WESTERN culture, argues T.S. Bennett in his recent documentary, What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire, is an addict in denial. Heavily hooked on oil, consumption and unchecked economic growth, our bloated culture of empire trolls the shadowy back-alleys of the global marketplace desperately searching for its next hit. And with every score, the gaping hole of need becomes wider.
As cities grow and those metropolitan populations spread, an increasingly urban existence severs our connection to the earth, the process of living and, ultimately, ourselves. It is from this ever-widening disconnect that our sense of false need is born.
“What most of us experience when it comes to addiction is a pattern of continually seeking more of what it is we don’t really want and, therefore, never being fully satisfied,” Sally Erickson, the film’s producer, told AlterNet. “And as long as we are never satisfied, we continue to seek more, while our real needs are never being met.”
Our insatiable modern appetites have created a civilization based entirely on consumption — of products, of resources, of space. But no matter how much we buy or how large we grow, we can never seem to fill the yawning expanse of collective need. And, like the addicts that we are, we live with the hope that satisfaction is just one more hit away — one more car, one more handbag, one more war to secure the resources vital to our diseased way of life.
The planet is giving us every indication that it can no longer support our habits. Peak oil, mass extinction, catastrophic climate change. With every passing day, the signs are becoming more and more difficult to deny. But we deny them anyway. We swear we’ll curb emissions, we promise to halt growth. We pledge to actively pursue an alternative energy policy. We don’t have a problem. We can stop anytime we want. Just not today.
