path: root/notes on drive to sea rim oil refinery.txt

My wife called this drive apocalyptic and I suppose to some extent industrialism and all its might and ugliness is the end of the world for us this is the machine in Luis mumford's sense of the machine at Full Throttle. But I can't say too much because like you I drive I am driving as you listen to this and driving requires a gasoline that comes out of this refinery I have plastic bags in the back they also come out of this Refinery and so on and so forth so much of what we do requires this so I can't condemn it because I am part of why it's here at the same time I think looking at this makes you wonder it makes you wonder should I be doing what I'm doing. It makes me think I should be traveling by wind in about but I can't afford a boat I think I would have gotten one right out of the gate if I could have but I could not have afford it and then when you see these towns here and you think gosh what does that do to you living in the shadow of this but the whole way in if you watch this footage you'll notice there's birds on the power lines there's egrets down at the sides in the marshy Colbert's and herons seagulls and Hawks harriers grackles the grackles should be the state bird of Texas I don't know what it is but it should be the grackle there's all these things that life has figured out how to keep going in the midst of this and I think that's worth keeping in mind but yes we can offend our own sense of beauty but we're the only ones that have that sense and I think that gives us a greater responsibility to to that but the rest of life doesn't care you know it keeps going.

Partly related perhaps it's a thing to work in: I believe human beings need three things to thrive the first is a purpose in life whether that's a spiritual connection to their higher self a god something that makes them realize why they're here and what they're doing protecting their family taking care of their family whatever it might be it's very Victor Frankel but you have to have a purpose and then you have to have at least some means to pursue that purpose you must have the will and agency control over yourself now as Nelson Mandela showed you only need a little teeny tiny bit of control over yourself to be able to maintain that also Victor Frankel's examples of that and the third thing you really need is what I would call the virtues for for lack of a better word but the main three that I can think of are Beauty compassion and kindness and when you take away Beauty by living in the shadow of the refineries like here I think it does something to us I think it haunts us maybe it drives us more to the other two I don't know