“Everything was beautiful and Nothing Hurt” – Kurt Vonnegut
We really love the dripping sarcasm of this quote by Kurt Vonnegut. What would a world where that was true be like? We are not suggesting we aspire to a Pleasantville utopia, but it is so hard to look for beauty in this world when the world is in so much turmoil. We try and focus on the positive, because there are often so many things we take for granted, including the very things that make our lives easier. But often these things we depend on keep us from recognizing the simpler organic beauty of life itself. Why not stop to smell the roses?
On a similar note, we were struck by what Louis C.K. had to say about the impatience of America in dealing with the glitches that come when conveniences of advanced technology fail us on Conan O’Brien. Watch this clip called Everything’s Amazing and Nobody’s Happy.
We found this clip to be enlightening, as we are all guilty of being impatient and bitter when something we have come to rely on doesn’t work properly. We are lucky to be priveledged to live in an age where we can get wi-fi on airplanes and cell service all over the world, but what happens when we can’t connect? We freak out! It’s nice to take a moment and realize how innovative these things are to begin with. It is truly spectacular that we can get to the moon and back, send anyone in the world an email and get immediate response, take our phones with us wherever we go, twitter, facebook… etc.. Yes spectacular.
Yet, somehow we cannot find the technology to stop an oil spill. Or to keep them from happening in the future. Crazy!
Sometimes we have to take a step back and understand consequences of these advancements and try and give up a few conveniences for the good of this planet. We may be used to getting in our car, turning on the air conditioning, throwing all our trash into one bin… but to what end? We have the power to create new technology that is beneficial to us and our environment, which includes all earth’s untechnological wonders like animals, the ocean and vegetation. To do this is one of the greatest combination of science and deference we can imagine.
While we have so much to aspire to, there are so many things to be thankful for. There are also things to be so mad about that we thrust ourselves to find new ways to go about things. We don’t fully understand why this oil spill is still going on, or why we are still so dependent on it. But we can change small things in our own lives and hope to live by example. Bill Maher, a fellow vegetarian, said it perfectly when he said in “New Rules for Democrats” on June 11, 2010 “eventually we are going to have to find something else to do. Try building windmills. You know what happens when windmills collapse into the sea? A splash.”