Our immediate decision to acquire shares of the wave's power came from our dissatisfaction with the primacy of nature. She, as nature is commonly thought of, had been our surrogate mother. She had wired us genetically, like all of her children, to take care of our needs. We were able to change our clothing if necessary, though it was through quite a slow wardrobe change, taking millions of years. We were able to find provision for our basic needs, given she had made the supplies available. The biggest bummer was that she had given us life, only to kill us off in the end. We saw her as the chief force of guaranteeing that the existence of life was only a minor blip in the history of the chaotic universe. This was a troublesome realization.
As far as we could tell (we did not have microscopes), there had never been any guarantee that she was there to protect us in any way. So we did the only thing we could do. We decided to make our own wardrobe decisions. We decided to try and provide for ourselves. We took power away from her, and while she still holds a great deal of that power, we still intend to take more. We are, after all, still dying. Our wager in this is that some way, somehow we will escape predetermined death. Over the millions of years since we declared our independence, we have occasionally looked back into nature, and wondered if we made the right choice all along.
Consider the example of this investment banker: A resident of Cincinnati, he has a high paying job, lives in a nice home that backs up to a nature preserve, and can afford to shop at Whole Foods. Yet he's not happy. He's sitting in his breakfast nook, drinking his fair trade coffee and looking out the window into the preserve thinking, "Gosh, what I wouldn't give just to be free from all of this. Gosh, the Bengals are going to blow this year. My son is turning out to be a real asshole, and I just don't want any of this anymore. I wish I was a park ranger..."
We all wish we were park rangers by the time we fully mature. Every single one of us. Yet how many of us actually return? From ancient cave paintings depicting a longing to be reunited with nature, to the experiences of our contemporary authors and artists, the remorse regarding our disconnect with nature and our inability to return is evident. H.D. Thoreau who depicts this longing quite well, wanted to reconnect with nature so badly he abandoned all shame to play "camp out" in his friend's back yard. Thoreau's book, "camp out" is a thoughtful read, until you realize he was in the back yard procuring free dinners throughout his experience, thus proving my point. We continue to walk away from its demand to govern us, yet all the while we walk with our heads looking backward, with tears in our eyes.
Do you remember that investment banker I brought up? He died of ass cancer one year after retiring from his job, and his son bought a strip club with his inheritance. How appropriate. Now waiting around forever for a wardrobe change doesn't look so bad, does it? So go the many costs of championing the wave. Until next time... I'm going to go make myself a sandwich.
"As we degenerate, the contrast between us and our house is more evident. We are as much strangers in nature, as we are aliens from God. We do not understand the notes of birds. The fox and the deer run away from us. We do not know the uses of more than a few plants, as corn and the apple, the potato and the vine. Is not the landscape, every glimpse of which hath a grandeur, a face of him? Yet this may show us what discord is between man and nature, for you cannot freely admire a noble landscape, if laborers are digging in the field hard by. The poet finds something ridiculous in his delight, until he is out of the sight of men." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leonard Cohen (reciting his poetry) and Philip Glass (playing the score), two guys you should definitely get to know while your still on the mortal coil, put our stakes into perspective quite well:
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