In this essay we identify a number of behaviors that we could choose to modify to prevent humanity’s descent into self-destructive chaos. But will we choose to?
Chris Hamby wrote the book Soul Full of Coal Dust: A Fight for Breath and Justice in Appalachia. “Most of the book is set in West Virginia, where 68 percent of voters backed Trump in 2016, more than any other state. Today [September 2020], the coal-mining industry is a favored child of the Trump Administration, which has loosened environmental restrictions on Big Coal, even as the world chokes on greenhouse gases.”[i]
Hamby reveals the absurdity of coal miners voting for Mr. Trump. “After following a long and miserable paper trail, we finally begin to see a larger picture: how a corporate and political power structure conspired to crush the bodies of men who faithfully served the coal industry.”[ii]
It does seem absurd that coal miners who voted for democrats for generations are now supporting a party and oligarchs who don’t care whether they live or die. What is going on in the human mind that permits such absurd, illogical behavior?
Quite simply, belief is a powerful determinant in how we behave.
Here’s another example of absurd behavior. At one time, witchcraft in America was a strong belief, but we don’t hear much about it today. Could it be that we simply, over time, stopped believing that people could be witches? “As anthropologists have observed in cultures around the world, people who regard themselves as objects of witchcraft are vulnerable to all manner of mischance. They blunder into ‘accidents,’ they lose their effectiveness in work and social relations, they occasionally sicken and die.”[iii] Clearly we have replaced one absurd belief with another.
Here’s another example. “In much of the developing world, vulnerable people will attempt to flee the emerging perils of global warming, seeking cooler temperatures, more fresh water and safety. But here in the United States, people have largely gravitated toward environmental danger, building along coastlines from New Jersey to Florida and settling across the cloudless deserts of the Southwest.”[iv]
And one final example. “Thanks to federally subsidized canals, for example, water in part of the Desert Southwest costs less than it does in Philadelphia. The Federal National Flood Insurance Program has paid to rebuild houses that have flooded six times over in the same spot. And federal agricultural aid withholds subsidies from farmers who switch to drought-resistant crops, while paying growers to replant the same ones that failed.”[v]
All of our examples seem absurd, right? The point is, we will never make the rational decisions necessary to create a sustainable community without the larger context of Oneness. Rather, we will be constantly bewildered by the absurdity of our experience.
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Supplemental Reading: Absurdity, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 1
#59 A Larger Picture
[i] Tobar, Hector. “Black Lung.” The New York Times Book Review. September 20, 2020, p. 9.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Demos, John. “Entertaining Satan.” American Heritage. August/September 1978, p. 20.
[iv] Lustgarten, Abraham. “How Climate Change Will Remap Where Americans Live.” The New York Times Magazine. September 20, 2020, p. 38.
[v] Ibid., p. 43.
