Boxed in

Oh, brother. I get really sick and tired of ranting about the goddamn environment.

What gave me ire? Earlier today Kevin and I decide to do an "outside thing" today, and then run a few errands. So, he decided to go to the Lake of the Woods located just north of Champaign. We arrive there and the first thing I notice is how many sub-divisions there are surrounding that tract of land. If LotW is supposed to be a preserve, it sure doesn't remind me of one. What is the point of preserving a forest if it is completely surrounded by urban sprawl? What is the point of having a piece of land "set aside for nature" when civilization is nestled literally ten feet away from the edge?

There is nothing natural about that. At all. Lake of the Woods is no more a nature preserve than Central Park in Manhattan.

Like I've said before elsewhere in my journal, it saddens me to realize that people just don't give a damn. People don't care about anything as long as they get their piece of the pie. People don't care as long as they have the huge McMansion, the three cars, and their consumerist lifestyles. Just buy, buy, buy. Just eat, fuck, shit, vegetate, sleep, and buy. And then buy some more.

After that tragic excursion, Kevin and I go to Menard's to buy a new rain gutter for the rain barrel he bought last year. As I walked in that big-box store I had an epiphany: I now know why little kids like running around in big stores so much: There is open spaces in big-box stores. Wide opens spaces don't exist now in urban areas, and they won't exist at all anywhere in the future. Urban sprawl will destroy everything. American entitlement will destroy all the open, natural areas in its pursuit of the American Dream -- in pursuit of the McMansion with the three-car garage. Consumerism and entitlement is an addiction that knows no bounds, limits, or boarders. Yes, we should just cut down that forest, plow over that field, and cut into that mountain just so we can build sub-divisions and shopping malls and airports and sports arenas. We should just cut down everything and plow over everything and just build, build, build.

Since natural, open, untouched, untamed spaces are being destroyed, the only place where people will feel any grandeur and insignificance is in shopping malls and big-box stores. All the forests will have been cut down and put in tree museums. All the fields where people used to run and play will exist only in memories. Uncluttered natural vistas will only exist in archival videos of the past.

Then humanity will realize what it lost when it doesn't have it anymore. We should stop destroying the environment now and just take a breather. We should just stop and ask ourselves if having the huge empty house and three cars and closets full of clothes and kitchen appliances is really worth the planet.

Of course, conscience is the first thing to go when people only care about their selfish needs.

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