My neighbors have been pissing me off lately.
More than usual. Sure, I’ve endured their slovenly, selfish practice of monopolizing the shared basement washer-dryer for up to 48 hours (and leaving the light on). But, whatever. And, as time goes by, I can’t stop myself from noticing ~ and reproving ~ their almost-daily deliveries of Amazon boxes. I mean, a huge box of etc. straight from Jeff Bezos almost every single day? It’s not like they’re shut-ins, too old and feeble to carry laundry detergent from the local (rip-off) market three blocks away. These are young, trim, ostensibly hip millennials with a ‘gas efficient’ vehicle.
And check out the recycling bin!
Between four residences (in a
converted house), these two characters (a typical male-female combo) fill it
75% up with the effluvia of their copious purchases within a day. They
have stuff left over, piling up, waiting to unload, from the prior recycling
cycle. And, sure enough, one reason they fill it so fast is due to their
slovenly, selfish practice of not bothering to break down their boxes.
Ever. On the other hand, they often cram boxes with other boxes and nest jars
in cans within plastic wrappers, even bubble-pack (all of which makes recycling
even less tenable than it is under ideal circumstances.*) Three shopping days
later, there are further deposits of boxes within boxes bulging upwards like
some monstrous Dr. Seuss tower, bulging up the bin lid. Within this strata,
stacked receipts, laminated plastic wrappers, garnished with tassels of
‘eco-packaging.’
That’s until the winds start
whipping the precariously-placed contents around.
Then the effluvia spreads. There’s
bubble-pack covering the steps to the basement washer-dryer. There are cans of
‘organic soda’ flapping around the bushes. A pizza box has migrated into
somebody else’s yard. The wrapper to a yoga mat lodges into the stairs leading
to my studio apartment. A used yoga mat whips around the parking lot. Whole
Foods sacks have tumbled across the street. And scrunched-up on the porch, the
name and shipping address of my apartment neighbors, like a signature to an art
installation. Jeff Bezos loves you. Supposedly, every American produces
4.4 pounds of trash daily** but I think my neighbors surpass 10 pounds, and
this before they’ve even approached home-owning middle-age.
Assholes!
Then I notice something curious about
these characters. Oh, right. They’re me and my wife 25 years ago.
And today me ~ a reproving no-fun zone ~ was, no doubt, some bicycle-pedaling,
patched-jean, composting far-left wacko we ridiculed on the few
occasions we ever pried our fat asses off our Blockbuster-watching ‘organic
cotton’ sofa to take a walk through the neighborhood. What did we call him?
Bumpersticker Man? Compost Guy maybe. Then we hit the big time in the dot
com bubble so we got our own house in a ‘better neighborhood’ and never saw
the loser again. Once we had our first kid, our consumption really went
through the ozone layer. It was for junior’s sake! Not that we were entirely
selfish, mind you. We voted for Al Gore. And we’d click ‘Save the planet’
on our iMacs every so often, too.***
I remember what we said back then.
If you don’t like McDonalds, don’t eat there. If you think cars are bad, don’t
drive one. If you don’t like the way we live, go fuck yourself.
And that sort of solipsistic
libertarianism works great on paper (and the comment box). But the sad,
scary truth of the matter is my slovenly, selfish attitude (and commensurate
lifestyle) is eroding someone else’s conscientious, modest life. With every
mile I drive, I’m hacking down someone’s tree. With every cheeseburger I eat, I
made some species of bird extinct. With every YouTube clip I watch, I just
started another wildfire in California.**** I am your flooded basement. And you
are my ingested microplastic. We don’t even know one another!
Don’t worry. I’m not going to
suggest you (theoretical person I don’t know) do anything different. I know you
won’t until you’re good and ready. I know that because I’ve been
you. And lucky you, I don’t have the power to make you live any
differently than you are living today. Here’s more reassuring news. Regarding
climate disaster, voting Democrat or Republican won’t make a damn bit of
difference.***** You’re off the hook. Nothing short of Green Stalinism
will ‘Save the planet’ and Uncle Joe’s not around to bust anyone’s buzz
anymore.
All that’s left is climate karma.
I’m working on mine. So far, I’ve
eliminated car ownership, plane travel, meat consumption, air-conditioning and
Christmas (20% of all annual retail sales). Top that. Add coffee out. And
home internet. I still have a long way to go. And it’s no fun going without.
But, I get a minor consolation. I get to be a better person than you.
I used to believe in ‘collective
action’ and ‘building social movements’ and all that crap. Dig how well that’s
been going. And, however greenwashed, magical Marxist thinking fails to
turn me on anymore.****** Nope. The fact is, our society is intransigently
individualistic. Climate change connects us all externally but we’re all
internally disconnected. Our awareness, like our ideology, is measured by
ever-shifting individual archaeologies and time-lines. Imagine me walking over
to my neighbors’ door, then suggesting buying less stuff. Imagine Bumpersticker
Man admonishing me to compost back in 1999. The trash all over the lawn?
It would take Stalin to make them change their slovenly, selfish practices
before they’re good and ready. What’s that to me? I can’t change them.
And, theoretical person, I can’t change you. I don’t even know you. All
I can do is protest myself.
I know. That won’t ‘Save the
planet.’ But it might save my soul.
*
The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard.
**
Wasteland by Oliver Franklin-Wallis.
***
Here’s thinking of you, Bill McKibben. As trenchant are his criticisms of
climate disaster practices and policies in Eaarth, when he arrives at
the positive plank of his program, things go sour. A line such as “For a
hundred years we’ve substituted oil for people, which is why we have more
prisoners than farmers in the United States; now we need to go the other way”
sounds pretty racist to me. Agricultural manual labor is not an easy sell. But
after he’s done castigating the wasteful frivolity of modern consumerist life,
and waxing enthusiastic about farmers’ markets, he sticks in a personal
carbon-consumption exemption, which is “[I]f I had my finger on the switch, I’d
keep the juice flowing to the Internet even if I had to turn off everything
else.” Sorry, Bill, in my artisan utopia, I’d keep the clothes washer instead
of the servers’ A/C. But doesn’t everyone have their pet
exemptions?
****
New Dark Age by James Bridle.
***** The Future of Denial by Tad Delay.
****** Apologies, Kōhei Saitō. As a former Marxist, I couldn’t resist Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto but, alas, his attempts to green the old bastard produces the usual conclusions, such as electric companies operated at “the citizen level” and “decentralized” solar panels (as if their production wasn’t enormously centralized, neocolonized and environmentally damaging). Yes, his critique of capitalism is spot on ~ nobody like a Marxist to nail it ~ but, faced with coughing up solutions, things get sketchy (as usual). Once we get to his list of things and services to be “banned” and what constitutes “essential work,” traditional totalitarianism returns full blast. “An enormous change must occur on a global scale.” Where have we heard that one before? Like McKibben, Saitō is cool with keeping the internet. But life, and presumably the internet, will be better once “workers take direct control of production.” But replace “workers” with “Trump voters” and there’s an argument against “direct control,” if not democracy itself. What if ecological devastation is what “the people” want? I know some of these people personally. They’re my neighbors. They’re your neighbors, too. And if you tell them what’s going to be “banned,” they won’t be very neighborly.
©
2025 C. Kurtz.