News Noise, Megalomania, Toilet Bowls and Nanoplastics

Shouldn’t we focus our attention on what really matters?

A couple of days a friend asked me what I thought about Trump’s comments on taking over Greenland, his Board of Peace that needs a billion dollars to join and all the rest of the news noise bombarding us minute by minute. Of course I have heard about it, but I said I took little notice of it because I thought most of it was overly emotional and would put me in a hysterical state of mind which would not allow me to reflect and identify issues that would matter in the longer term. Besides, why lose sleep because of a sociopathic, narcissistic, megalomaniac old man suffering from dementia? Why let the news cycle control your life and destroy your peace of mind and health, knowing that it will undo all the meditation and yoga you are doing to stay sane?

That of course begs the question; what really matters? What should we focus our attention on? To my mind, only two things. First, in order of immediacy, your and your family/friends mental, emotional, physical and social health – and I want to especially emphasize the latter. Second, and closely related, the health of our waters, soil, air, food, fellow creatures and Mother Earth in general, understanding that these two are closely intertwined. What we are doing is peeing and pooing into our toilets, drinking our excrement and then acting surprised when we get sick.

With regards to our social health we are clearly becoming more and more isolated, more and more anxious and depressed and lonely and losing our optimism. This is all well documented. There are many causes, but an over emphasis on money, a glorification of “me” and just being a wealthy society for too long are signals that History books will tell you are usually signs that a society will go into decline. The ideas of self sacrifice, of thinking about the future, about the “the glory of Rome” rather than “the glory of me” are all lost. With regards to the health of our environment, well, if you are regular reader of the cacor website I need not say much: its obvious that we are turning the planet into a toxic garbage dump, as portrayed humorously in the Disney movie Wall-E.

Nothing illustrates the inter-related nature of our health, and in particular our social health, and the planet’s health more than micro-nanoplastics. [MNP for short] It just so happens that I did a presenation on MNP’s for the Green Party of SDG [Stormont-Dundas-Glengarry, the region around Cornwall] a few days ago and part of what I found out was how social this problem is. In fact, during the talk, my #1 focus was on the fact that this disaster is primarily a social-cultural problem, in this way: the petrochemical companies only care about profit and creating a market for their products. Fair enough. We also understand that they don’t care about the externalities and unintended consequences. It’s the job of the people in a democracy and their governments to push back when these externalities that are generated by the successful marketing of toxic products start to significantly damage the population and/or the water/soil/air we eat/drink/breath. In a healthy society, when the social fabric is strong and when social cohesion is high and a sense of social responsibility is the norm this back and forth is kept in balance.

Want a concrete example.

Think back to the publication of Silent Spring in 1962. The book was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, but it swayed public opinion and led to a reversal in US pesticide policy, a nationwide ban on DDT for agricultural uses,[2] and an environmental movement that led to the creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency. Why was it successful in changing public opinion? The social forces at the time were strong enough to fight back and defeat the chemical companies who only cared about their profits. I want to emphasize here I am not against companies doing what they can to make profits – but not at the expense of public health or the health of our waters, soils and air. Now instead of DDT we are fighting the same kind of battle against the over use of plastics that are creating millions of tons of micro-nanoplastics per year – but now we are losing that fight and the companies are profiting enormously from that defeat. As an example of the impacts is this article I got in my news feed 5 minutes ago:

Texas officials alarmed over rising increase in ‘nurdles’ dominating beaches: ‘They’re a real threat to human health’ Nurdles act like sponges for toxins as they move through food chains, posing health threats to wildlife and humans. Scientists estimate that adults ingest the equivalent of one credit card per week of microplastics — and studies in animal and human cells suggest connections to cancer, heart attacks, reproductive problems, and more. [2]

And what are we doing about it? Well, after more than 40 years of fighting the petrochemical industries pretty much nothing. Production of plastics keeps on increasing. Plastics become more necessary in our ordinary lives. In fact I think its clear that if we tried to ban most plastics our entire society would fall apart. In other words, we are addicted to them. We are addicts in this way: we derive short term pleasure/reward from plastic, knowing that in the longer term they will destroy us. Plastics are in my opinion, primarly a social problem. Our society has allowed private profit at public expense to flourish. When I was researching for my presentation for the Greens I read this paper which highlighted how absolutely ruthless yet brilliant the plastic industry has been at convincing us that they are the good guys and they are helping us. [6] Here are a few words from this excellent article that illustrate that is a problem we created on purpose with only profits in mind:

“The ripe postwar consumer climate itself was no guarantee that shoppers would buy plastic. Since synthetics had never before been part of the average American’s daily routine, there was little existing demand for the stuff. Also, because plastic couldn’t be repaired when it broke, it melted when heated, and it smelled strange, consumers weren’t always compelled to purchase the mysterious substance. Based on this, SPI concluded that synthetics had to be aggressively marketed through sophisticated advertising and “education” campaigns.”

So what can you do? Watch the CDN documentary Plastic People [3]. If that has not convinced you read the book The Problem with Plastic [4], follow the advice in Plastic Freee – How I kicked the plastic habit [5]… and always remember all of this is really a social problem – so be more social, learn to get along with difficult people, get to know your neighbours, join some sort of social group – even its only pickle ball. We made the mess we are in and that means we can get out of it too – if we work together, just like folks did after being inspired by Silent Spring in 1962.