We all know that to really protect the environment these days you are swimming against the stream. Our habits of destroying natural habitat are so inbred that we prostitute the environment for money. Where the forests are most beautiful, we fill them with provincial parks, put up fences, clear spaces for roads, install campsites, and then drop monstrous lines for sewers and water. We do this saying we are protecting the environment, when the reality is that we are exploiting the environment and rather than use science to save it and develop it and improve upon it, we stop there and say that we have done enough.
When very intelligent people design an environmentally friendly community of living within a forest, as is the case in Southcott, Grand Bend, we should at least acknowledge the qualitative difference between their community and those outside which destroy more of the environment. After all the deer can eat the plants in the garden of Southcott homes as they did last night, but they don't eat the plants in the so called progressive communities represented by citification, bulldozing and widespread addiction to values for environmental issues that are not really sustainable over the longer term.
What amazes me, as a person, who reads the local blogs and newspapers is how many local people and those from outside the community, do not see the qualitative improvement in an approach to the environment that Southcott embodies. The reporting should have a quality about it, but unfortunately the looked for quality is sadly missing. What is even more alarming is that the Ministry of the Environment and it's people including the head man, do not appear to notice the qualitative difference. Nothing is really said about the quality of the environment in Southcott Pines. Everyone is dead against those systems for protecting the environment that Southcott represents.
I find this situation so surprising that the fact is terrifying because it means the environment in Ontario, at least, has little hope. People by and large are generally blind here to genuine progress in living within the forest habitat. Those that live in the community can have their meetings, but the reporting of the meeting is totally blind to the qualitative aspects of the discussion.
The visitors to Grand Bend need to be herded into confined spaces because they really are destructive of the environment. After they have despoiled there own habitats, the city people come to destroy other habitats. People come to provincial parks and they really don't understand their impact or the limitations of those fragile environments. Neither do the people, who run them as theaters of fun and pleasure. They don't even know how to control the human waste products from within the park. They hire consultants who don't get it. The consultants are ignorant of what it takes. So what hope is there?
Sure people can earn a living by exploiting what is beautiful, but they, at least, should learn how to sustain it and improve upon it. If I am missing something please let me know. It's not all about making money and putting in more houses and bulldozing and clearing land and laying pipe and installing ugly features all over the natural landscape.
Several aspects of this blindness amaze me:
1. The reporting mentions too little about the democratic process of people defending what they know to be progress in face of what they know to be ignorance. Of course, if ignorant persons cannot report back to the general public what they don't see because they don't even raise quality of environment aspects of the discussion then the fight begins because ignorance and bad reporting should not win out over prudence and qualitative alertness. Being ignorant may win votes and an audience with people who don't read very much and who out of lack of appreciation of quality destroy what is beautiful out of ignorance, but it is not right. It is bullying by the ignorant. Unfortunately, the history of humanity shows that those who bully out of ignorance tend to implant unworkable social environments that self destruct from within. It is quality that wins out in the end. it is science and prudence and being more aware of what is quality that wins out.
So when I say that something appears to have Roman qualities, I am not saying that it is good. I am saying that it is a forced solution out of ignorance. It is a straight line solution where a curvilinear one will do better. It is an undemocratic solution where a democratic one cannot be executed because of ignorance within the democracy. It is a catch 22 situation where ignorance rules, but wisdom should have prevailed. It is a loss that nature will eventually undo because it is unsustainable over the longer term.
2. Intelligent people, who have spent their money and much of their lives learning how to live in a wilder forest with big trees and birds and wild animals, are being bullied by a city whose name people really don't remember that has big city values controlling it and has large scale development written all over it. This is where small meets large. David meets Goliath!
Who will win? Who do you think will win. My money is on ignorance bullying brilliance, low quality winning over high quality, the Roman ideals of might is right destroying those family and environmentally friendly values of the Celts and Gauls who live in the forests. It's the battle of the goose against the wolf.
There is no doubt that an ignorant Minister of the Environment will come down on the side of ignorance. That is after all progress as seen from a city such as Toronto, or should I say Hog Town.
AW Lake
Will ye no think kindly on those who would be your friends! May the sun shine with your thoughts, today, and happiness grow in your heart! May you allow yourself some peace of mind.
