May 15th, 2006

Like most wankers, I took at least first year English at university. Unlike many of them, I moved on to bigger and better English courses, and eventually settled on the mechanics part of English (basically, the history of how this bloody bastard child called English came to be a language in the first place ... and where did that ridiculous "K" come from anyhow?)

Right, but in first year English there was a "reader", or, basically, a collection of short stories called, Modern Stories in English edited by William H. New and H.J.Rosengarten. My older sisters before me had earlier editions of this same anthology, and I am sure that an entire generation of students has seen newer and shinier editions since. It is a rite of passage in university English just as Romeo and Juliet is in high school English 11. Everybody who is anybody has had to study a story or two out of this anthology.

Like most books, that anthology found its way to a bookshelf where it stayed until a few years after my graduation. But then, looking for something—anything—to read one day when I was home sick from work, and ready to drop-kick my TV off my balcony (daytime TV is the real wasteland, Mr. Nader), I pulled it out and lay in bed re-reading the old stories (cringing at my marginalia) and reading some of the un-studied ones.

And I came across a brilliant story called "The Dog Explosion" by Hugh Hood. Let me quickly summarize this one: A college teacher makes a quiet bet with his wife that he can spark a mild panic by planting some misinformation with a few key people at his college. So he tells two or three people that he's heard there is a growing environmental problem with the huge proliferation of the canine population. He tells them that within 20 years there will be more dogs than people, and no way physically possible to contain or control their population. And you know what happens next, don't you? The idea starts spreading through the college like wildfire. First leading to student petitions and demands of further study into this "problem", then later to appeals for money. At the end of the story, the college teacher, more than a little shocked and awestruck by the ferocity of how the issue has caught on and been adopted as a real pressing environmental disaster, sees a well-known actor on TV performing a public service announcement by telling the world that, if they don't donate to the Dog Explosion Fund, the Earth will be three feet deep in dogs within 10 years, and will have consumed all natural resources within 30. And the teacher hides under his blankets, now certain that he could never stop the monster he gave birth to.

* * *

So, while I do not question the scientific community in its conviction that the world is warming up, and while I hold the religious faith just as much as the next guy that it is us puny humans somehow doing it, I cannot help thinking about The Dog Explosion and wondering at just how caught up in the mass hysteria I am.

I mean, we humans are always so happy to create a mythology where we are turning things from bad to worse. We really do seem to carry that Original-Sin mentality around with us, no matter where we go (even though we may not be Catholic). Species are going extinct? Humans are doing it. Torrential storms and hurricanes? Our criminal overuse of fossil fuels. Wobbles in the Earth's orbit and earthquake-induced tsunamis? ... Well, some clever scientist might find a way to make this humans' fault as well. Deteriorating ozone layer, reefs collapsing or bleaching away, forests dying or going up in flames, melting glaciers, swirling mists, over-aggressive bears ... it's All Our Fault.

WE ... ARE ... BAD ... BAD ... BAD ...

Um, except, are we really? The world is definitely warming up. There is no question of that. But is this strictly the effect of humanity? Or is there some cyclical nature as well? Are the glaciers melting because they always melt every 60,000 years? Are they melting a little faster because we need to drive Cadillac Escalades to work every day? Are they melting entirely because of that and our refrigerators?

People are so convinced that we are tearing our environment apart at the seams, that you can be sure there is an almost religious fervour attached to that conviction. Just look at people when they get on the topic at a party or around the water cooler. We (note how I include myself here) really get into a frenzy of self-loathing that is, somehow, strangely, a self-righteous crusade at the same time. I mentioned Catholicism earlier for a reason: Guilt is a human condition as prevalent to our psyches as water is to our metabolisms. And so we wallow in that guilt and allow it to define us. If we are so convinced that we are so awful and destroying our world so handily, just questioning the veracity of a lot of scientific studies confirming our religiously guilty convictions is a dangerous exercise (and a futile one). We are not interested in having our religious beliefs questioned by the likes of you, thank you very much!

And I think more about that story The Dog Explosion. I think how this might very well be the fiction that makes the point and speaks more truth better than any fact. I wonder how much of the destruction of the environment is nothing but a case of collective low self-esteem. And I wonder if future generations will look back on the widespread panic of global environmental destruction and wonder at our naivety, while they themselves exercise their future guilts of their future impending disasters ....

NB: It seems very telling (though hardly surprising) that you can barely find a single reference to "The Dog Explosion" on the Internet!

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