Last night, I said several things that now seem to require some additional discussion, as I don’t want to leave a mistaken impression with people. I was simply writing freely, with no real forethought involved. Before I realized it, I had typed up quite a spiel.

To start with, I am angry with the evident inaction on the part of the masses, many of whom I’m sure were distressed when the media started broadcasting images of the struggling wildlife bearing the oily brunt of our unbridled lust for oil. And I am angry when I know that once we’ve pinned our own subconscious guilt on BP and or its leadership (the sacrificial goat I mentioned last night), life will go on as it has. Oh, we’ll claim to “feel” bad that this happened, but when we start to feel those twinges of conscience, those pangs of guilt, we’ll delude ourselves back into the mindset that this was BP’s fault, and if they hadn’t been so greedy and in a rush to pad their corporate bank accounts, this might never have happened.

Yes, it’s indisputably true that we are a stupid people capable of not only being convinced of the craziest nonsense ever before known, but willing to delude ourselves as well!

No matter what people say on this matter, it will invariably come back to an issue that has been at work in the Human condition since “Day One,” when a young man uttered the immortal words, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

That statement continues to perplex people. And especially people of religious inclination.

There is this pervasive disassociation we enter into in order to avoid responsibility and accountability. That childish whim when trouble arises and the sentence comes out in a rush of breath, “It wasn’t me! It was—” and the child points the finger at the alleged culprit.

That is precisely what I see taking place as the earth’s bosom hemorrhages oil into the lifewaters of the planet. There is the audacious, immature spewing forth of the perpetual lie from the mouths of everyone around me. This constant, sickening drone of self-professed innocence from people who are either totally naive as to the role they played in this ongoing holocaust of life, or too stupid to grasp it.

It is an inescapable fact that we ourselves are the core of the problem because we have allowed it to happen. And for what? For convenience, for the self-assuredness of progress and imaginary prosperity, for ease of life. Am I to believe that people really don’t realize that the petroleum industry has pervaded the Human way of life to such an extent that it has near become impossible to escape its reach? From the gas we incessantly pump into our vehicles to the shampoo we buy, from the gallon of milk we buy at the local market to the trash bag we set out to the curb every week, the petroleum industry is a massive machine of money-making opportunity.

Try, just for a month, to not buy any food packed in plastic. Heck, try not to eat a single food item for a week that hasn’t been somehow encased in plastic! It’s become nearly impossible to do!!

I say nearly, because the reality is that we simply do not care enough to insist otherwise. It’s not really impossible. We either don’t know how to buy food not encased in plastic, or we don’t care and are operating under the ill-conceived notion that God will deal with the miles upon miles of wastelands devoted to the reception and burial of our trash. Some Christians are more than content in adopting the view that since this planet will be burned up anyhow (and they themselves will conveniently be “raptured” before that happens), and that they’ll be given a new earth to play on, then what’s the problem? Let things take their course, and praise the Lord!

Still other Christians hold the view that God will bring to ruin those ruining the earth and see to it that the earth will be restored to its original beauty and glory, and that they themselves will survive God’s coming judgment, blah blah blah blah blah.

How they can justify themselves and be convinced that they’re not ruining the earth, too, is quite beyond the ability of my puny little brain to comprehend or process. “It wasn’t me, God…  THEY did it!”

The Great Teacher, Jesus, tried impressing upon Humans the simple fact that we are all one family. We are a collective body of living, thinking, reasoning beings. We do not get to say “He did it” of someone else. If “he” did it, then we ALL did it. We are ALL guilty. Time and time again, Christians everywhere tout how we came under sin because Adam sinned, but when it comes to us, we quite conveniently go hunting for scapegoats so that we can boast of our self-proclaimed innocence. In case you missed it the first time through, let me repeat what I said: If “he” (our convenient scapegoat) did it, then we ALL did it. There simply is no way to disassociate ourselves from the brotherhood of man, no matter how hard we try to do just that.

It transcends the notion of guilt by association, mind you. But rather than explain what I mean by that, I’ll let you mull that point on your own time.

Let me break it down this way: if you put gas in your vehicle, then you are as guilty as BP and any of the other oil conglomerates who are willingly and wilfully raping the earth of its oil. If you buy your milk in a plastic jug, you are as guilty as the oil magnates who gleefully set the prices of oil from day to day. If you wash your hair with store-bought shampoo, you are guilty. You have, by your guilt, lost the right to judge or condemn BP for this holocaust. You have become a participant.

And yes, I include myself in the brood of human leeches, even though I am making strides in discontinuing my participation in the ruining of the earth through the oil and plastics industries. It’s an uphill battle, that’s for sure. I had no idea about the extent and reach of the petroleum industry into our everyday lives. But now that I am becoming aware, I am cutting it out where I can and slowly making adjustments to my lifestyle.

And where I have not yet been able to cast out plastic and petroleum, I take it angrily and with resentment because I presently do not know of any other options due to the insidious nature of our system of life here in the United States. And it’s that anger, that righteous anger that motivates me to look for alternatives.

I don’t accept complacency as an answer. I refuse to accept that. If you are forced to fill your vehicle with gas in order to get to your job, then I can understand that. But how angry and resentful are you, really, when you do? Or, are you, like most Americans, angry at the price of that gasoline, not at how it’s making you bloodguilty of destroying wildlife in the southern shores of this country, and in lands around the world?

Willingly or not, there is not a single one of us that are not “ruining the earth” through our way of life here in the United States and abroad. So, shouldn’t we be a little more discreet about eagerly longing for that day when God brings to ruin those ruining the earth, and instead praying to God that He forgives us for having done so?

I guess that’s a determination that we, as individuals, will need to make.