If there’s a 12-step program which helps one to cope with hypocrisy, let me be the first to say "I’m Bill, and I’m a hypocrite".

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I was driving to the office on a weekend afternoon not too long ago (it’s a long and rather depressing story which bears testimony to the quality of my social life), and, nearing my destination, I saw the body of a dead dog lying next to the thoroughfare, discarded and without whatever dignity this former living creature had scrapped together in what was probably a fairly short and difficult life (given the fact that he or she was running loose in this particular neighborhood). The memory of a then-recent event flooded my thoughts.

Preoccupied by thoughts of the apparent cheapness of life, I drove on to my destination. One thing occurred to me: I’m a hypocrite. I came to this conclusion because, while I feel an emotion that verges on despair when I see the larger animals killed in the name of "progress", I feel little such remorse at the devastation I personally cause every year, mindlessly slaughtering insects while driving my car. Even the less-tangible (but no less real) environmental damage I’m causing is more in the forefront of my thoughts than the "bugs", whose very real (to them) lives I’ve terminated because I wanted to get somewhere.

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Based on my observation, it appears to me that many people in our culture are more concerned with their possessions and their next opportunity for party and diversion than with their communities and the world which surrounds them.

The indigenous people who lived in this place before they were displaced by others who possessed greater military firepower were wise enough to cultivate their environment. They knew their existence depended on the health of their world, and they lived wisely in it as a result. For example, they did not build permanent structures in floodplains, nor did they try to alter the flow of major rivers (how primitive!). They lived sustainably, within the ecological constraints of their landbases.

Call me a heretic before the altar of our miraculous modern consumer culture, but with every announcement of yet another mind-numbing, sprawl-enhancing, countryside-consuming subdivision or shopping center, I feel a little more desperate. Maybe we really are collectively too weak-minded to think our way out of this wet paper bag of a social conundrum. Our cultural and political "leaders"encourage us through the corporate-owned media (props here to The Parkville [Missouri]Luminary for its editorial independence) to keep up what writer James Howard Kunstler (The Long Emergency; www.kunstler.com) calls our "easy-motoring utopia". Many go on viewing "entertainment" on television, consuming the planet and growing fatter on fast food shipped 1,500 miles or more to the middle of one of the richest food-producing zones in the world, figuratively fiddling while Rome burns. I believe our reach exceeds our grasp. The "savages", exterminated to make way for our ancestors (all of whom gave their lives so that we could have ever-more hair-cutters, nail salons, and fried chicken places) appear to have been our superiors in wisdom if not military capability.

I’m aware of instances in which deer-automobile interactions have catastrophic consequences for all parties, not just the deer, and I believe that many view deer and other wild creatures as nuisances or worse. Our indigenous forbears (whose views on sustainability we should be emulating if we want to prosper for a while) held a longer-term perspective. Callous disregard of the welfare of wildlife and our landbase is but one of the many examples which point out that our industrial civilization exhibits a virtual death-wish, cloaked in manifestations of "good times" and "prosperity".

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After I’d reflected a while on my hypocrisy and the morbid spectacle our lifestyle has wrought, another thought occurred to me: Sting was right. Before you point out (quite correctly) that I’m a dilettante to quote Sting when I’m getting all philosophical, please hear me out on this one.

Sometimes, being open to the painful manifestations of the world are what make us realize we’re alive. Not consuming more. Not greater participation in our "ownership society". Not midnight ‘til dawn parties. Not the mind-wrecking crud on television. That deer was trying only to live her life in the manner deer have lived for millennia. Unfortunately, she encountered the irresistible force of 21^st Century American culture on its terms, to her detriment. Save for her food value to smaller creatures, her life was wasted. Before we as a culture waste the planet, before we run into the wall of resource depletion we’ve placed in our own path through our unsustainable lifestyle choices, we should slow down and examine the consequences of maintaining the status quo. Sometimes a little pain’s not such a bad thing. Maybe it’s even a little therapeutic if you, too, are a hypocrite.