It definitely seems at the end of the year, something happens, and I completely lose patience with humanity. Just like clockwork, the black mood is back, though in this case it is even a bit earlier and maybe darker, and it will probably ruin my mood throughout Christmas and into Boxing Day.
This year, I worked a bit too long today, well after everyone else had split. Then the bus was quite late in turning up, so I walked home instead. I definitely wasn't thrilled by this, though at least the weather is fairly mild and all the snow and ice are off the sidewalks (for now). I was about to turn the corner to my block, when I saw a milkweed pod with lots of seeds ready to go. I had tried unsuccessfully to plant milkweed this year, so I thought I would try again. I grabbed a couple of seeds (actually the wind-borne fluff with a seed attached) and started off. Suddenly a car pulled over and the guy inside shouted that it was his flower and I had to put it back. This seemed like pure insanity to me, but another guy in the car threatened me. So I said, sure and brushed the seeds back onto the fence. It wasn't worth trying to reason with them, despite the fact I am quite sure they don't live at that house...
Obviously, they just thought it was amusing to fuck with me. Anyone who actually grows milkweed would know that the seeds want to spread and that it is a good thing to plant more of it to help keep the monarch butterfly population up. I suppose having an unpleasant experience with a bunch of jerks is hardly the end of the world (and had this been Chicago I might well have been mugged again), but it does piss me off. I'd say it is probably more than 80% likely these are residents of the Pocket (a fairly low-income neighbourhood just north of my neighbourhood). I never had much use for the Pocket, given that kids from this area made school extremely difficult for my son (they were incredibly disruptive), and right now I am feeling incredibly antagonistic towards the Pocket. Fine, you want more class war, let's bring it on... I am so looking forward to the class war that will crush the Pocket out of existence. I had been trying to fight an alignment of the Ontario Line that would be incredibly disruptive, particularly to the Pocket, and now I look forward to it tearing up their street and forcing their school to close.
But at a deeper level, I really do not like (and actually basically detest*) the majority of humanity, and I think they do deserve pretty much everything they have coming to them. It sucks that global warming and everything else will impact the people that I can tolerate, but I guess them's the breaks. There are simply far too many people on the planet and the vast majority of them consume too much. It's the Tragedy of the Commons at a truly global scale, and there is no way to convince enough people to change direction until the suffering reaches near apocalyptic levels. Of course, it didn't have to be this way,** but we've had at least 20-25 years of knowing there were serious problems but we persisted in electing leaders who at best kicked the can down the road, and in many cases (particularly Australia and now the U.S.) deliberately made things worse. So really humanity can just look at itself in the mirror when the shit really hits the fan and know who really is to blame. (Oh so many mixed metaphors.) I guess on that cheery note, I should take a break and wrap the last of my Xmas presents. Ho ho humbug...
* I did find this article partly amusing but mostly just depressing proving that people are more than willing to let on how terrible they are when they can confess anonymously to any number of things.
** There's no point in pretending it would be easy, and certainly in the short to medium term it would mean massive disruption to our society as we decarbonize, and likely high unemployment in perpetuity thereafter, as our consumption has to go way, way down. But there were certainly a number of baby steps that could have been taken well before now that would have positioned us to transition to a lower-carbon society with less pain than we face now. But most humans are very short-sighted and really don't like to change, which is largely why I have so little use for the masses.
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