Right on, dude!

This guy is so far ahead of me... I'm trying to grow up too, but it's
hard leaving behind all that stupid hippy shit the enemies of america
pumped into my weak brain...

www.counterpunch.org
Weekend Edition
March 19 / 20, 2005
Nature Isn't Real
Good Material for Material Goods

By BEN TRIPP

Sometimes, when I think about what's going on with the natural world,
I get a little sad. But after the tears have dried and the Rohypnol
does its thing, I remember that God loves me. So everything will be
okay. I'm just too attached to material goods, and that, brothers and
sisters, is not the way to get into heaven, as our savior and
all-around #1 guy Jesus Christ pointed out on numerous occasions.
Probably he said it even more times than the disciples actually wrote
down. I've been working on this hang-up, though. I stopped being
attached to fancy cars and big houses and those stainless steel
barbecues the size of U-boat quarterdecks. But try as I might, I just
can't give up those wide open spaces.

I think it started during the Ford administration, when I was a
schoolboy. Back then we were utterly indoctrinated into materialism.
It was all about the Grand Canyon, the vast reaches of the Arctic
tundra, mighty rivers running through primordial forests of fir and
fern. America was like some gigantic beer commercial, and it all
belonged to us. "This land is your land, this land is my land/ From
Cauliflower, to the Newark Highlands", we would sing. This goes to
show public education was already beyond repair in 1976. We were
warned not to litter on OUR LAND, partly because it would make the
Indian cry, but mostly because it was OUR LAND. Don't throw litter out
the windows of your Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser that gets 8 miles per
gallon, because littering is bad for OUR LAND. So I got the feeling
that I owned America, in a general kind of way, even if I didn't have
the keys. This is a ridiculous attitude, and set me up for
disappointment later on.

Let us look at an example of how my delusional thinking led me abaft:
trees. As the years went by, more and more old-growth redwood trees
were cut down to make patio decks for Sunset Magazine articles. Entire
forests of lesser trees disappeared, as well, probably to build
subdivisions on reclaimed wetlands. I took it personally, because I
thought those were my trees, at least the ones on public land. The
government was selling my trees to lumber companies, and I wasn't
getting a dime of the proceeds. Later on I found out it's crazy to
just have trees standing there doing nothing, when with a little
judicious felling they could create JOBS. And that's what has been
getting me all mixed up.

Jobs, like the economy, or net worth, or God, are real things. You can
measure them. They occupy mass. Things like trees, rivers, and coal
underneath mountains are nothing more than commodities. 'Commodities'
is just a word. It's a mere idea. 'Tree' is just a word. Trees are
mere ideas. If you go around believing that things are 'real', just
because there's a word for them, the next thing you know you're
marching for 'peace'. Can 'peace' blow up a village full of Southeast
Asians? Of course not. So it isn't real. War, on the other hand, is
real. Ask anybody that lives in a country with land mines. So I began
the long, painful process of disengaging myself from the illusory
notion that one can 'own' anything, when after all we're just an
agglomeration of electrons whizzing around in the shape of a human,
and electrons can't own anything.

I'm making progress. Just the other day it was announced that we would
be drilling for oil in some Arctic wildlife refuge. Time was, this
would have bothered me. "Hey, that's MY wildlife refuge, " I would
have said, not realizing what a child I was being (I was probably a
child at the time). Sure it's my wildlife refuge. It's all of our
wildlife refuge, and it's just taking up space. When we're dead, it
will make any difference to us personally if we drilled it or even
hammered a few nails into it? You can't take it with you, people! Your
grandchildren will never even miss the thing. Give up this crazy
materialism and get with Jesus. Either way, it will all soon end when
the Book of Revelations comes true and the world is destroyed, so we
might as well gas up while we can. Did God go easy on the dinosaurs,
just because they were environmentally correct? Let's face it, people:
if we can't really own it, we might as well use it. When the End Times
come, you'll find me praying on my bitchen new gas-powered redwood
deck.

Ben Tripp can be reached at credel@earthlink.net.

His book, 'Square In The Nuts', has been held up at the printers by
thugs but will be released as soon as hostage negotiations conclude.

See also www.cafeshops.com/tarantulabros.