Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Wolf Cry

Due to CIA sabotage, I just lost the text to a long essay I wrote to sum up this wolf howl but I'll attempt to reconstruct it.

First, I opened with a question: does it do any good to donate money toWildlife defenders and other non-profit groups who basically use money to enable them to live and operate while lobbying Congress to enforce wolf-friendly laws. This seems futile to me. Firstly, because the wolves are last on the food chain of this money and their extinction from North America is about as likely to be reversed as everyone putting recyclables in the right bucket.

I compared this to the lobster relocation program in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, where lobsters are being moved out of the path of a harbour dredger...and relocated to safe spots...where native lobster fishermen are picking them right back out of the water. Canada has a long history of relocating people, communities, houses, moose, caribou, salmon, Indians, Eskimos, and now lobsters. If it sounds crazy it is because it is crazy and sounds good on paper alone.
"The lobsters are in the way of the harbour dredge."
"Let's move the lobsters."

This led me to compare the futility of everything to the fossil cliffs which are 300 million years old. Joggins fossil cliffs is on the Bay of Fundy and the 50 ft. tide almost swallowed me up as I fled through the tidal marsh. It was also humbling because 300 million equals 25 trillion high tides...all of which made the stratigraphy you see here. This isn't that rare but in 1800 when Charles Lyell went hunting for exposed rock there were no railroads and no highway throughcuts and no industrial machinery so it had to be natural. Each tiny 2 cm layer of sandstone being the work of many thousands of years as the weight of multiple glacial epochs compacts the sand eroded from huge mountains. Add some plate shifting and buckling of the terrane and some microsaurs who died cowering inside tree trunks and you have a UNESCO site where fossil hounds go to see old lizard legs.
Somewhere in there I casually said that the ocean was slowly becoming too polluted to support life, and it would eventually shift to a deadly level of acidity and then the condoms and discarded balloons and detergent containers that drift in huge areas would become encased in volcanic ash as the temperature turns furnace-hot and only cold-blooded animals could survive by hibernating in mud.

Ah, I had not reached my concluding statement, which, if the CIA will not delete my post, is this:
Ethics is like air in a balloon; it is obvious that it is there until you pop the balloon to make sure. Then the balloon is empty and you feel cheated. Was there any there to begin with?
Why are we obligated to accommodate the wolf and cousins of the wolf? It makes no sense. The wolf would not accommodate us if he were to dominate the land. Coming upon the wasted Oggy corpse, a wolf would not take the skull and put it on a wooden stake and announce "This land is sacred. We need to introduce other Oggy-like creatures." No, the wolf has no codependent inclinations. But the wolf does not hunt arctic hares and mice into extinction. There is a balance and I think the balance comes from the absence of Apple and Disney marketing campaigns. See, the propaganda tactics used since 1900 to deceive and control the masses are currently at their most effective summit.
It's a two-front war of ideological control: 1. Confuse and Amuse . People should be entertained by dancing fat people. Their gadgets should be a source on non-stop grief.
2. Values should be taught by fake people on screens. When in doubt, simply tell people what they should think.

So, I don't necessarily blame anyone for believing the lies. We're like the Lollipop kids
They were born into captivity and didn't know what to believe. Someone told them the Wizard was powerful and the witch was evil. I don't think any of that was true but when you are born in captivity then you don't have much to go on.
Maybe that is it. We are all born into captivity, like the wolves in the zoo. They think the train is a tone deaf cousin of theirs and they are trying to teach him to howl correctly. Years of this futile effort has not stopped them from trying.

It relates to how we raise kids. Mostly, I watch parents try to teach their kids not to waste, to eat their food, not to hit, to ask nicely, to be polite. And all this basically ends up being subverted by Apple and Disney. Marketing executives have whole seminars on "How to get children to whine more effectively." And these are smart people and they'll have your kids undivided attention for much longer than you will...so they win. They tell your kid they are born into captivity and the witch is evil and the wizard is powerful. None of this is true, but they will win by sheer perseverance and effective campaigning. McDonalds and Tim Horton sell food that is absolutely disgusting but people flock to them. Cigarettes cause cancer but people smoke. Does the best President always get elected?
So, I think western culture is, in its nature, one of Lollipop Kids and flash frozen chicken flavored wheat patties stuffed in a pretty package. I resent it. I don't want to be a Lollipop Kid.
And what hope is there for the wolf in that environment? None. Like trying to ride your bicycle in a car dominated city. It's pointless.
The wolf has been a device these past few years to explore and deconstruct the Lollipop Kid paradigm because to discuss the arctic wolf is not in the Lollipop Kid's vocabulary. And once you learn to discuss the arctic wolf then you are no longer a Lollipop Kid. That's my theory, at least. For the most part everyone has failed. The gravity of Disney and Reality television and Walmart is stronger than the gravity of the arctic wolf and Oggy's quest to find him. And that's a statement about pop culture's grip on the intellect of America. Obviously, we would not support a criminally imperialist government if we were a peace loving folk. These are lies we tell ourselves so we can rest before the anti-depressant wears off and the sleeping pill kicks in. Or, more accurately, those are the lies Apple whispers to us in our sleep, to tell ourselves later on...

I try to rectify the abuse of resources and think, "It's all for the advancement of human comfort..." but then I see the supermarkets placed so far out of reach and the trucking of frivolous dog toys and disposable automobiles. Where does that fit in? Nowhere. It's pure marketing for profit. Short term goal. Buy low, sell high. But if that's true then only a tiny fraction of the resources are being used to further the effort to find alternative energy sources. And since it's a race against time then the critical energy sources we are wasting now, the lizard lips and Jurassic cactus coal, will be needed later...and won't be there...which means none of this has any grand plan at all. And that leads me back to the Lollipop Kids.
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