Engagement

I am waiting for the heretofore unknown concept of peak oil. I'm anticipating it because if it were to happen, my expectation is that this nation of ours will fall to pieces as we are unaccustomed to any notion of resource shortages, but that we will emerge stronger, we will emerge a better nation, one suddenly willing to accept the strange notions of community and fraternity that have eluded us for the past several decades of our existence.

I asked the rhetorical question a few months ago here on my blog: suppose a Fukushima event occurred here; suppose a tsunami-style event occurred here in the Midwest, or the Southeast, or here in my Northern California. What, do you suppose the liklihood that community or fraternity would prevail over riots, lootings, and general disorderliness? I'd put all my marbles on the latter.

My gut feeling is that there'd be no order whatsoever, that we'd only consider number one, that we'd sooner fuck our neighbors out of any meager assistance such that our own excessive comforts are secured. This is the America that we live in, where we discount our neighbors, where we only look out for ourselves, where we will totally fail to accept any notion that community is stronger than individualism, that we might just persevere by joining together.

I do not recall any media coverage of looting in Shichigahama. I do not recall hearing about hordes of teenagers smashing windows in Matsugahama for all those Sony/Samsung flat screens in all those window displays. Perhaps because it never happened. Fifty bucks says that if a similar event occurred here, anywhere here in the U.S., we'd be reporting on the $40,000,000 in natural damage and the $52,650,000 in material losses due to theft, looting, and robbery.

I await a resource shortage so that we go through the arduous, painful process of exposing the hyper-individualism of our NASCAR-crazed populace for what they are as quickly as possible, so that we might sooner develop real communities, communities based on relationships instead of private automobiling, communities based on engagement rather than individualism.