Lake Powell Is Drying Up

How does the world appear to a child who is living in the USA through these first years of the anthropocene, on a planet that has been engineered for 200 or so years to serve a manner of inhabitation called industrial capitalism?

No doubt, they have been taught that they live in a democracy, and that their political system is governed by two political parties, the Dems and GOP, that are dialectically opposed to each other, and that through that opposition a synthesis is reached that guides our mass population through historical challenges on the way to a state of well-being where everyone lives freely, equally and healthily.

What they have not been taught, at least in schools, is that the binary opposition of the parties is at once real and fake, like a movie is. It is real when the parties stake out positions during elections and legislative sessions, and it is fake when the parties remain united in their unyielding and unfailing service to industrial capitalism. Their union is witnessed whenever corporate interests prevail over human interests; these interests are not the same because corporations don’t breathe, have babies, need medical attention, love, etc. They exist only to make pecuniary profits, and history reveals that these profits are considered by our Constitution and hence government to be of greater value than the biological systems that give us, and sustain, our life.

The West is experiencing 20 years of drought that is the most severe in 1,200 years. At least 40 million people depend on the water that the Colorado River supplies to the industrial capitalist infrastructure that has been constructed for 100 or years. The water level at Lake Powell reservoir is at its lowest ever: 25% of capacity. The dam generates electricity for the West and the political decision has been made not to release any more water to prevent disruption of the electrical supply. Here we witness the binary opposition of life and industrial capitalism, for water is life and instead of giving us life, Dems and GOPers are keeping an industrial megamachine going. Of course, they consider life and the megamachine to be the same. Children have heard the world is coming to an end, and they are witnessing the union of our two political parties’ in a shared action of abandonment of responsibility, and refusal to act aggressively to prepare for what is coming, much less deal with what is already upon us.

Is it possible for the Dems and the GOP to fill Lake Powell? No, it is not. Is it possible for them to prepare the 40 million people who depend upon the megamachine for the end of the megamachine? The answer is yes, of course. But they will not prepare anybody for the end of the megamachine—and in this epic irresponsibility they are united.

What is driving the epidemic of child mental illness is, largely, their tacit awareness of their dawning extinction and of their parents’ inability to prevent it from happening. Futility feeds despair and despair fuels mental illness. Never before has such a large population been able to predict the certainty of its inclement demise; and even as this is happening the politicians and corporations are fully committed to growing the same economy, the same manner of inhabitation, of industrial capitalism that has doomed us.

The child who experiences the first years of the anthropocene understands that, despite any promises or even actions, the world they have been taught is real, isn’t really real. The computers, the highways, the restaurants, the political parties, democracy, money: they are plugged into the same megamachine that drains the life out of everything, including their own life.

Bios vs. megamachine—which one is reality, ultimately? Which one is us?

If adults can’t prepare themselves for the end of industrial capitalism because their lives are dependent upon it, how can children? Imagine a child looking at the 3/4s empty Lake Powell. What they see is what was promised, what was unfulfilled, and what dooms them. What educational system can, will, teach them this lesson?