You might not expect such idiocy from a species named for its especially large and developed brain, but we are destroying our own habitat. In radically changing the face of the planet, as we continue to do, and by continuously releasing extreme quantities of pollutants into the environment, we are setting in motion our own (thoroughly justified) extinction. True, as a species we are ingenious and some will possibly manage to survive. Hopefully not as homo capitalis or homo prodigi (capitalist man or wasteful man, according to my Google-based Latin), but as some newer kind of man not bent on profiting from the rape of the Earth.
We are bankrupting ourselves and 'feeding the habit'. Consumerism and our credit-based society is putting large sections of society into an unsustainable position of ever-growing debt. Add to that that governments cater to the corporations and organisations largely responsible for that debt and the destruction mentioned above, you see that even those responsible for protecting us as a people are doing us in.
We are overfishing, overpolluting, overclearing and overusing. Sure, it seems like there are enough fish when you look at the fish in the supermarket. The sky and water look blue. It seems like there is forest aplenty around the world. Honestly, though, all is not as it seems. If we stop commercially fishing the oceans right now, the fish populations might recover. One day. The sky and water can look clean without actually being clean. And there IS a lot of forest. But those forests are responsible for filtering the air of the whole world, returning oxygen to the atmosphere so that we (and everything else) can keep breathing. Consider that not so long ago, most of North America and Europe used to be covered in forest and are now largely farmland, and look at how quickly forests are being cleared around the world to make space for more (poor) farmland. The scale at which we are taking away from the environment is immense. And the token efforts to compensate are negligible. Yet the rate of consumption is only increasing.
The 'developed' world is greedy and wasteful, 'buying' and claiming resources that belong to everyone in the name of profit, burning and disposing of vast resources to facilitate an addiction of bigger and better and more.
Here's a little doomsday scenario based on the forests mentioned above. Every person on Earth relies on those forests. We don't actually know exactly how much we need to survive, though, so we just keep on cutting it down. Because it's just forest. You don't have to pay for it. You can just take it. And what happens when oxygen levels in the atmosphere start to drop, and people start having symptoms of oxygen deprivation? Then what? The people at high elevations, where there is already less oxygen, would suffer first, of course. Typically these are not the richest or most powerful people in the world, though, so their voices would probably go unheard, while more forests are cleared. There wouldn't be a real fuss until it started to affect larger populations. So everyone who can afford it moves down to sea-level where there's more air and the people higher up just all curl up and die and maybe logging is halted. Maybe. But at that point there already isn't enough oxygen in the world for the people and the problem continues to get worse. People start planting trees, perhaps. But it's already too late. Plants need oxygen too. They can't grow without it. As oxygen levels drop, photosynthesis is less efficient, so less oxygen is released. Mass populations start feeling the effects. The rich start walking around with their own oxygen supplies and people start sealing themselves into oxygen-enhanced domes. But this can only work for a select few. There are too many people on Earth and something needs to be done about it. Wars start, in the name of survival, fighting over air. The poorer populations lose, of course, suffering from the tiring effects of oxygen deprivation, struggling to fight against the rich armies supplied with oxygen to make them active and strong. But no one knows what to do with all the bodies, of humans and animals dying all over the world. So they just retreat to their bubbles and let them rot in place. Unfortunately, decomposition releases even more CO2 and other pollutants into the air, which only contributes to climate change and pollutes the air even further. Meanwhile the world outside the bubbles is a toxic desert. Inside, there isn't enough food to go around. Not a nice scenario? Stop cutting down the forests! Stop taking! The trees don't belong to everyone? Surely we can agree that the AIR does!
Oxygen is only one of the things we rely on the forests for, though. The Amazon rainforest in particular is considered one of the most important forests in the world, for its biodiversity and its influence on world climate and weather patterns. Seriously. And it is being cleared at a horrific rate. Why? To plant 'biofuel' crops - crops whose only point is to continue to fuel the fossil-fuel-based energy and vehicles we rely on today, two of the main sources of pollution in the world. 'Biodiesel' doesn't burn any cleaner than regular diesel, but since it comes from plants instead of oil, it's supposed to be okay. And since the rainforest is just there for the taking and people will pay ridiculous amounts of money for the oil crop, bye bye rainforest. Hello desert.
And this is just one of the many things we're doing wrong right now. Like good little scientists following the scientific method, we isolate problems and try to study just one variable at a time. And each one of the things may have horrendous consequences. But the total effect of all of the horrible scenarios I could describe right now would surely be even worse?! But that's not something that can be proven by 'scientific' experimenting; it's theoretical. So it isn't studied. It's not an actual 'environmental problem' in fact, unless/until society perceives it as a problem. Which it doesn't. Because right now it is just theoretical. The forests ARE still there right now. There ARE still a few fish in the seas. So you don't see a problem and don't think about it. And it won't change and we will continue on this path to destruction until we are all dead, and everything on Earth along with us.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Failing
You know how I was trying to be positive? Well, I haven't written in a while because I'm having a hard time with that. I feel like I'm failing. So I've decided to write about that because otherwise this blog will just curl up and die... So as a bit of a warning, this will probably be a rant, and if you're one of those gentle souls that doesn't believe in negative feelings, stop reading now.
First of all, despite my contrived list of things I like about the Netherlands, the honest truth is that I hate it here. I've been here almost 8 years and despite my 'integrated' life, internally I seriously doubt that I will ever feel like I belong here. I am not Dutch. I will never be Dutch. The list of things that annoy me here on a daily basis overwhelmingly surpasses, exceeds and outweighs the list of things I like. Yes, there are good days and bad days. But if I consider my entire experience living here, I wonder how I even manage to stay another day.
Yet obviously, I manage to stay because I have a life here and I can't leave. Even when I had nothing to tie me down, picking up and moving to another country was difficult. And now I have a mortgage on a house that drops in value every year, amounting to a burden that is quite literally a cage keeping me here. I have a Dutch husband (for the moment. I can't say our relationship is terribly healthy righ now either) who refuses to leave the Netherlands for at least the next 20 years. Leaving the Netherlands means leaving him (or waiting until retirement). And I have a Dutch son. If I were to leave, husband and country, would I even get custody of him? And if I did, how would I manage?! I don't make enough money to support the two of us, and I quail at the thought of looking after him all by myself without ever a break. Although, I suppose if I were to return to Canada, even just to regroup, probably meaning staying with my parents, they would be able to help me out a bit in that area. But anyway. These are hypothetical. The reality is that I'm trapped here and I hate it.
I am stuck at home every day. Essentially the only people I ever see are my husband and my son. I take The Little Ninja to daycare in the morning, then sit behind my computer procrastinating/working/worrying about not having enough work all day. At 5:30, when The Recyclist brings home The Little Ninja, I basically have to have dinner on the table. That or face screaming from one or both of them. Then I look after TLN until he's in bed. I can either watch tv with The Recyclist in the evening, or be relegated to trying to read over the background noise of the cursed tv. There's only one living room and my only other option is to go upstairs. Where I sit all day.
I don't make enough money because I don't get enough work and because I get paid too little for the work that I do. Despite my years of experience (ever increasing!) my clients continually force my rates down. I earn less every year. So I worry about not getting enough work, because it means we have less income. And while my rates are being forced ever downward, prices for everything else are going up. I desperately need some time off to just unwind, but I feel guilty for every assignment I turn down because that's income we won't have.
I also hate my job. I procrastinate because I don't actually want to do the work. I'm bored. I'm always on the lookout for other jobs, but my options are limited to engineering in Rotterdam 5 days a week, or some local part time job. Neither option really appeals. I was looking at some schools to see if I could retrain to do something more hands-on. Sadly, even training to be a construction assistant (to hold the bucket of nails and fetch coffee) takes at least a year, full time. And there's no work in construction anyway. Rather pathetically, the apprenticeships, if I could get one (unlikely, given that: I am female, I am 'old' and would therefore cost more - minimum wage is age-based, construction hours are not compatible with daycare hours, and, again, there are no jobs) look like they would earn me more than I'm making now (as a translator/editor with a degree and six years' experience). But I would go out of my mind doing something so menial.
I'm trying to figure out what I could do to fix my situation. What hands-on job requires real thinking? Because I really miss having to think. I used to be really smart. Seriously. The lowest I have ever gotten on an IQ test was 140, (and I blame the noisy environment when I took it). I was always in the 'enhanced/gifted' class at school. I love solving problems. I love thinking and coming up with new ideas, new ways to do things. I am easily bored and crave something new. Not like new employer; more like new career. This is extremely difficult to facilitate in the Dutch labour market, where you need a piece of paper to qualify you to do anything. Seriously. Work at McDonalds? Hospitality certificate. Plant trees? Gardening diploma. Secretarial work? Secretarial diploma. And I don't actually want to do any of those things, certainly not badly enough to go get a certificate for it. Those papers also limit you. I have a mechanical engineering degree, which here only allows me to do mechanical engineering (in theory, interesting. In practice: boring). I have excellent English skills, something that, considering the standard of English here, should be prized more highly. My Dutch is about as good as any foreigner is likely to get. I want to work with my hands on something tangible. I thrive on change. I feel completely confined here. And though I keep on keeping on, I hate it. I'm dying inside.
To continue my rant, I feel completely unappreciated. And unheard. Invisible even. The only positive feedback I get from my clients is that they keep coming back to me. Despite this, they keep pushing down my rates, implying that if I don't lower my rates, they'll go to someone else... and I know they will, too. My husband's every word seems to be criticism of something I'm doing or not doing. You know 'defensive driving'? I seem to be defensive living. People seem to literally not see me. I have to watch out for cars, bikes, even people walking - they'd run right over me. (Part of this has to do with the inconsiderate nature of Dutch people, which I can go into at length. Don't get me started.) I live a photoshopped facebook life that almost exclusively highlights the positive, and my Dad still had the gall to criticize me yesterday for swearing in a comment on someone else's photo. I can't even fucking swear on facebook anymore? I didn't invite my family to be my facebook friends. I felt obligated to accept their requests. I don't want them on there. I want to be able to post things that they can't read. I carefully filter my life for them already when I talk to them. Now I have to censor facebook too, my one link to my friends around the world? I almost unfriended him, right then, but didn't, because it would be unfair, since he's stalking me through his wife's account and she didn't say anything. I feel like I can't even live my life truthfully. Everything has to be great to the outside world. But I'm so tired of faking it. Of lying. Hence the rant here; this anonymous blog is my sole outlet. Can't I ever be honest to actual people who know me? Don't I have the right to say that I am unhappy and discontent with my life right now?
First of all, despite my contrived list of things I like about the Netherlands, the honest truth is that I hate it here. I've been here almost 8 years and despite my 'integrated' life, internally I seriously doubt that I will ever feel like I belong here. I am not Dutch. I will never be Dutch. The list of things that annoy me here on a daily basis overwhelmingly surpasses, exceeds and outweighs the list of things I like. Yes, there are good days and bad days. But if I consider my entire experience living here, I wonder how I even manage to stay another day.
Yet obviously, I manage to stay because I have a life here and I can't leave. Even when I had nothing to tie me down, picking up and moving to another country was difficult. And now I have a mortgage on a house that drops in value every year, amounting to a burden that is quite literally a cage keeping me here. I have a Dutch husband (for the moment. I can't say our relationship is terribly healthy righ now either) who refuses to leave the Netherlands for at least the next 20 years. Leaving the Netherlands means leaving him (or waiting until retirement). And I have a Dutch son. If I were to leave, husband and country, would I even get custody of him? And if I did, how would I manage?! I don't make enough money to support the two of us, and I quail at the thought of looking after him all by myself without ever a break. Although, I suppose if I were to return to Canada, even just to regroup, probably meaning staying with my parents, they would be able to help me out a bit in that area. But anyway. These are hypothetical. The reality is that I'm trapped here and I hate it.
I am stuck at home every day. Essentially the only people I ever see are my husband and my son. I take The Little Ninja to daycare in the morning, then sit behind my computer procrastinating/working/worrying about not having enough work all day. At 5:30, when The Recyclist brings home The Little Ninja, I basically have to have dinner on the table. That or face screaming from one or both of them. Then I look after TLN until he's in bed. I can either watch tv with The Recyclist in the evening, or be relegated to trying to read over the background noise of the cursed tv. There's only one living room and my only other option is to go upstairs. Where I sit all day.
I don't make enough money because I don't get enough work and because I get paid too little for the work that I do. Despite my years of experience (ever increasing!) my clients continually force my rates down. I earn less every year. So I worry about not getting enough work, because it means we have less income. And while my rates are being forced ever downward, prices for everything else are going up. I desperately need some time off to just unwind, but I feel guilty for every assignment I turn down because that's income we won't have.
I also hate my job. I procrastinate because I don't actually want to do the work. I'm bored. I'm always on the lookout for other jobs, but my options are limited to engineering in Rotterdam 5 days a week, or some local part time job. Neither option really appeals. I was looking at some schools to see if I could retrain to do something more hands-on. Sadly, even training to be a construction assistant (to hold the bucket of nails and fetch coffee) takes at least a year, full time. And there's no work in construction anyway. Rather pathetically, the apprenticeships, if I could get one (unlikely, given that: I am female, I am 'old' and would therefore cost more - minimum wage is age-based, construction hours are not compatible with daycare hours, and, again, there are no jobs) look like they would earn me more than I'm making now (as a translator/editor with a degree and six years' experience). But I would go out of my mind doing something so menial.
I'm trying to figure out what I could do to fix my situation. What hands-on job requires real thinking? Because I really miss having to think. I used to be really smart. Seriously. The lowest I have ever gotten on an IQ test was 140, (and I blame the noisy environment when I took it). I was always in the 'enhanced/gifted' class at school. I love solving problems. I love thinking and coming up with new ideas, new ways to do things. I am easily bored and crave something new. Not like new employer; more like new career. This is extremely difficult to facilitate in the Dutch labour market, where you need a piece of paper to qualify you to do anything. Seriously. Work at McDonalds? Hospitality certificate. Plant trees? Gardening diploma. Secretarial work? Secretarial diploma. And I don't actually want to do any of those things, certainly not badly enough to go get a certificate for it. Those papers also limit you. I have a mechanical engineering degree, which here only allows me to do mechanical engineering (in theory, interesting. In practice: boring). I have excellent English skills, something that, considering the standard of English here, should be prized more highly. My Dutch is about as good as any foreigner is likely to get. I want to work with my hands on something tangible. I thrive on change. I feel completely confined here. And though I keep on keeping on, I hate it. I'm dying inside.
To continue my rant, I feel completely unappreciated. And unheard. Invisible even. The only positive feedback I get from my clients is that they keep coming back to me. Despite this, they keep pushing down my rates, implying that if I don't lower my rates, they'll go to someone else... and I know they will, too. My husband's every word seems to be criticism of something I'm doing or not doing. You know 'defensive driving'? I seem to be defensive living. People seem to literally not see me. I have to watch out for cars, bikes, even people walking - they'd run right over me. (Part of this has to do with the inconsiderate nature of Dutch people, which I can go into at length. Don't get me started.) I live a photoshopped facebook life that almost exclusively highlights the positive, and my Dad still had the gall to criticize me yesterday for swearing in a comment on someone else's photo. I can't even fucking swear on facebook anymore? I didn't invite my family to be my facebook friends. I felt obligated to accept their requests. I don't want them on there. I want to be able to post things that they can't read. I carefully filter my life for them already when I talk to them. Now I have to censor facebook too, my one link to my friends around the world? I almost unfriended him, right then, but didn't, because it would be unfair, since he's stalking me through his wife's account and she didn't say anything. I feel like I can't even live my life truthfully. Everything has to be great to the outside world. But I'm so tired of faking it. Of lying. Hence the rant here; this anonymous blog is my sole outlet. Can't I ever be honest to actual people who know me? Don't I have the right to say that I am unhappy and discontent with my life right now?
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
8... a sign?
I got an 8 on my environmental science exam (out of 10). I'm quite pleased. I guess the prof understood my Dutch well enough. Whew. (Or he didn't and gave me the benefit of the doubt. That could be it too.) In the bigger picture, this means I can take more courses, possibly leading to a degree at some point. In an even bigger picture, I wonder if it's a sign.
I don't mean to go all new-age on you, but I've read a lot about synchronicity and basically letting the universe tell you what you're meant to be doing. Recently I've started interpreting things in my life as signs that I am definitely going down the wrong path. Big things like I'm not getting much work as a freelancer and dreading actually having to do any of the work I do get, and little things like how nothing ever goes right, from bags of groceries falling over to tossed trash bouncing back out of the garbage can, my e-mail program constantly crashing right when I need it and burnt fingers from cooking.
So I wonder if this exam result is a sign pointing me in the right direction, in contrast to the useless signs around me that just tell me I'm going the wrong way.
I don't mean to go all new-age on you, but I've read a lot about synchronicity and basically letting the universe tell you what you're meant to be doing. Recently I've started interpreting things in my life as signs that I am definitely going down the wrong path. Big things like I'm not getting much work as a freelancer and dreading actually having to do any of the work I do get, and little things like how nothing ever goes right, from bags of groceries falling over to tossed trash bouncing back out of the garbage can, my e-mail program constantly crashing right when I need it and burnt fingers from cooking.
So I wonder if this exam result is a sign pointing me in the right direction, in contrast to the useless signs around me that just tell me I'm going the wrong way.
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