Save our conscience!

I was in a supermarket the other day. I bought some stuff and on my way to the checkout counter, I noticed they were selling eco-friendly bags. Made of jute or whatever. I felt they were priced way more than they should have been. But right then, as if hunting down my previous thought, came a conscience-driven reprimand. "Price? Is that what you are considering? When it comes to saving the environment? A few meager units of currency? Shame!" So I had to purchase those bags. And I must say, I felt really proud of myself. After all, I had spent money buying something I didn't need, just so I could save the world. If that doesn't make you proud, what does?

I came out, did some other stuff, and then went home. I was damn happy! People who were in the streets that day will vouch for me. They will testify that they saw a guy move around, beaming like a moron. Why a moron? Because moronic is what it was, I realized later. Its astonishing, the distance we will go, just so we can look into our eyes in the mirror. I spent a little extra money. Other people do something else. But, in the end, its all about that. Feeling good about ourselves.

What the hell are we thinking when we make/sell/buy stuff to save the world? Do we not know what the real, REAL problem is? Its that there are too many of us. Thats whats destroying the world. This planet wasn't built to have one species (humans too) breed to a seven billion number and dominate proceedings this way. If we really wanted to save the world, they'd sell "Put yourself to sleep instantly" injections at supermarkets. Not jute bags. What the hell is 'eco-friendly' anyway? You consume 100 and give back 1? Is that how we plan to "save the earth"? More like, "lets try and keep this place liveable till we are alive. There's no hope beyond that anyway!". The annoying part is that we (including me) actually know there is no hope. And yet, we continue to lie to ourselves. Doing what we can hoping it will be enough. Hoping...and denying.

Denial is not just a river in Egypt. We have taken it so far, that now its become a part of our composition. Its like we have a conscience...and then we have a metacognitive (word?) section of the brain that has genetically evolved to suppress the conscience. We have no control over that anymore. We don't want to acknowledge that deep down we all know its almost certainly a long lost cause.

The fact that humans live only for 80 odd years has some role to play there. Right now, all of us know that we only need to be bothered about sleeping well for the next 60 years. And jute bags do that for us. So jute bags it is. We don't really (I mean really) care for what happens after we are gone. Imagine if we lived for 400-500 years. You think we would resort to lame ass jute bags to bail us out then? Haah! We would have to acknowledge that the bags and such aren't even a speck of cleanser in the ocean that is our trash ridden planet. There is ABSOLUTELY no point in pretending like we 'have a solution, but the onus is on the people'. "A huge ocean is made up of tiny drops" and all that is too pathetic and we should just get off it already. We have no answer. Well, we do have THE answer, but no one is ballsy enough to say it.

I want some scientist types to explain to me how a gazillion eco-friendly consumables are going to save this planet, if we keep fornicating and reproducing like rats, consuming disproportionate amounts of resources on the other side. I know there is no solution in sight. But for once, I would like someone to just stand up and say, "You know what? This eco-friendly pretense is all good. But lets not kid ourselves. Until we start eliminating people or introduce a impotency inducing virus, we are headed for that wall. Maybe not us, but the ones after us. And for all the eco-friendly products that we buy, we are prolonging the end by a few minutes, at best."

I will continue to buy jute bags, 'do my bit' (whatever), and I will continue to hope. Hope, that maybe nature has a larger plan to reset things here. That maybe, we'll devise an organic fertilizer that makes tall trees grow in minutes. That maybe, one day we will invent cars that are made of wood and run on water. That maybe, air conditioners will one day give out fresh nutrient-rich air as exhaust. I will hope that I am so stupid and wrong that I don't understand how this 'save the earth' plan is actually going to work. I will hope, because I have tremendous faith in nature. It still holds the power to start a major shakedown anytime and restore sanity within hours. I believe I am smart enough to not undermine that force. But all this is the active and dominant part of my brain performing its job.

My conscience will always read 'Stall' whenever it sees 'Save'.