Homeless Story of J, Part III

----- (Note: Although J is a character in a story, who doesn’t necessarily reflect my views, all references and articles are real and refer to the Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2010) ----- The irony is this: as I stand hungry and dirty on the fringe, I see where it’s all going; and yet the millions of ants scurrying around me, clean and well-fed, toil blind. Not only that, I am powerless to affect a single soul. They, in contrast, hum with collective power. J’s First Law of Social Physics: There is an inverse relationship between awareness and power. This, of course, makes god the most powerless being of all. A mute invisible bystander helpless to stop humanity from destroying what took millions of years to unfold. I have partaken too much of god’s sad sight. Today I found a discarded newspaper, damp with gutter scum and smelling of grinds. All the necessary clues are in it, All the answers to save ourselves, too. Why can’t anyone see? WHY??? O chalk-eyed, ice-tongued people, you have earned your reward. Page One of the dirty smelly news: “In Amazon, Rain Forests Make Room for Mall Rats.” Can it be true? Does this article really spit on the grave of a great activist, Chico Mendes, all the while offering up praise to suburbs, malls, and teeming purchases? Yes. “The latest mall project broke ground in March in Rio Branco, a once-isolated outpost near the spot where rain forest activist Chico Mendes was killed in 1988.” Don’t they see? Can they really be replacing the rain forest with big cubes full of vain trinkets, and do it with glee and corrupt pride? “The proliferation of Amazon shopping malls marks an economic turning point for one of the world’s last frontiers. A modern consumer economy is taking root.” Oh, we’ve done it. Wrecked and converted one of the last places where the Primal Green was relatively untouched. Our “modern economy,” in the future, will be judged as a viral blight. Don’t they see this? That gold is heavy and sinks? “The Amazon’s development also alters the game for environmentalists. Amazon city dwellers now have more clout to demand that roads, power plants and other projects be built in the region.” Ignorance. Destroying what existed in great diversity. And for what??? What?? Does anyone hear the lyrics of Green Day: === City of the dead, at the end of another lost highway, signs misleading to nowhere. City of the damned, lost children with dirty faces today-- no one really seems to care. === Do you see now why I am so upset, spirit guides? I sit on the curb and watch as Mammon wins. Wins so completely and efficiently that the ant-people don’t even know what they have lost.