It's about time to clean up our act

FRANK MIELE

Pollution is bad. Everyone knows that. We have public campaigns against it. Laws to prohibit it. Scouts walking the sides of roads to clean it up.

There are scrubbers in chimneys and catalytic converters in cars. There is a thriving business in carbon credits, as well as recycling of glass, paper, cardboard, scrap metal, electronics. You name it.

The point is that we as a society have come to the realization that we are all affected by what is in our shared environment, and that we cannot individually have the freedom to pollute the world that we collectively must live in together.

Too bad we still haven't realized that the biosphere that we live in - and which must be zealously guarded against deterioration, rot, disease and detritus - is more than dirt and sky.

For human beings, especially, the world we live in includes a mental component, a spiritual component, and an emotional component, all of which are just as important to our well-being as the food we eat or the air we breathe.

But just look around. We clearly don't get it. In fact, we swim in a sea of polluted, sick and sickening filth and don't even seem to notice. TB is not the only bacteria that can infect the air; there is also TV. Herpes, Ebola and hepatitis are not the only viruses that can weaken and destroy an entire culture; there are also Lindsay, Paris, and Britney. There is also pornography, self-centeredness, prurient violence, and reckless anti-social tendencies.

There is virtually no aspect of our culture which is not tainted with selfishness and coarseness, yet as a society we simply don't care.

The reasons range from laziness and foolishness to formalistic belief in the First Amendment as a guarantor of the right to be naughty, sophomoric and offensive. Unfortunately, there is no way to resolve the problem short of revolution. We are not going to get rid of the First Amendment. We are not going to get rid of laziness. And we are not going to get rid of foolishness.

What we are going to get, instead, is a whole lot more decadence and a whole lot more deterioration. In fact, we demand it. It is not by accident that Paris Hilton is a celebrity; it is because her sexual appetites fed the lust of the public. It is no accident that broadcast television is filled with shows about murder, madness and perversion - that is just half of a self-destructive feedback loop with television news. The more we teach people how to kill, the more we can report that they have killed, and then the more we can be justified in depicting the killings because they accurately reflect the insanity in which we live. Ad infinitum.

The Federal Communications Commission recently released a report that said

Congress has the authority to keep programs with violent content from being shown during hours when children could view them.

Ha. That is laughable. Imagine Congress or any other lawmaking body in this country actually trying to regulate social behavior in an effort to give us a healthier climate to live in! No, it won't happen because the self-centered majority won't let it happen.

"Just turn it off if you don't like it," they will say, and the unthinking heads will all nod in agreement. "Yeah, that's right. Just turn it off if you don't like it, because me and my friends want to snicker and snort over our own lasciviousness and the depths to which human depravity will descend. Stay out of our way if you know what is good for you."

They aren't kidding. They won't harm you if you leave them alone, but if the sheriff ever rode back into town and tried to restore order, he would be dead and buried long before high noon.

This duel is over, and the guys in the black hats won.