Walk on By

Walk on By

I’m beginning to wonder if we are gardeners of the planet and have misunderstood our part in the eco-system. A lifetime of factory, office work, driving a truck, working at sea, and a million other occupations and for what purpose? Birth, labour and taxes, and death: at this last garrison all accumulated becomes someone else’s to squander. In two generations all your accumulation is gone. What a pointless exercise.

I suggest an African warrior/hunters existence contains greater pleasure and happiness than a millionaire drinking champagne on a seagoing yacht: And the millionaire’s response? Probably ‘apparent’ indifference. Most are openly caring for the plight of the warrior and secretly envious of the tycoon. A penny in the charity box and a vote for equality are how we deal with conscience and suspicion of injustice.

There is a seed of truth within the idea of a race of gardeners. Society and civilisation’s evolution dissolves any possibility of a human race dedicated to caring for the planet. The majority does not care and applauds and aligns themselves with the minority who are environmentalist. For example, everyone is shocked by the suffocating plastic saturated oceans, and most continue to fill shopping baskets with polymer water vessels. The solution is simple: force shoppers to pay twenty per cent of the grocery bill for an eco-destruction tax: Glass bottles and recycled paper packaging or no shop provided packaging at all is the future. Once instigated: the oceans will have a reprieve. Money counts, money is the tipping point; cash is the influence: what a paradox. Charge an environmental tax: based on personal waste and use of packaging all would change.

Could an individual be an ecological mindset gardener? If a different mindset were to be encouraged. The earlier suggestion of taxing the shopping basket if packaging is used could be made possible. Once every individual is forced to make a taxable contribution if they do not culture an environmental mindset: the future o the planet would change. Maybe rateable taxation on non-ecological property. And the tax used as a gift to health treatment, payment for cleaner water or drainage. Maybe those without jobs should be paid by the environmental tax to look after woodland, gardens, parks and play areas. And with the environmental earnings comes taxes paid back into the system. Not only this, people come to understand about waste and responsibility: with waste and pollution comes death. Death of ethos, the death of reality. 

Unless of course, you’re the warrior/hunter, the proud man in his Savannah, the tribe member in his Amazonian forest. These humans are the last of the true real humans, knowing and understanding life purpose. Unfortunately, for the tribes, people have taken or are stealing their birthright. He weeps, for his stolen land, and his tribe is cast to the winds.

Cast to the winds for food, fuel, and trinkets. Next time you fill your car with fuel, eat your imported fruit and meat, sigh at the sparkling carbon called diamond, pay fifteen grand for a gold watch. Remember, the cost is higher than the money exchanges for the goods: The price is millennia of tribes and culture, their land, their birthrights. And the ecology of the planet.

Your future generations will see you as a fool, waster, and thief of their health and happiness…

A ten-minute writing exercise