Yesterday I went to Santa Cruz to attend a symposium called “Awakening the Dreamer.” An organization called the Pachamama Alliance hosts symposiums all over the world to help raise awareness and inspiration to change the world as it pertains to sustainable living, social justice and spiritual awakening. Pachamama is a concept that in the language of the Ecuador natives who started the alliance to save the rainforests, means the earth, the sky, the stars, the universe- a big concept for everything that is life.
None of the information was new, yet it reaffirmed how much is wrong with the world right this very moment that cannot wait for us to solve. The videos gave me a visceral feeling of overwhelming sadness and a desire to stop adding to all that is wrong with the world, and start contributing something positive before it’s too late. 50% of all species have been extinct. 90% of all Africa’s lions are gone. 80% of the world’s elephants are gone, 90% of the world’s fish. If you have a roof over your head, food to eat and clothes in the closet, you are better off than 83% of the world’s population.
I really liked that the symposium brought together the ideas of sustainability and social justice because so often the work that’s done is separate. The environments we are destroying first are those in the third world, and the places we dump our waste and hazards are again in the third world. Of course none of this is new information, but I was thinking about how odd it is to have money to buy clothes and plane tickets and anything I want to live my life, and that I don’t have to know my neighbors, don’t have to rely on a damn person in my community for anything. All I have to rely on is the money I make to buy anything I need to “rely on myself” and live independently. It’s interesting to think how new that concept is; that for most of human history we needed each other to live. And we still do, it’s just hidden by the global world we live in. The community I rely upon to survive is not the people who live next door to me or across the street, they live in China, making cheap plastics, in Ecuador cutting down rainforest for my paper, in the marine life that bears the brunt of the pollution from tankers taking these goods to the stores I shop in. I can buy a finished product that I “need” for seven dollars when the real cost, the human cost in cheap labor and denigrated habitat, in population and transportation and destruction, is immeasurable.
If we saw the extent to which we relied on our global community for the goods we bought, if we saw that destruction right in front of us in our neighbors suffering, in our own soil and food rotting from oil mining, we wouldn’t be driven to consume always more more.
I’ve gotten good at ignoring the things that drive me insane in the world around me. I’ve told myself to stop being self-righteous, that this is the world and that we do what we can. That it’s enough to recycle and eat organic and local, drink tap water and shop minimally and work for an advertising agency that at least brings sustainable programs to Starbucks and works for Team Earth, Conservation International and Goodwill. But it’s not enough. It’s the opposite of enough. The people I work with drink bottled water day after day, they drink out of paper cups-sometimes three times a day. They go to Vegas as many weekends as they can. I am no better. My old apartment had no compost. I took 13 plane flights last year and I eat industrially produced meat. And perhaps I’m worse because I know better.
And yet watching this video, it made me furious to think I live among people who see nothing wrong with Las Vegas; see no connection between the utter waste of water, electricity and materials, which causes suffering and shortages all over the world, just for our sport. It makes me seethe to think they think my concern is a cute habit, a quirky passion for the earth. That they think eating farmed fish is saving wild fish when really farmed fish is half the reason wild Pacific salmon are disappearing, from competition, from catching farmed fish diseases, from having their critical habitats turned to fish farms for sickly, artificially colored fish.
There was a comic they put on the board that perfectly illustrated our situation. It was a picture of a small boat sinking on one end in a violent ocean. Two people were trying to bail out the bow of the boat, which low in the water. Two people were sitting at the top of the boat, which was high in the air as the boat sank and they were smiling, saying to each other “Boy I’m glad I don’t have to bail out the boat!”
Anyway, my desire to start a new chapter of my life has been growing very strong since Christmas. The more I’ve been studying orcas and writing about them, the harder it’s been for me to work hard selling casinos, zoos, wine, soymilk even. Shit we don’t need. The symposium reaffirmed that I need to do something to help. I need to be a part of the change, not the person at the top of the boat, not helping bail as we sink.
I went down to Santa Cruz with Zack. He makes me laugh more frequently and harder than anyone in my immediate vicinity. We didn’t listen to music, just laughed and talked and ate bagels and cupcakes that he got us for breakfast. Yes that’s right cupcakes for breakfast. Chocolate ones. Santa Cruz looks exactly like the California cliché you see in movies. The boardwalk has huge breaking waves, a beach with volley ball nets and bikinis clad girls and boys in board shorts playing around. Palm trees line the sidewalks and every other shop is a taco joint. We parked far up the beach where gorgeous, funky, brightly colored houses face the surf and people were gathered in the mid morning sun on front porches. It would be such a different life. People carried their surf boards from their porches to the water, others sat on the stony ledge high above the waves. The waves were enormous, breaking against the rocks and spraying into the air. One was so big it came over the ledge and soaked a couple sitting out enjoy the sunny morning. We walked down the steps of a pier to get some sea spray and watch the waves, then went to eat tacos. It was a warm day, almost felt like spring. I could live in Santa Cruz…
