Liberty
Posted in: UncategorizedA letter to the Editor
In 2003, we bought our first new car, a Jeep Liberty — we named it “Jean.” At the time it got two or three km / liter (just joking, but it really did suck from the start). Its fuel economy in recent years has followed the same trajectory as goodwill in the Canadian government. We lived on the prairies, we had little kids. The illusion of safety it provided filled a need. People were just starting to hate SUVs, their inefficiency and excess. The auto industry was loving the extra profit gained by bolting a few extra comfy seats on their standard truck chassis. Gas was 65 cents a litre. I resented my wife for making us buy it.
12 years and 250,000 km later, the Liberty is still parked in our driveway. It has never failed to start when we needed it. We’re still married. My daughter, who was tightly strapped into its back seat when it rolled off the lot is now learning to drive it. Jean is old now and probably should be put down like the neighbors’ cat who keeps crapping in our flower pots. We need a new car and I am not sure what to do. I try to envision how I will feel 12 years from now when our new purchase has run its course. I try to consider how the dominoes of destruction will eventually tumble through the natural world from its use.
It is a complex feeling. The earth’s precious resources threading themselves inseparably between what we truly need and what we want. How our quest for security creates insecurity. I read Adbusters. I tell myself no one makes me buy anything. I am an individual. A conscientious decision maker. A bit of a jammer! Future participant in #worldrevolution? I share the ideals, but the execution remains frighteningly elusive.
But I cannot hold off buying something new forever. Neither can anyone I have ever met. Eventually, we have to compromise our ideal vision of a sustainable world. It’s boring. It’s imperfect. It misses the angst of youth. Like the acronym which vaguely resembles a collection of communist states, things fall apart. To make matters worse, our new economy designs the replacement parts to become obsolete whether we use them or not. Eventually, I will buy a new car and other stuff as well. It will be a compromise. It will damage other living things, but from what I have learned, “being aware” is the first step in curbing our society’s blind pursuits that are destroying the Liberty of all living things on earth.
Jam on.
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