We shape the world and the world shapes us.
If we see in the distance a bright, sunny hilltop
of free, clean, infinitely renewable solar energy
that seems so close we could almost touch it,
it takes a lot of bad habits and years of intense
conditioning to convince ourselves that we have
to remain stuck in the dark and cold, narrow and
dreary, valley bottom of filthy, ever-more expensive,
fossil fuel. Yet this is what the Petrochemical Worldview
has done to us, whispering in our ears over and over
again, a thousand times a day, persuading us that
their self-caused Dark Age of scarcity, resource wars,
and climate chaos is now irreversibly upon us—which
is really our own fault because of our insatiable hunger
for the fuel they provide us—and that we just better
get used to it.
And we believe them.