The calm and quiet belie the danger, a temporary reprieve, a chance for action or an extreme lesson in patience. Crawling out from whatever devastation when it is all over on this day, going forward into the next awaiting the storms once again. The analogy to life itself painfully accurate, the reminders all around.
The storms come in all shapes and sizes, all manner of destruction and failures to operate properly. One day it is the children and their health issues, then next it is an actual snow storm shutting down everything for who knows how long. The government shuts down and the rent checks are late. The doctor says your cancer has returned and inoperable… All storms, with the size and destructive properties of hurricanes in most cases. The damage is not to be seen, the mechanisms of society, and the business of business do not allow these intrusions to interfere with the important grind of tomorrow.
I picked up a shovel when I was just old enough to hold one. By the time I was seven I had an underground fort. I did a lot of yard-work when I was a teen to earn some money, there was no turning to Mom or Dad. Doing contracting work later on in life and digging a few water lines by hand, moving earth was something I had some experience with. So when I ran into hard-pan and glacial layers I knew how to work with them to get through to the next layer. Of course, not all of it was hard-pan, some was easy as Nutella to get through. I could have stopped at the hard-pan, but the job wasn’t done and when it was I earned some experience that I could spend later on.
I am acutely aware of the strengths and actions needed to get through some layers of earth, and in a similar vein, layers of life as well. Like anyone, and everyone else though, the more that is learned, the more it is realized that in reality I know less than I did before. It doesn’t mean I have regressed at all, but an inch of knowledge will provide a foot of perspective, and with a foot of perspective you gain a yard of horizon containing opportunities to learn. So, yes, a million directions and a million storms and I see and feel a lot of people I know going through them. I see and feel a lot of people I don’t know going through them too. What is overwhelming is the issue of not seeing this as a whole, not seeing that, yes, individualism should be celebrated and embraced. Yet in the automation of life, the islands and in some cases pedestals that we have become are all sinking at the same pace. Human climate change, the present, but ignored danger of this unnatural disaster.
I am witnessing the change of generational generalities, affluence changing ways of civilization. The importance of things from the past of little consequence in the new human storms. Huge avalanches of misplaced and displaced workers, devastating living changes, and a lack of basic infrastructure to handle this human side of this devaluation. Hey! Look guys I just invented “blank!” Which is rarely followed by, it will take the jobs and effect the industry in such a manner that 9 million people will have to do something else. At the pace we are going, a basic income is almost going to be a must before people start picking up sledge hammers and bring it all down. This is happening at such a pace and on such a wide scale, that the confusion of it all makes it seems like outliers, but it’s not.
The good part is that we are forced into change, the bad part is that we are forced into change. Hurricanes rarely leave much left that doesn’t need to be changed, the human inside kind can have that effect as well, but is usually at least a little contained. The inside kinds of storms raging in even the very best of us are coalescing, the emotional economy is a negative bank statement. Paying for basics is a stretch at best and a late bill is a constant battle between fees and next Friday’s dinner. I can understand my young friend, a rapper who is in the now, and reminds me all the time about how his generation is oblivious to those things we hold and honor now. It’s about tomorrow and building that “blank” to get them ahead. The mantra of hard steady work and retirement is a pipe dream concept of a different time. So I kind of see where they poo-poo some of our ideals, some of our thinking because we really did get it this messed up after all didn’t we? More wreckage, more emotional economy that is being spent, the thinner we all become.
Like a Sharpie mark on your face, you don’t know it’s there until you do. Someone or something makes you aware that action is needed to remove the mark. This is what we are up against in the grander picture of things. Civilization and dystopia are butting against borders of the populace, the old Mad magazine Spy Vs Spy routine is happening in reality and the Acme trading companies are selling to the highest bidder. The merchandise is us and our beliefs and needs, the weapons and warfare is information and psychology that is either generated or exploited. You need this, everyone has one, you have to believe such and such to be a part of this, or at least act like you believe. The grand web of securities compiled throughout a lifetime not compatible with the economy of today that has been manipulated and pushed at every corner. To many, it just doesn’t make any sense, the world is out of order, not the people… right? Sorry to say that the world is exactly the way it is supposed to be, the issue arises with the people who aren’t. Did I mention that Sharpie mark is hard to remove without some elbow grease.
Change is a constant, and with it comes difficulties with comprehension, usability, needs and wants. Ask any ten year old what they want for Christmas next year and then as them again in October, they have gone through a few levels of dirt by then I bet. The human kind of climate change can be hard to see and the effects so gradual that you don’t notice the water rising an inch here, a little land lost. The changes you do notice come when the hurricanes, and storms like death and security of life become too much a constant, more emotional money spent. Chasing the symptoms of trying to fix government and social/living environments, instead of the causes. The human climate change that is occurring is not being mentioned or examined in this socio/political angst and argument the country has going on. Symptoms are still being “treated” by everyone from the best Science has to offer, to the Crack maker at the end of the cul-de-sac.
We are an evolving and adaptive species. Our instincts are still running our lives, and directing many of our actions. We are trained to be a part of things that are systematic and robotic, with the human element being left to deal with the wreckage from their personal and communal hurricanes. We are also a thinking and intellectual species that with a simple understanding of what it means to be in the middle of a climate change on a human level of this magnitude is meaningful, and worthy of conceptualizing. Worthy of being a part of the big thinking going on, and the safeguards and foundations we will need for a tomorrow that we all know will leave the tasks, the picking up, the constant chore of life. Human Climate Change is also happening and the inside hurricanes are leaving too much debris to manage. We can do better if we simply gain an inch of knowledge, but we are too busy trying to climb to success on someone else’s ladder, instead of doing the work of digging the holes… To survive the storms.