Road to Nowhere

My reading life seems to be on a road to nowhere.  I've worked on four books in the past two weeks and finished one, and of the three remaining, only one is calling me back.  I finished the 323 pgs. of The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins quickly because the suspense kept me hooked; I had to find out what happened. Like "the girl on the train," I was curious about the lives of the people I was watching from afar, so I kept reading to click the puzzle pieces into place.  The payoff was a resolved mystery, but honestly, the book didn't offer any great moments of emotional satisfaction or life insight.  It's a "yeah, it was entertaining" kind of book, but that's it (not that there's anything wrong with that). I also read 28 pgs. of The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, which I want to like because her first book The Secret History was one I eagerly devoured in college.  But maybe that's because the notion of an accidental murder during one bacchanalian brouhaha is undeniably fascinating when you're of a certain age. At school, I focused on Missoula by Jon Krakauer, reading 62 pgs. during silent reading. Krakauer's book is the one calling me back; though I'm not going to "enjoy" reading the details of sexual assaults on college campuses, it's a relevant modern issue and therefore an appropriate choice to model how reading can spur us to recognize the need for societal change.

The book that has me thoroughly bogged down also calls for change, huge change that would hopefully affect the problem of climate change. I've been reading The World Without Us by Alan Weisman for over two weeks now, and that's a long time in my reading life.  His idea of considering how quickly the world would "heal" without human influence is clever, and some chapters fly by, like the one in which he trashes Houston, but some chapters, like the one in which he discusses bridge deterioration, involve intense details about building materials and pressure ratios and other esoteric concepts that fly over my head. Still, I'm determined to finish.  I made it through another 70 pages this week, and I only have 75 to go.  I hope to finish this week and plunge into Missoula so that I can stick with my goal of 2 books every 2 weeks. Just keep reading. Just keep reading, reading, reading.

Weisman seems to feel that the human race is on a road to nowhere in that all of our progress is potentially a path to destruction.  He backs up his claims well enough to cause severe discomfort, especially because it seems that we may be too far down this dangerous path to reverse it.  Over and over, Weisman suggests that the human need for dominion over all things (nature, land, each other) leads to some tragic choices.  When he ponders a world where humans vanish and baboons become the reigning primate, he asks "...would they be satisfied to dwell in pure natural beauty? Or would curiosity and sheer narcissistic delight in their unfolding powers eventually push them and their planet to the brink, too?" (87). Clearly, Weisman isn't one to sugarcoat; he says humans are narcissists, and he asserts that accusation repeatedly. He hit my guilt personally when he described the "bite-size pieces of plastic" contained in skin exfoliants that eventually "go right down the drain, into the sewers, into the rivers, right into the ocean...to be swallowed by little sea creatures." Gulp. Yep.  I have some of those exfoliants loaded with "micro-fine polyethylene granules" lurking in my own cabinet (117). My narcissistic need to smooth fine lines and wrinkles may one day choke a sea otter.  Even the simplistic things in life, like driving our cars, result in destruction as "two U.S. federal agencies estimate that 60 to 80 million birds...annually end up in radiator grilles or as smears on windshields of vehicles racing down highways"(196).  We love our cars, our skin products, our electrical wires, our plastics, our high rises, but all of these human creations have shifted both climate and ecosystems in disturbing ways.  Millions of dead birds may not seem like a big deal, but those birds carried out many functions that are now disrupted: consuming insects, spreading seeds, and maintaining the natural balance of our world.

Dystopian fiction is fun; dystopian nonfiction, disturbing.  Stats about landfills and images of floating plastic islands in the ocean conjure an ugly picture of our future.  Even children's movies depict exaggerated visions of our habits, like this scene from Pixar's Wall-E:

Of course the film over-simplifies the future, but its attempts to influence the next generation raises valid points. As we produce goods with great efficiency, we consume and discard them at an increasing rate.  I'll use my cloth shopping bags and drive my fuel-efficient car and stubbornly wear clothes that are twenty years old, but really, what dent can I make if action doesn't come from higher up?  Science keeps telling us to do something, to change our ways, and to make the sacrifices necessary to reverse course.  Will we listen, or will we stubbornly stay on our "Road to Nowhere"?

Weisman, Alan. The World Without Us. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press. 2007

Wall-E. Directed by Andrew Stanton. Pixar Animation Studios, 2008.

Aldrett, Edgar. "Road to Nowhere." Online video clip. You Tube. You Tube, 22 March 2010.
         Web. 10 September 2016.