When I was younger I lived in a neighborhood in town. My neighbor’s houses were close by, just a stone’s throw away as they used to say. Now I live in the country and my closest neighbor is about three stone throws away, and that’s if you’ve got a good arm, which I don’t. I asked my wife, Rhonda, for her opinion on my distance estimate. She suggested I go outside and give it a try, but then quickly followed it up with, “But that won’t look very good – you throwing rocks at the neighbors.”
For now, let’s just say the closest house is three throws from mine. The other houses are beyond that and I would throw my arm out trying to figure out how far away they are, plus I would make some enemies in the process.
So who are my neighbors? Jesus was asked that question, and now I am asking my gas utility company the same thing.
About once a month we get a notice from the gas company. They keep reminding us that we are not using the gas they send us as efficiently as our neighbors. They never name these pagans, and I think these unidentified utilitarians are more fiction than fact, but let’s call them the Greens.
The Greens are being propped as the settled authority on many aspects of day-to-day activities. The established ideals are changing and even the Joneses are having trouble keeping up.
To keep their natural-gas consumption so low the Greens’ house is usually cool in the winter and warm in the summer; if they shower all it is either quick or cold; they prefer damp clothes over dry ones and they never cook with gas.
The Greens probably don’t own any eight-cylinder SUV’s, choosing instead to drive hybrids or the Chevy Volt (apparently so much in demand that this car is hard to find anywhere).
Their wardrobe is made from recycled hemp, they eat food organically grown from fair trade farms and they don’t eat meat. They live in sustainable communities where international law is considered superior to the U. S. Constitution.
Well good for them. Their personal preferences are becoming models for responsible behavior. Examples are paraded in front of the masses as “best practices” for living, suggestions are given, good behavior is rewarded (tax credits) and poor choices are punished (taxes and fines).
I don’t mind innovation and the opportunity to try new things, and I have a feeling that the utility company may just be trying to help, but I resist having my behavior monitored and mandated. So when the faceless utility company tells me I don’t hold a candle compared to my neighbors gas usage I say, “So?”
I honestly don’t know who they’re talking about anyway. I don’t know anyone who would fit there ideal. Around here the mix of people, houses and lifestyles would make a good story, but we do not provide enough similarities to be making comparisons. We are different than one another.
That’s one of the things that make this a great country; we are allowed to live our own lives. If I want to keep my thermostat a little higher, or pretend that I was born in a barn and keep the windows and doors open, that’s my business. It may be careless and foolish, but it’s not yet against the law.
But it might be a sin as we have been entrusted to be good stewards of the Earth. Clearly I have failed; therefore, I will not cast the first stone at my neighbors or anyone else who does not measure up.
Sounds like you suffer from affluenza, a disorder in which you derive youself worth by how much you consume. While I don't agree with everything the Greens do, at the end of the day its much easier (and cheaper) than keeping up with the Joneses. I'll never measure up enough with them: my lawn will never be green enough (nor our lakes polluted enough), my teeth will never be white enough (insurance won't cover the whitening treatments), my car will never be new enough (just slap on another car payment), my house will never be big enough (I'll never be able to pay off that mortage), my clothes will never be hip enough (you can never have enough Made-in-China clothing), my breasts will never be best enough (I'll have to wake up in the middle of the night and feed my baby store-bought arttifical baby milk in a Made-in-China bottle and soothe her with a Made-in-China pacifer, I throw both of those out in a year or two, and I'll have to get a boob job cause they'll never be big enough (insurance won't cover that either). You may resent the kindly reminder on your utility bill about not measuring I... I resent the constant junk mail and the ever present ads on the radio and television say I don't measure up. America has tried keeping up with the Jones since WWII, and now we can do anything for ourselves (we don't make our own clothing, our our shower curtains, our own apples, our own car, our own televisions (which tell us what to do), and we don't even know how to hunt or grow our own food (the tele tells us what's good for us and blindly follow the suggestion (Humans have ZERO need for pop, but most of us in Scott County drink more than one a day, again zero need for it... pay attention to how much pop advertising there is around... far more than your monthly reminder to use less natural gas))
ReplyDeleteThe Jones and the consumer juggernaut that want us to keep up with them have been casting stones on all of us for decades, but they have social scientists and marketers figure ut how to spin the message to trick our brains Yes! I do need a shiny new car! Yes! I do need a bigger house! Yes! I do need a Snuggie!
ReplyDeletehttp://topdocumentaryfilms.com/affluenza/
It's be cool if they could spin thins so we'd say Yes! I do need to reduce my natural resource consumption to keep prices low for all and so that future generations can all have the convience of using them too.
The consequence of continuing on the trail we are on: Idiocracy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBvIweCIgwk