the ridgerunner* friday, february 4, 1972
Editorial Comment:
the american way
The average American houshold
dog eats better than almost half of
the rest of the world. This is not to
say that American food is all its
cracked up to be, but the fact remains
that Americans probably throw away
more food than most other humans
get a chance to eat.
Being a dishwasher is not usually
considered an intellectually edifying
occupation but it does get one point
across and that is that we are woe
fully wasteful and almost incredibly
alienated from the basic processes
of living.
Somehow, we as a generation have
been so pampered, so sheltered that
to throw away food means nothing;
if it doesn’t serve our pleasures,
then we are content to see it thrown
away. The irony of the situation is
appalling.
At a time when we scream
ECOLOGY, indicting the corpora
tions and calling for stiffer fines on
oil spills, we throw away food,
drive our cushioned cars on our grow
ing freeways and go home to our
tight, secure little suburban homes
where we while away the time reading
about ecology and buying ecology
stickers.
“Children in Asia are starving” is
all we used to hear and still it hasn’t
made its mark. Children in India and
Asia ARE Starving and yet still
we lounge and over-consume and
stroke our fat bellies with our soft
hands and seem to think we are
justified to be God’s chosen people.
The food we throw away would be
feasts for many of the other peoples
of the world. Our trash could be
come other men’s palaces. We
over-consume and think we are justi
fied in worshipping our gluttonous,
distended appetites.
And while we look at our bread
and decry that it is bleached and
nourishment-less, we are turning
over what would be a holiday for
many.
Washing dishes, scraping off
good food to be taken to hogs is
sobering for the offal Of. a people
often tells more about them than
their finest art and there is our story;
there is our worshipped garbage,
our monuments made to ourselves:
the plastic and metal cities, and con
crete freeways and oily air and
mounds of garbage.
Waste has become one of the most
important facets of the American
way-of-life.
A friend of our is a junk dealer and
he muses that we pour out so much
junk, so much good that we consign
to the junkyard. Planned obsole
scence is so much a part of our lives
that to have a car for only two or
three years seems reasonable and
throwing out electrical appliances
gets to be a major occupation; they
are too cheap to have flxed, better
to throw them out.
And the ecology books, oh!-the
ecology books. How many pines
have been cut down so that America’s
pre-pubescent intellectuals could
READ about nature? disgusting.
The irony of the ecology fad is that
it, like every other fad in modern
America (including the Jesus Freak
Movement) has been co-opted into
the society to make it even more in
nocuous than it was to begin with.
It is like Leonard Bernstein and the
Black Panthers (radical chic); we’ve
gotten to the point that we don’t
think twice about seeing an ecology
sticker on a smoking car. We have
become desensitized to the irony.
The cure for America’s problem is
less consumption, not more. Con
serve and waste less is what we must
do to save this nation from becoming
what it is so quickly beginning to
look like; a king-sized, (special
coupon enclosed) savings-sized gar
bage heap.
— Fred Myers
UMC'A
FUMM16'3
SORRY!
The last issue of The Ridgerunner was late due to
a printing botch-up. We’re doing better, please be
patient.
W
Senator. I told you it would fly. All it needed was the riqht fuel."
Ridgerunner meetings are on Monday nights at
6:30 p.m. in The Ridgerunner Office (second floor-
Lipinsky Student Center).
vol. 7, no. 12
friday, february 4, 1972
• staff:
• fred myers, dee grier, mike meagher, sukey durham, bill
comfort, mary louise ordway, donna glick, Jonathan
williams, gene spears, beverly diehl, barbara blake, sam
pinkerton, ilsa dubinsky, willie patrick, larry and sherry
goyer, nancy horak, and lynn hyde.
• advisor: robert tnillinger
• photos by patsy wheeler and greg harris
• printed by grove’s printing, inc.
• typeset by haga commercial typesetting