Stale Coffee

If decency were mainstream, there wouldn’t be an island of garbage in the Pacific. An intellectual would assert that such a statement be far too difficult to establish a correlation between such points, let alone, causation. This is precisely why we are ham-stringed by the scientific method. More precisely, higher education, aimlessly trying to fit everything into a neatly wrapped box worthy of future funding, gives rise to the real issue.

Technocrats routinely latch their fangs into one or two points of jargon without ever digesting the material. Howbeit, aren’t we all guilty? Cling to one word while you wait for a pause just long enough to rebut, and you miss the point entirely. Nonetheless, accusing a person of something, all the while knowing you’re guilty of the same activity is hypocrisy. Which brings us back to the garbage, I am concretely asserting it’s your fault!

By your fault, I mean all of our fault, but someone needed to get in your face. You see, there are a lot of places on this planet where the water is curdled, but you can buy a cold soda on the corner. Children smoke cigarettes, but they do not have time for school. There are also equal amounts of oblivious imbeciles that don’t live so hardily. These suburbanites shit is bowls of water that flush five gallons at a time. They put their garbage in black bags they never see again, and they shop…. unremittingly!

The former are too busy surviving to give a shit about coral or endangered species. The latter lack contact with their own filth. Though rare, how do you make the focal point the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? It is reasonable to say that the majority of Earth’s population is either too helpless or inept to rightfully discuss how we are going to unfuck ourselves.

Point being, no one feels responsible, not even the billionaires who spend every waking hour thirsting over tickers. Mom and dad buy the bottle of soda at the grocery store for their screaming brat. Big industry sells plastic for better profit margins. Poor people eat whatever they can get their hands on. At the end of the day, it is a luxury to worry whether or not your plastic straw is going to lobotomize a sea turtle— Patagonia politik.

Which brings us back to the dilemma of higher education and the luxury of discussing the world’s problems. We pride ourselves on free thought as though Hippocrates were enrolled in Ivy League. My experience in academia is that undergraduate students, in their eagerness to conquer the world, rush through general education courses because they “don’t apply” to the making of fat stacks of cash.

Meanwhile, graduate students, even more focussed on accomplishing their life long dreams, take classes that further their interests. Which, in turn, narrows their purview. By the time someone strives for a doctorate, their head has been shoved into a trough of obliviousness. This anecdote does not even scratch the surface of donation politics, rife sports scandals and the burden of crippling student loan debt. Even our prestige is fallible.

Peer review, you’re our only hope! Unless a person is joy reading dissertations in the school library, in the spare time they don’t have, they will reasonably not broaden their horizons beyond the next term paper. Worse yet, when you graduate and finally land the meaningless career you placed all your faith in, free access to such resources become nil. Therefore, if you somehow find time, after feeding your family, walking dogs, paying the mortgage and surviving, then you would have to pay for access to peer reviewed material.

Full circle, the Greeks had Atlantis; we have ordure. Even our brightest minds in the subject aren’t actively talking about it unless it’s something they're actively working on. So, we place our survival into the hands of the chosen few who have sacrificed any chance of earning a decent salary in their conquest to save humanity, and they are over worked and under paid. We assert it’s just going to have to be the sea turtles’ problem to solve. Because, a gargantuan mess, which starts by not adding any more trash to the pile, couldn’t possibly be solved by a handful of marine biologists.

In conclusion, it’s all bullshit. Cloth diapers are disgusting, and I drive a Mercedes. It’s far easier to just call someone drinking from a cardboard straw a liberal asshole than remotely even acknowledge our pending doom. In all actuality, I doubt anyone will remember the cardboard straws when it’s such a piddly attempt in comparison to an island sized problem that no one takes responsibility for. Not to mention, there is complete overshadowing and removal of discussion due to pandemics, financial crashes, corrupt elections, and unbeknownst catastrophes ejaculating in all our faces. Just drink your stale coffee, and go back to work.