Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Gossip: an untapped renewable energy source

Just out of curiosity I Googled news on "peak oil" and got 3,397 hits. Then, I Googled "Tiger Woods", and got a staggering 57,134 hits! What does this mean?

I have spoken of peak oil before, so will not belabor the issue right at the moment. On the other hand, this is the first time the name Tiger Woods is appearing on this blog. Why? Because a celebrity's personal life is none of my business, it is none of my children's business, and none of my community's business. I prefer to engage in life itself rather than waste my time on voyeuristic destruction of another life (actually several lives).

But here is my question: how can we harness this endless and renewable resource of gossip to power our post-peak lives? Why is the Department of Energy not exploring this abundant energy source? Oh, yeah, you are right, it is toxic to the environment.

Destruction of lives in the name of cheap entertainment has become a staple of "journalism" in America. If news outlets would only focus as much attention on the real issues that we are facing as a society as they do on meaningless infotainment, we might not be a nation of overgrown adolescents habituated to a steady diet of mindless pablum. That would be pretty subversive, would it not? I wonder what it would be like if we just said "No thanks, not today. Not any longer."

The wheels of corporate journalism are lubricated by oil. What would happen if the truth came out? The bottom would fall out of the market, as all of it is inextricably dependent on oil. You can press your nose to the glass of familiar narrative of someone else's fame, fortune and destruction and be content to live in the fairy tale being sold to you. Or you can demand the truth, so that you can make your own decisions within your community. The choice is yours.  

No comments:

Post a Comment