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| Behold, a New World where truth reigns. Maybe. |
Are you as tired of television advertising as I am? Surely I am not the only one who reaches for the mute button on the remote when a commercial for a tampon applicator that comes in fun new colors, a triple decker hamburger that has more carcinogens than a Standard Oil refinery, a tablet that can connect you to a billion of your friends in one nanosecond, or an automobile manufacturer who is trying to sell a vehicle based not on its ability to get remarkable mileage, but rather on its amenities such as its moon roof, GPS, heated leather seats, stereo system, or its back up camera to keep drivers from running over their dogs or pedestrians, while being distracted by amenities. Stop the roller coaster, I want to get off.
I find it annoying because I am not a superficial consumer. I have a background in advertising, and I am trying to wash my hands of it with organic soap. But advertising is everywhere, and this ubiquitous presence is still trying to sell us a bunch of lies. And I don't know about you, but I grew tired of lies a long time ago. Do you read food labels? I do. I read food ingredients labels to see what poisons manufacturers want me to ingest to keep the healthcare business alive. But I love my liver; I care about the environment; I recycle. The problem with American consumers is most do not read labels or believe that American industry is all about money not about health. Which means most products should contain, in bold type, the disclaimer, to be read in a cheerful 1960s television voice: WE DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU OR THE EARTH. WE DON'T CARE HOW LONG YOU LIVE, OR THE QUALITY OF YOUR LIFE WHILE YOU'RE ALIVE. BUY THIS PRODUCT BECAUSE YOU ARE TOO LAZY TO THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU OR YOUR FAMILY PUTS IN YOUR BODIES. PLEASE USE MORE FLUORIDE TO POISON YOURSELVES, DO NOT QUESTION ANYTHING YOU READ OR HEAR. THE AMERICAN DENTAL INDUSTRY, THE AMA, THE USDA, BIG OIL, THE ADVERTISING INDUSTRY, AND THE RICH, WHO CONTROL THE AFOREMENTIONED, ARE YOUR FRIENDS. HELP US CONTINUE TO PROSPER, THANK YOU, AND GOD BLESS AMERICA.
There is an out of sight, out of mind mentality in regards to people's awareness of the products they buy, and the food they consume. And the real state of the world's economy. Now we are being told that the world's oil reserves are going to last indefinitely. The U.S. economy is bankrupt? Bah-humbug! What does this mean? Do we have fifty years left? A hundred years? Ten years? Until next Tuesday? Who controls this flow of honest communication? Satan? And, really, is there any gold left in Fort Knox? Are we are all playing with funny money?
What the majority, if not all of the products in stores and on television have in common is petroleum. Without petroleum there will be no plastic for a myriad of products. We are surrounded by plastic and forms of plastic that will go away without petroleum. Imagine a grocery without plastic packaging. Your voice would echo for seconds in such a place. To a large extent your car is made of plastic. Your life is shrink-wrapped in plastic. You only lack a barcode.
Plastic will last for thousands of years. Rafts of it float in the oceans of the world. Plastic will become more valuable than gold if the supply of petroleum is turned off. Imagine clothing without petroleum based materials. Goodbye, sports equipment. No elastic for bra's, hose, underwear, toothbrushes, the svelte Nike running wear you love so much, the battery or electrically powered devices you depend upon, no rubber for your shoes, no dyes for fabrics and their logos, no thread to hold it all together. No stylish sunglasses, or designer frames. No printer inks for your HP printer, no books, no CDs, no DVDs. Without petroleum, the world will also be a less colorful place. Goodbye makeup counters, goodbye acrylic, lacquer, and enamel paints that make our civilized world so pretty - that allow a lot of people to make a living, (and die of work related cancers). Goodbye pesticides, goodbye GMO's, goodbye bullets, and weapons of mass destruction. We will be living in The Stone Age. And it might not take an apocalyptic event to get us there. The clock will simply run out for The Oil Age. Goodbye modern society.
Petroleum is the lubricant that runs the machines that make everything you wear or drive, the transportation industry on land, air, or sea, packaging your food comes in, the newspaper your read, your computer, your lipstick and makeup, the plethora of personal care products that you count on to look good, materials and machinery to the build dams, office buildings, and homes. Without petroleum the world will come grinding to a halt. Nothing will get done very fast, if at all. And if it is metal, it will rust.
In the future, when the world realizes the salad days are gone, there will be plastic collectors who will recycle plastic with the power of water mills. There will be water, food, fuel, and seed wars. But long before the Earth is stripped bare of natural resources, wars and plagues will wipe out billions. Darwin's 'Survival of the Fittest' will take over. This will be an age of everybody for themselves. It will be a time where a person with knowledge about technology or medicines will be called a wizard. We will be living in Middle Earth in The New Dark Ages, this new Stone Age. A person who can read the crumbling ancient books will be revered as sages and scholars. Comedians will flourish; there will be an unheard of need for people who can make people laugh. There will not be a whole lot to live for without jesters to lighten the mood. Comedians will make life in The Stone Age bearable.
In the future, the future without petroleum and its many byproducts, there will be dirty little villages on the fringes of decaying cities. There will be the clickety clack of wood wheeled bicycles on the weed choked streets and sidewalks. The cities will long have been stripped of metal and plastic and mostly be the domain of criminals and wildlife. Metal, plastic, and wood barons will stockpile their treasures in vast stone fortresses. People will kill for a crust of bread and fresh water. Plants will turn New York and Los Angeles into urban jungles. People will avoid going into the cities for fear of being killed by animals and criminals. Only cannibals will live in the cities. Gold and gems will be the cash of the future.
Comedians during this time will wear festive clothing they have obtained from black market sources. The drably dressed populace will recognize comedians by their elaborate comic wagons that will roll into their villages once a month. Crowds will gather around these wagons and the comedian will stand atop his wagon and do his or her routine and be paid with produce and bread. Bread will be extremely valuable in the future. Bakers will be among the nobility of this era. People will make bread from just about everything. Potato bread will be the most common form, and contain a mixture of wild grains gathered by hand during the bleak rainy summers, by lowly serfs with no educations.
About five hundred years into this malaise, this New Dark Age, there will be a technological breakthrough. A brilliant person, probably employed by one of the many lords, or kings of the land, will find a way to make hydrogen powered engines, and civilization will enter into a new renaissance. Petroleum will be forgotten. Knowledge will again be given to the masses. Governments will arise, and justice will again be found. Houses of worship will be built and reclaimed. The cities will slowly be resettled, there will be merriment. A slew of festivals will mark the beginning of the New Dawn of Mankind.
The jesters who once roamed the land as vagabonds will become advertising men. But the ads on the new high definition sets will not be like the old ads. No. The new ads will tell the truth about the products. Everything plastic will be gathered and recycled, or reduced into oil that will be used to make solar panels. The Earth will be cleaned up. Scientists will find a way to make things without petroleum. A strange plant in the ocean will ignite a storm of technology. Metal gears will lubricate themselves.
The political structure of this New Age of Enlightenment will not be democratic, communist, or totalitarian. It will be a monarchy, and the advertising people will no longer be on top, and the messages they will be telling will be the truth. Hopefully.
My descendants, if they survive this troubling time, will have titles like Ecological Engineer, and World Renewer. Television, and the movies will be wholesome and people will live like in the movie Pleasantville, but in color and with bright, happy, wholesome, and organic thoughts.
At that time in human history, will have supplanted plastic with an organic form that replicates itself. Self-repairing materials will be the norm. Even human beings will be able to regenerate their missing limbs and organs. Plastic and petroleum will become the stuff of legend, from a time of darkness that was long ago and far away. Amen.
