Oh, humans. Will you never learn? You still fight endless wars. You still use fax machines for some reason. You still rely more and more on computers despite the warnings of every Sci-Fi film about robots ever. We live in an amazing time full of furiously advancing technology and new scientific breakthroughs seemingly every day. But we also live on an unsustainable earth that is overpopulated. There were roughly seven billion of us last time I went around and counted everyone. That took a long time, and in that time I noticed that humans still partake in a lot of habits that waste space, which we kind of need because there's less and less to go around. "What are they?" you ask? Well, it's weird that you're talking to text on a webpage, but I'll gladly provide some examples.
1. Graveyards
Okay, I understand that humans go through a grieving process when loved ones expire. I also understand the perfectly logical desire to remember these people after they're gone. So, for thousands of years graveyards made sense. Here was a place where we could bury our dead and then visit them when we missed them most. Or when your parents made you go to stand by your great uncle's tombstone or whatever. But over the last two hundred years or so we've developed way better methods of remembering people.
For instance, the camera. I'm going to take a bit of a gamble and assume anybody reading this knows what this device is, and what it does. I won't take the time to explain how it works, mostly because I've read about it in detail but still don't quite understand how it happens. Magic, I guess. From the still photograph camera came the next innovation, motion picture cameras! Nowadays you don't even need film because everything is digital, which I understand even less but still appreciate nonetheless. You can literally record every moment of somebody's life if you want, even if they shout things at you like, "If you don't get off my porch I'm going to shove that camera up your creepy ass, you creep!"
I know that Batman would have one less dramatic place to stand around and mope in the rain if there were no graveyards, but come on, the guy has so many places to brood; Wayne Manor, The Batcave, any building with a gargoyle on it. There's a lot of tradition and symbolism or some shit in burying the memory of your loved one in the earth, but if you believe in souls and their transcendence to something greater, why would your dead grandma be hanging around a graveyard waiting for you to come and talk to a stone with her name carved on it? Obviously I hope people will remember me when I'm gone, but I'd like to think they can find better ways to do it than making a trip to some out-of-the-way location to stand over my chemically-preserved body and mumble about how things aren't the same since that band of ninjas finally caught up with me. (I want to be cremated and spread on the driveway in the winter, so that I'm useful even after death.)
Many people may disagree with my non-traditional opinion of this subject, but I truly feel like it's selfish to think that you're so special that you have the right to take up space on our planet after you've lived your life. Consider that if there was a farm at the location of your corpse complex instead of a bunch of rows of rocks with words and numbers on them, perhaps your great grandchildren won't starve to death because the world won't run out of food quite so fast.
2. Golf Courses
I have nothing against golf. I do find it quite boring, unless it's mini-golf (preferably with a hole where you have to hit the ball into a gator's mouth). Or laser golf. Is there such a thing as laser golf? If not, there should be. I understand that there are people who love the sport and want to play it, but what I don't understand is the abundance of golf courses in my area. Within a 15 mile radius of my house there's at least three of them, possibly more. Maybe this would make sense if I lived in Florida, but I live in an area where it's winter for like eight fucking months. Then it's spring for a few weeks, then ungodly hot and humid for two months, then fall for a while. There's really not a big window for golfing time if you live up this way. So for most of the year the golf courses are just empty voids, sitting there not being used for anything. And let's face it, even when they're in use it's not like it's for anything particularly useful. Yeah, I know some people call it exercise, but I can think of a hundred things that are better exercise than swinging your club, cursing at the piece of shit graphite club you splurged on, and then driving a golf cart to the next hole.
Since just about everything in our society is driven by the idea of making money, you'd think with the proliferation of golf courses in my area that the owners were living like Uncle Scrooge, diving into piles of money and somehow swimming through it. But if that were the case, then the owners of the courses maybe wouldn't have to sell cocaine to make a living. Aside from membership fees I suppose there's money to be made by having a restaurant near the course and a bar that's called The 19th Hole because that's clever and nobody ever thought of that before. But I'm guessing most people don't drive to a golf course in January to get a drink and a bite to eat (especially not the bite to eat if they're buying coke at the links), so the whole idea just seems like a bad business plan in an area where a foot of snow garners such reactions as "Oh, it snowed."
The space might be better put to use as farmland, of course, or perhaps some affordable housing in a depressed area that desperately needs affordable anything. Or maybe the space could house an indoor amusement complex, where money could be made year round, and kids could have something to do aside from drugs. Just, you know, don't sell cocaine to the kids.
3. Giant Parking Lots
Think of whichever massive big box store is nearest to you. What's around it? Trees? Ha! No, a gigantic parking lot. Once fertile land has been coated in oil and crushed rocks because people need to drive to these stores to get the cheapest products so they can afford to buy more gas to drive back to the store again. So, naturally, they're going to need a place to park when they get there. This one is kind of a complicated matter, because to reduce the size of these wind-swept wastelands full of empty carts and plastic bags floating around like jellyfish ghosts we'd have to restore our old public transit systems.
That's right, restore, not create. Once upon a time most cities, even the really small ones, had electric rail cars so people could affordably move from one location to another without having to rely on a machine that runs on costly gasoline and breaks a lot (requiring even more money to repair). But then the American auto industry conspired to buy up and destroy the railroads, forcing people who may not have needed a car to become reliant on one as the only means of transportation. If that sounds like some evil bullshit it's only because it is.
So maybe it's more practical to use your own vehicle if you're going on a shopping trip to bring home two weeks worth of groceries and some appliances that will last a year if you're lucky, but how many times have you had to run out to pick up some toilet paper, cold medicine, or diapers (infant or adult size, depending on circumstances)? That's a whole gas-fueled excursion to a place you don't want to be, surrounded by a bunch of other miserable fucks who also ran out of toilet paper. (Quite possibly the toilet paper shortage is related to the new pizza buffet that just opened up down the street or the nervous poops you've been experiencing since that chubby Korean dude with the stupid haircut declared nuclear war on America.) Wouldn't it be great if you could just hop on an electric train to get to the store instead?
Call me a dreamer, but with less reliance on automobiles for transport, people might have more money to spend on necessities, and wouldn't have to reluctantly shop at the big box stores that we all hate yet spend so much time wandering around in. The big box stores wouldn't need such massive parking lots, and there could be things like oxygen-creating trees where the last forty rows of parking spaces used to be. There would be less pollution, less traffic, and more money for hard-working citizens to spend on golf course cocaine.
I know, I know, this last one is totally a pipe-dream. But it's my blog, I can fantasize on it if I want to.
While I'm generally optimistic about my own life and the possibilities it holds, I'm pretty cynical when it comes to radical ideas such as humans suddenly giving up being wasteful, thoughtless bastards. I'm not expecting anything to change by the time I die (I have it coming, I owe those ninjas money). But sometimes speculative daydreaming is fun, even if I know my hopes are false.
Fore! *Snort*
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