The current world population is 8,189,900,916 as of Monday, November 25, 2024 according to the most recent United Nations estimates elaborated by Worldometer.
If you grew up a Millennial in America, or had children who did, you likely watched quite a bit of children's television programming, replete with all of the commercial breaks for action figures, Barbies, gimmicky breakfast cereals, and guilt trips of face-melting intensity. Sarah McLachlan sings mournfully over abused cats and dogs, and only you, Small Child or/and Parent Also Watching, can save these poor pitiful souls! McGruff the Crime Dog says only you can take a bite out of crime! Daren the lion wants you to D.A.R.E. to just say no to drugs! Smokey Bear, with a charming music box ditty over a little pile of matches resembling a drawing of a house, says only you can prevent forest fires!
The World Wildlife Fund also wants you to know, just as an aside, that only you can save these beleaguered, lonesome sea turtles from strangling to death from the plastic ring of a beer or soda six pack getting stuck around their neck, mistaken for the jellyfish that are their favourite meal. And just in case the commercial doesn't get the point across, here's Captain Planet demonstrating an entire episode on the topic, and The Magic Schoolbus, and we're also going to imply but not explicitly state that Ariel, The Little Mermaid, might also be in danger from the dreadful threat of plastic six pack rings!
In the 1990s and 2000s, television networks seemed - at least cosmetically - to care about the moral conscience and sense of social obligation that should develop in Millennial youngsters, with the previous generation's after school special evolving into 30 second commercial spots which fell like hammer blows upon the malleable minds of youngsters, who were at the same time being told with unprecedented frequency that they are special and that "you can do anything you put your mind to." They were the generation raised with a strong conviction about their own agency and the availability of opportunities and resources through which to enact that agency. They were the generation raised with an almost Catholic level of guilt over taking too long to grow up and seize the reins of responsibility for saving the world. Children's literature, prior to the YA boom kicked off by The Hunger Games and its contemporaries in 2012, also overwhelmingly depicted empowered child characters facing global threats: Animorphs, Pendragon, Harry Potter, and so many other stories depicted a recognisable, modern version of 21st Century Earth, waiting to be rescued from certain collapse by a mere handful of ordinary preteens.
This belief in personal responsibility was not a belief in a simplistic or even optimistic world. These works of fiction entailed complicated worldbuilding and nuanced politics, with sympathetic characters being forced to sacrifice some of their ideals in order to preserve other ideals or a "bigger picture" that mattered more. Likewise, it was not a belief in the world being eager to supply young people with help and support: in all of these works of media, the previous generation of adults are the obstacles, the detractors, the problem. It furthermore was not a belief that benevolence would be rewarded, or even seen by adults as rational or an appropriate solution to problems: these characters all suffer terribly in their pursuit of their goals, and a happy ending is never even meaningfully on their list of priorities, much less an assumed result of achieving their goals. Pre-YA children's literature was grim as hell about what actually happens to kids who try to make the world better, even in just a small corner of it. All of the brightness and hopefulness in these narratives, likewise expressed in those commercial breaks, boils down to this: whatever small exertion you put into improving the world, is a worthy effort, even if it goes nowhere. Whatever small opportunity for benevolence you reject or ignore, however, is unforgivable laziness, cowardice, and abandonment of your obligation to the future.
We may phrase it more simply, by quoting Rabbi Tarfon from the Pirkei Avot:
“You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”
And so I find myself, a 90s kid, standing over the kitchen waste bin, a pair of scissors in one hand, and a six pack ring in my other hand from some Dr Pepper I bought earlier in the week, methodically clipping it apart, ring after ring, leaving no pieces large enough to choke a sea turtle, and no closed loops which might strangle a sea turtle. It's almost fun, almost meditative, to see if I can get the entire job done in just six clean cuts. Snip.
And I think about commercial fishing nets, with their billions of plastic loops, which have killed off 80% of the population of Indian Ocean dolphins in the past two decades. Snip.
And I think about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and how it is biologically a "desert" in the middle of the world's most biodiverse ocean, because the microplastics seeping into the water make it unbreathable for fish. Snip.
And I used to recycle my plastic water bottles, back in my university years, but then I learned that 91% of plastics placed by end users in recycling containers do not actually get recycled. Exxon Mobil, Shell, and BP spent millions of dollars a year throughout the 90s and 2000s to convince consumers, through recycling public service ads, however, that plastic is so easy to recycle, and that turning water bottles into polyester "polar fleece" undershirts and "vegan leather" purses is so friendly to the environment, and avoids slaying poor dear little animals for their hides, and therefore is an unambiguous public good. Laundering "fleece" puts microplastics into the greywater supply, and doesn't get filtered out when it returns to the drinking water supply. Snip.
And I think about how every drinking water supply on planet Earth is now contaminated with microplastics, and every human body has permanent microplastics in every organ and tissue, right this moment, and we still have no goddamn idea how that's going to affect our health, but we can be very certain that some pharmaceutical company and every medical insurance company will make a mountain of wealth off the fact. And now we're entering a political administration which is going to deregulate every single thing that can be deregulated, and whether or not it ever gets better in the remote future, for now it's gonna' get a whole lot worse first. Snip.
The social contract is a masterpiece of tensegrity, one delicate, stretchy, plastic thread keeping everything in its proper order, through the complex dynamics of forces pulling every which way, all at once. It works so well, when we all just pull together in the right directions. Children's media had my entire generation ready, willing, eager, desperate for the chance to all pull together, the right way, the better way, the kinder way. It's a terrible shame that fewer than a thousand individuals have enough pull to damn the other 8,189,900,000 of us, and the untold tens of billions yet to be born. Every thread of trust, of obligation, of love we all have for this world, has become the net used to trap and mutilate us. We choke on our own hopefulness. The children we used to be, indict us from inside our memory, for our helplessness to follow through on all those plans and promises they believed in. The children who are growing up in this world today are born with plastic in their veins, accumulating, always still accumulating. The commercial fishing nets are on the insides of us now. The call is coming from inside the house, but don't you know that phones don't need cords these days, to keep you hanging out, stuck dangling on the line?
And I still try to be a good citizen in all the little ways, because it's what Samwise Gamgee would do, and I trust his opinion more than I trust A Word from Our Sponsors. Sometimes, I do it because it's what George Carlin would rant about people not doing, and spite is as effective a motivator as kindness, if the results are the same. I push my shopping cart back up to the cart storage area, even if I parked far away. I turn off the light switches when I leave a room. If I can walk somewhere, I do that rather than take a car. If I can shop local for my produce and eggs at a farmers' market, I do that rather than buy something that had to be shipped here by long haul truckers. I pick up litter I find on the ground. I rescue-adopted my house pets and did not shop for them. I carefully extinguish any fires I start, and monitor them long afterwards to be very sure of it. I go through certified professional dangerous waste disposal services, when I get my phone's lithium battery replaced. I'm an educator and strive to pass along benevolent habits to my young students. Oh, to be sure, the fish hook of personal ecological and social responsibility has lodged itself securely, permanently, in my sensitive mouth. Those ads worked on me, and I'd frankly rather be someone they worked on, than someone who doesn't care. I'll keep doing my part, because anything less than this is anathema to my integrity. But any belief I ever had that the Powers That Be, running the show, ever actually cared - any belief that those PSAs were intended to be effective policy, rather than propaganda and lip service, to instill certain beliefs in a generation? Any belief that this trolley problem had a working set of brakes on it? Well, children's speculative fiction authors were quick to remind me that adults and politicians are the source of every problem, so that rosy belief was always finer in me than a monofilament strand of 10 lb test fishing line.
And I think I've probably kept you hanging here for long enough. If nobody is actually listening, or if those who are listening are powerless to act, then a De Profundis is only so much rhythmless amateur slam poetry, directed at an equally-frustrated choir. All that frustrated hope just needs somewhere to go, you know? What is grief, if not love persevering?
And I think about Judas Iscariot, his cheaply-bought traitor's feet, like two unhurried compass needles, turning north, northeast, east, southeast, south...
And I think about the Sword of Damocles.
And I think about Madame Guillotine.
Snip.
Iron Noder 2024, 16/30