’t need insects. Or anything else in the food web that might be collateral damage. Just spray and enjoy the antiseptic landscape, and then pop open a beer and watch more of the puppet show.

A large ship full of plastic goods arrives from Asia. The news anchor jokes about hitting those sales. A large American company, a discount store, boasts that 60% of Americans shop at their stores. Meanwhile, across the world, large piles of old plastic burn, and the air stings. Meanwhile, in the real world, there is a 270,000 square mile garbage patch, filled with the detritus of the free market. Nothing lives there. Anymore.

The puppet show continues. I sit at the kitchen table. It is early summer.I can hear the drone of the evening news. There was an oil spill from the Tar Sands along the Canadian border. It hit an Indian reservation. Nothing can live there now either. The black earth is poisoned and will remain so long after we are just bones. In other news, a stringent anti-abortion bill passed the house, but is expected to die in the senate.

Outside, in the real world, I can hear the soft hum of honey bees in the Bottle Brush. I can hear the chirps of the hummingbirds and the tiny song of dozens of bird babies as the mama birds bring dinner home to the nest. I live in a very fortunate place. It is hard to see that anything is wrong on this gentle summer evening. It is impossible for us to detect the loss of diversity, the collapse of ecosystems, with the information gathering tools that we have. Even when we see it it is almost impossible to see that our way of life is at fault. Further-even if we see both the destruction and our part in it–there seems to be little we can do. And until we collectively decide to commit our full energy to tearing down the machine we have built and replacing it with something that supports the entire biotic community, it is true.  Nothing can be done.

I turn back to the puppet show of the apocalypse. In other news, the largest fire in Colorado history took another twenty homes. As for the weather-it’s gonna be a scorcher out there…


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