August, 1997
Commentary
John Alphonse
You've probably heard the saying, "Watch what you wish for, it may come true." Combine a wish with determination, dedication and hard work, and there's a high probability it will come true. But beware the consequences, the old saying warns.
It seems like success and the "American Dream" has interpreted itself to most people as "buying a car, building a house." It's what a lot of people will tell you they're working to achieve. And many of them are "successful."
So they think.
Let's look at what they, and we, have gotten:
Everybody and his brother, sister, mother, child and cousin owns a car. New housing is booming, and a lot of these "successful" people are moving into new homes on new land.
We dreamed it, we thought it, we made it happen. Yes, many of us seem to have been quite successful in achieving these things our society has deemed as "goals" or "important" or "desirable. But what happened?
Nobody thought of the consequences of "The Dream."
And we have the carbon monoxide levels, overloaded transportation infrastructure, and overweight populace to prove it. We have so much land being stripped to generate new housing income that we are fast choking ourselves, stuffed to the throat with our own "dream" becoming realized by anybody with the money and desire to buy it. Where once thrived the ecosystem of many of the "lesser" creatures on earth, we now have subdivisions and developments, entire neighborhoods of people who bought "The Dream," all living together in the "privacy" of their own little strip of woods. And no problem getting to and from these no-longer-remote little pieces of wilderness. We've got cars!
Yeah, sure, practically everything in this country was once woods. I'm not being unrealistic. What's unrealistic is to think that the same dream that prevailed 50 years ago makes sense today. What's unrealistic is the underappreciation of our natural world.
Look what we've got! A bunch of people for the most part working far enough away from their "personal forest" that they have to burn up tankfuls of polluting fossil fuels and considerable accumulated time getting to and from it, creating frustrating jams of vehicles in the process, working at a job they probably don't like just to generate the income to pay for it all. Are you really happy?! You shouldn't be, spending all that energy and money just to ruin your child's future, our nation's future, not to mention your own limited time on this planet.
Look again! Churches are having to close their doors because of lack of attendance, lack of a congregation that has hidden itself in suburbia from the society it helped create. God left the city? No, you left God.
We couldn't live with ourselves, so we destroyed our countryside in the process of escape. Bad news: you've destroyed our civilization as well. No more city, no more countryside, either. Ah, the path of self-destruction. Say hello for me to all your friends you pass at 70 mph!
What we need today is a new dream, before we can create a new reality. We need a national agenda that values community, and nature and art and living above "average annual income." We learn to live together, or we live not much longer at all.
The only thing we're getting in pursuit of the goals set up for us at present, is closer to self-destruction every day.
John Alphonse is reality x editor and publisher.
© 1997 reality x publishing co.
All rights reserved.