55: Steps towards despair: a burden to other lifeforms

When I try to trace my thoughts back to their origins, I usually find my earliest memories of them to be on my way to or from school. Most of my school years were spent in Quito, and most of the time we lived within walking distance of our school. In the mornings, my father would usually walk us to school, and in the afternoons we would sometimes walk together and sometimes separately. We had great conversations during our times together, and but I also enjoyed walking by myself and pursuing my thoughts.

It seems that it was on these walks that my thoughts on the nature of the world and my role in it began to take shape. Looking back on it now, I find it remarkable how soon I came to see myself as part of the problem.

In a South American capital city you can see the growth from day to day. Hills that were forested last year are now another suburb, or expanse of slums, or combination of the two.

I knew I was a burden on the world because I knew two things: 1. Natural habitats are being destroyed and species are going extinct every day. 2. The human population on earth is increasing.

I did hear that the destruction of habitat was not caused directly by human population growth, but by greedy landowners, ruthless oil companies, and poorly educated farmers on the edge of rain forests. I also heard that the billions of people sharing the planet had not yet reached numbers at which one could talk of "overpopulation". I wasn't qualified to dispute either of these, although the "not yet overpopulated" arguments never sounded very convincing to me, and didn't seem to take into account that overpopulation -- by anyone's definition -- would be reached soon.

But I considered how I lived. We lived in a fourplex with a small garden. It was not luxurious, but I wondered how much of the earth's surface would be taken up if everyone in the world had as many square meters as we did. In some areas of the world there are three families living in a place like ours.

We had a car. We did not use it much, as we were within walking distance of school and work, but still, it needed gasoline. How much gasoline? How much gasoline would be needed if every family in the world had a car like ours? How many toxins and greenhouse gases would they all pump into the atmosphere? How much oil would need to be pumped out of the ground? How much rainforest would need to be destroyed to get this oil?

I ate three meals a day. How much land was being used to grow the wheat and potatoes and to provide pasture for the cows that went into my meals?

The electricity I used for my reading lamp, my computer, my radio -- where did it come from? Where was some reservoir flooding an ecological habitat, or some coal generator pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, or some nuclear power plant creating radioactive waste?

I did not know the answer to these questions. I always wished that someone could give us exact figures on what an equilibrium between humans and the rest of nature would look like. How much fuel can we burn before we're taking more than is replenished, and sending more toxins into the air than can be absorbed again? Given the world's population, how much land would each person be entitled to before plant and animal life would suffer irreparable damage? My suspicion was that we were already taking a lot more than our share. This was certainly true for the "wealthy landowners and greedy oil companies" we always liked to blame, but I couldn't help thinking that, to really achieve ecological equilibrium, everyone above the poverty line would have to downsize. But since most people weren't doing so, and certainly not voluntarily, even the more minor contributions of those below the poverty line were upsetting the equilibrium.

"Upsetting the equilibrium" is what I am doing. I am a breathing, eating burden on other lifeforms. No matter what efforts I put into this, I cannot become a positive or even a neutral force. I'll have to settle for being a less destructive force, but still destructive, because I cannot stop contributing my part to a massive force that is creating an imbalance which is disfavorable to most species and fatal to many. They would be better off if I didn't exist.

How can life possibly be lived when you have this knowledge? Apparently, everyone around me was doing just fine. What I could never figure out was whether people weren't seeing it, or saw it but had found a way to live in spite of it. There is amazing power in the optimistic idea of counterbalancing the damage we do by doing some even greater good someday. Fatalism, too, is powerful. So is the willful blindness of greed. I know this because I used these three methods myself in staving off despair.