Useless Animals

I remember reading about a novel once that told the story of a writer who had given up writing. There is nothing groundbreaking about that, since writers give up the most thankless of crafts every second of every day. But his reason was that the world was in such a horrible state that he couldn't bring himself to create fiction, to waste the energy on it, since it clearly didn't matter. He was stuck in a state of non-doing, because to write would be an act of selfishness, when all energy should be pointed towards solving the world's problems. And since no man alone can do that, he did nothing.

Lately, I can empathize. The Gulf of Mexico apocalypse seems to me the beginning of the final act of our time here. It's an environmental fuck-up that is undeniable to nay-sayers who have made a career out of dismissing global warming, who can wave away numbers and studies as being biased and the work of hippie interest groups. But it's a little more difficult to use rhetoric against burning dolphins and sea turtles, against struggling birds dying in oil. Granted, they've tried--dropping to the meagre defence of the importance of maintaining oil industry jobs to continue off shore drilling, but that must sound hollow even to those Republicans full on BP's Christmas card list.

The simple truth that this is our only planet--and we have nowhere else to go-- doesn't faze most of humanity. Someone will make it right, so why worry? We can do what we want, and we have the religion and/or the family values to justify our selfishness. We imagine we have rights to any cruelty we perpetuate. Animals are dying in an oil slick? Well, that's okay--they don't have souls. They can't feel pain. And why are they swimming near our oil rig, anyway? It's not like there aren't millions of dolphins and stupid sea gulls anyway. And when does the golf start?

Even here in Hobbiton, this attitude reigns supreme. The shelters are bursting with abandoned animals because people are too selfish to have their pets fixed, or are dumping them because caring for them cuts into their beer money. What does it matter? They're only animals, and fuck, I wanna get that sweet ass tattoo I saw that guy had on UFC. I needs my money for that.

And to think that this in an injustice that will be rectified through education is to chase unicorns: this is the society governments want. You want your populace to be selfish and short thinking, to not be able to see past their own bill payments and paycheques. Things can quickly become untenable if compassion begins to take root. People start questioning then, start thinking outside themselves, and that's the last thing you want when maintaining power. Better to keep everyone just wanting stuff, filling their TV sets with greed inducing commercials, making people think turning their lawns into living rooms is a good idea, creating inferiority complexes based on body image that can only be rectified with weight loss programs and not simple willpower, to point out the lack of perfection in their lives with images of sunlit, massive kitchens accompanied by eternally smiling Stepford mates and children.

In this way, everyone just keeps buying stuff they don't need, and the wheels keep turning, and the weekend is only a few days away.

And still the animals die. And still pets find themselves in stinking cages, surrounded by misery, or shivering outside at 2 a.m., hungry and scared, wondering why they can't find their home. From this micro to the macro of the Gulf, it continues, all across this wonderful planet. Our needs will stand paramount, until the last animal is gone, the last bit of wild paved over, the last songbird shot.

And then we'll turn on each other.

So why, in light of this, should you do anything for the world? Why create? Chances are there will be no-one with the attention span to read a story, appreciate a painting, or watch a film that doesn't involve boobs and explosions in ten years anyway. Sure, they'll be buying lots of things, like lawn furniture made of real oil soaked dolphin skin straight from the Gulf, or commemorative plates from the assassination of the next Enemy Of Freedom. But thinking? That will be bred out of them, cut away like a useless vestigial tail, with families sitting around to watch seven minute long reality TV shows, with the kids complaining that the show is too fucking long.

And so here I sit, on a Sunday afternoon, looking at the novel I'm writing, images of G20 protests and dead dolphins on the screens behind me. And I'm reminded of another story, this one by Harlan Ellison, who wrote about the last storyteller, about a man who spent his final days telling stories to a wasteland, to anyone who would come and sit by his campfire. And this seems a better fit, a more sane approach. As the last songbird will sing before the bullet hits, as the last dolphin will play before it swims into the oil, I'll write before I'm silenced forever, just as anyone who has a talent or gift should keep using it, even if the world has and never will care.

I'll just be another useless animal, doing what I was born to do, as the smoke fills the sky.