In the end we are all Nero

A very mindful conversation today with the lads about landfill and waste. They had a tour of the Waterloo Beechwood/Boardwalk landfill and learned that we are filling it faster than they can manage.

They were a bit gobsmacked about the “only way to stop it is by not buying stuff in the first place” part. which also ties in to the production end of stuff… the part that doesn’t hit the landfill but the endless mass of productions of plastic and disposable stuff.

i didn’t have the heart to tell them that we are screwed in so many ways that landfill, albeit a worry, may be the least of them in the upcoming years. their lifetimes will not be at all like mine. our addiction to not getting dirty, to not eating anything that doesn’t look like it belongs in a picture book, the swiffer-generation disposability, and certainly their parents and grandparents generations have betrayed them through selfish pursuits of stuff and convenience. man… not an easy day. what’s worse: the guilt of knowing, the guilt of doing, or feeling badly for myself in the moment when they are the ones at risk.

and then finally… how the hell do we stop. we are all addicts. our behaviour hurts almost every living thing we can identify with on the planet just to keep up with the joneses, just to have a lower hydro bill, just to fill another storage container with junk we will never use, just to not have to wash a fucking mop head… we look at China and shame them for their pollution. we are the ones who support what they produce — we consume — we drive their economies through the dollars we spend — we enslave them into factories making tacky shit that we love today and hate tomorrow before we pitch it. when can we shift from consumer back to citizen? when can we make that decision that we must be stewards, instead of hoarders?

and with all that on my heart, and in my mind… i do something so pathetic as to plot out gardens, do small acts of activism, and still dream of a better world. dreaming just doesn’t cut it. neither do the other two. what a fucking idiot.

we need change. real, profound change. our values are misplaced and so are we. the only thing that puts us on the top of the foodchain is the misery we impose on everything we touch. I do think we were once beautiful. I do think we can be so again. i am just failing to see how.

in the end we are all Nero. we are all fiddling, watching our Rome burn.