Sink and Source: Facing Limits of Capacity

For too long we in the US have lived the delusions of exceptionalism.  Having dreamed from early on that it was our birthright, nay our DESTINY, to seize control over this continent from sea to shining sea, this inheritance of and heritage to the enlightenment rationality that located humanity (or more specifically White Anglo Men) as somehow separate from and hierarchically superior to Nature (and other Mothers, as well) has brought us to loggerheads with a foe we cannot hope to defeat:  for should we win it can only spell our own undoing.

Poised here at the end of history, it is very convenient for us to name our civilization as the pinnacle and apex of a linear narrative of progress and development.  We are the biggest, baddest, most dominating force this world has ever seen.  We can cure disease and have split the atom.  We can record history and project our voices and images around the globe.  We have sent people into space and thrown objects out of our solar system.  And yet we can’t seem to come to grips with the fact that we are not living on a rock with unbounded sink and source capacities.

Understanding our environment (that is: where we live, where we work and where we play) to be a complex, dynamic and highly interactive system, it comes as no great surprise that the direct causal thinking so prevalent in the modern forms of Western European economic and political thought have managed to muck things up a fair bit.  What is more astonishing, however is just how far askew things have gotten – and all most precipitously since the Industrial Revolution.

But I digress (slightly).  For while the questions regarding whether we are at or have gone beyond the point of no return are important ones and deserve to be addressed, more to the point at this point is a closer examining of some of how we got ourselves into this mess.  For alongside a longstanding tradition of anti-intellectualism and a resurgent religious fundamentalism, we here in the states are also prone to a peculiar notion of exceptionalism.

The USA is #1!  Unless of course you mean in terms of education, health care, infant mortality or lifespan (for example).  We also don’t look so hot in terms of disparities of wealth or income, the percentage of our population that is in prison or in regards to (the lack of) prosecution of corporate and political malfeasance.  But these are all minor details and who am I to quibble? 

Of course this patriotic zealotry isn’t all pennant flags and cheerleaders: RAH-RAH … it also comes with a martial pride that names force as an acceptable response to negotiating differences.  Copernicus had trouble getting people to believe in heliocentrism and I’m afraid that getting people to excavate their own deep-seated beliefs of human superiority faces quite the similar challenge.

We are one small part in a vast and deliciously complex web and yet, in ways similar to the keystone in an arch, we hold the potential to rend the whole structure asunder.  We have taken for too long as if there were no limits to what the Earth could provide.  And in return we have gifted back pollution of the air, the land and the seas.  But we live in a finite ecosystem.  There are natural constraints to things like resource extraction, the expansion of markets or the regenerative capacity of our Mother.

For far too long we have believed that we could wreak havoc unto the earth: pouring smoke into the sky and fire into the oceans.  Leveling mountains and slashing down entire ecosystems to dig up the scarce and force the land to yield up fruits that flower in other men’s pockets - long has been the dawning of our discontent while the wealth of our nations has gone to the bank accounts of an elite few.

There is only so much profit one can squeeze before beginning to draw blood.  For too long we have danced the dance of disbelief – hoping against hope that if we only tweak this or adjust that we might keep doing the same old turns about the parquet floor and eventually it’d all turn out alright.  The system would correct itself - the free hands of globalization and unbridled capitalism would somehow conjure up the mythological level playing field where we can stand tall amongst the giants of industry and capital.

Instead we have been served course after course of increasing calamity and catastrophe while the powers that be both feed and feed off of the very disasters that lay so many low.  A small bump in the road we are assured.  A steady hand and to stay the course is all that’s called for.  We’re headed in the right direction.  Our destination is assured.  Manifest.  Destiny.  You see.  And in the meantime we just need more offshore drilling and privatization - and union busting - and externalizing environmental costs - and financial deregulation ... among other things of course.  I mean, it’s necessary … to see us through the interim.  As a stopgap measure.  And a little phlebotomy.  Just until it gets better.  To stem the hemorrhaging.  It’s necessary …  You’ll see … It’s an exception … An extraordinary circumstance … Once in a lifetime … Or at least until next time …

And the question remains: How long will it take before we recognize ourselves as the patient upon the table?