Guest Blogger: Jacob Corvidae

Jacob Corvidae is our guest blogger this week. He is is the Green Programs Manager for WARM Training Center and co-founder of Sustainable Detroit.

 Check back here every weekday for Jacob’s thoughts.

Want to join the conversation? Please send your comments to: feedback@metromodemedia.com

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03.08.07
Post No. 1

Kill ourselves now or later?

Put a bullet in the chamber, grab the handle, hold your hand out as far from yourself as possible (best to pretend it’s not even there) and point the gun toward yourself. Now pull the trigger. Still here? Lucky you. 

If asked, “Would you like to kill yourself now?” Most of us will say “no.” How about later, then? No? I’m with you there.

How about we adopt a policy of let’s-not-kill-ourselves-at-all? It seems that with a bit of ingenuity we should be able to make that work, right? Yet it’s not the current plan (Plan? Is there a plan? Where is it?)and so the default design is the kill-ourselves-later option. That means that we ignore the long-term issues, undermining the health of our region and our families in the future in the hopes of making good today.

I think we need a new plan.

My daughter got lead poisoning when she was one. I’m the sort of person who knows about these dangers. This couldn’t happen to my family, could it? It did.

We had moved into a big old house and the rent was good. The landlord hadn’t done the promised maintenance before we moved in and the neglect continued over the next 6 months. I had thought of the lead test just as one of those things you should do but didn’t expect it to discover anything.

When I got the results, my heart started beating too fast and too hard. I knew and understood what lead poisoning could do to small children. It causes brain damage and learning disabilities. It’s connected to increased aggression in teens.

Nothing is scarier to me than brain damage. What had I just done to my daughter’s life?

I’m happy to report that she’s totally fine. She’s in a great elementary school and at the top of her class. She’s very bright, articulate, thoughtful, caring and ethical (in other words beautiful, a genius like every other parent’s child).

The key is that we caught the lead poisoning early on. We responded to it quickly and thoroughly, drawing on the best information available to address the issue. Her lead levels dropped and she never exhibited any outward symptoms. She is now a picture of health and vitality.

In our circumstances lead poisoning probably wouldn’t have killed her as a child if it had gone unchecked. But it could easily have ruined her life and, in essence, killed her later.

Our region has many wonderful features. It is also showing signs of economic, social and environmental poisoning. We have a choice as to how we respond to these challenges, but if we choose to ignore long-term indicators then we are simply choosing to kill-ourselves-later.

Oil’s reign is fading, but that only places the wider issue of energy as a huge question mark for this era.

Analysts have been predicting for some time that the most important geopolitical resource of this century will be water. Meanwhile, Michigan sits in the middle of the largest freshwater reserve in the world, paying it little attention.

It’s often discussed that we are in the midst of shifting from an economy based on objects to one based more and more on information. Yet, the cultural divides wracking our state (urban/rural, white/black, queer-supportive/religious right) also hinder our ability to foster the information flows needed in the new economy.

In no particular order energy, water and information are fundamental issues for our region. And those ride on other crucial challenges such as housing, transportation and even cultural diversity.

Personally, I’m a big fan of the let’s-not-kill-ourselves-at-all option and so I thank you for joining me as metromode’s guest blogger for this week. I hope to provide some of the useful pointers I’ve found for moving toward improved designs in our lives. I’d like to share some stories from the trenches and I’d to take a peak at some hope for our region.

But first, can we put that gun down?

Photograph © Dave Krieger