Dear Editor,
In regard to the letter in the previous issue, I offer rebuttal. First, allow me to explain Caesura. The series began for my Creative Process class because I noticed a dearth of meaningful discussion on campus. I’m not here to tell people how to solve problems. I want everyone to consider why our way of life might be problematic. The truth is that our species has far expanded its carrying capacity on this planet, and that our ‘advanced’ culture has little respect for other forms of life here. Every day, inadvertently, we and the industrial system upon which our human lives ‘depend’ continuously poison the land, water, and air upon which ALL organisms depend.
Nearly every act we perform is destructive. I implore everyone to ask How? How do we get our water, toothpaste, food, plates, cutlery, medicine, condoms, beer, beds, and shelter? How does the raw extraction, production, and transportation of everything we use impact the whole planet? To think of plants, animals, water, land, and air as less important than human life is insane. I repeat: to think of plants, animals, water, land, and air as less important than human life is insane. All of these factors play an integral role in the continuation of our survival.
Every organism on this planet depends on the diversity provided by other organisms. This diversity sustains the continuation of every species. We are exponentially dismantling that diversity daily. We may not be actively murdering, but we have been forced to depend on a system that exploits all forms of life, a system that actively and latently murders for our benefit. This system even exploits our own species for our benefit—in sweatshops and overseas wars, naming two instances among many. All of this happens because we depend on finite natural resources: water, fossil fuels (plastics), wood, metals, etc., that hinder natural stability by exploitation and resulting pollution from extracting/using them. Eventually, the disintegration will be so intense that ecological diversity will collapse, and as we are a species like those who die for us, so will we.
Now, my direct response to Mr. Essig. Your letter is as self-righteous as you found my mission statement. Of course Caesura seems biased, but it’s no more biased than your argument. I want to know how my facts were flawed; they came from texts with meticulously cited research. How is our civilization not inherently evil? Why is thinking it evil delusional? What good has our civilization done? I would like you and anyone else who has answers to these questions to e-mail dcarter3@washcoll.edu. I would be delighted to counter your arguments. We aren’t god. I don’t want to be, and none of us should, but at least we can consider thinking about change, and how that change can be made. Collapse will inevitably arrive, but how do we prepare? Do we wait until ashes, ashes, all fall down? Or do we walk away now? Is walking away even possible?
-Doug Carter ‘12