These Wildfires Smell Systemic to Me

The measure of intelligence is the ability to change. — Albert Einstein

Wildfires have burned a way into my house, it seems. Nothing burned and no one is on fire, but the smoke lingers. It sits in the sky like a wall of gray that I'll never reach. I’ll hop in my car for hours and I’ll never reach it, because the smoke is all around me. It blanketed my state like an Iron Curtain, but it reminds me more of the Iron Lung.

The wildfires are thousands of miles away. I tell myself there’s nothing I can do to stop them. Others tell me that “They have to do something,” as if an entire country is one body that can simply scoop up a lake and douse out the flames.

Even that wouldn’t do enough. The fires would return the next week, somewhere else. Next year, they’ll be stronger.

“Something needs to be done,” I hear. “We have to stop these fires.”

The smoke gives me a headache and a sore throat for days on end. I can taste it every time I open a door, and yet, I continue with my day. Everyone does, because we all agree on one thing.

There’s nothing we can do.

I can’t help but think of The Lorax—not because of mustached activist, but because of the thneed. Everyone needed one, and they couldn’t stop, even with the Lorax’s fair warnings. Years prior, the thneed didn’t exist. Soon after, the thneed strangled their village. Then the fad passed.

And when the village of Thneedville saw their salvation—one final truffula tree seed—they began a full-scale prosecution.

The march of time moves too slowly for us to notice. By then, we’re already hooked on thneeds. We know this. What we haven’t discovered, is how—and when—to march backwards.

How do we reverse the problems we ourselves have created?

I ask this question while driving to an office cubicle. The smokey curtain wafts around me, and I think about how I could complete every task of my job remotely. So many of us are stuck here, in positions that are glued to ancient, costly office spaces because “that’s how we do things.”

Why?

Why do we torture ourselves with lives that we don’t want to live?

If people in need of housing had these empty offices, the housing problem would correct itself. But we can’t do that because of zoning and infrastructure laws created half a century ago. We can’t build townhouses because of a fire outbreak that we are now well-equipped to prevent. We can’t stop driving our cars because we need to go to our offices and buy groceries because neighborhood gardens are taboo, and we can’t open local markets in our neighborhoods because... well, zoning. Zoning originally lobbied for by auto companies.

We won’t switch to green energy because gas and oil investments make up a majority of the world’s retirement funds, and the energy companies won’t invest in green power because that would cut into their profits.

We can’t tax these companies because that’d cut into their profits.

And they refuse to cut into their profits because, well... that means doing something different.

It means change.

Why change when things work just fine as is? Ignore the smoke. And the frustration with your job, and your commute, and your HOA’s fence standards. Those are all just a part of life.

All of these concepts lie within something known as the intersubjective reality.

Intersubjective: Involving or occurring between separate conscious minds

— Merriam-Webster

The intersubjective world only makes sense to humans, because we are the ones who dictate it. To put it simply, imagine a car. Where do you drive a car? If you said “a road”, then you’re abiding by an intersubjective reality. If you said something like “the desert” or “through my neighbor’s farmlands”, then you’re not abiding by the intersubjective.

Breaking away from this reality, means convincing other people to believe in it as well. That is the challenge of change. By convincing ourselves that climate change does not exist, we can ignore it. Our neighbors will back us up—and if they don’t, we’ll find others that abide by our decisions.

If you have an idea for a watermelon stall in your neighborhood, your neighbors may like the idea, but they may shut you down because they know about the intersubjective rules that dictate your neighborhood’s zoning regulations.

Laws are intersubjective concepts.

By writing these ideas onto paper, we seal our fate to living in the past. The status quo takes hold. Your watermelon stand will never happen because you can’t talk your neighbors into ignoring the law. The smoke will fill your lungs, and you can’t put it out—where would you even begin? Not with the fire, no. How does one become a firefighter across country borders?

Imagine there’s no countries | It isn’t hard to do. — John Lennon.

It’s too overwhelming. You choose to sit back and let your boss demand that you come into your office and sit on Teams calls for hours. You convince yourself that the politicians and the people that matter will solve this problem, even though you know they’re equally stuck. You shrug off the smoke, and accept its sour taste as it shortens your lifespan.

Without facing the intersubjective head-on, this will be your reality. The status quo is easy. Setting up a watermelon stand in your neighborhood with your homestead’s fresh, sweeter-than-store-bought watermelons? That’s the real challenge.

Take the challenge. Fight the smoke. You don’t need to be a firefighter. You simply need to tell yourself:

Things as they are, aren’t working. Society, as it is, has broken down. The tire has popped, and if I don’t change it, no one will.

There are so many popped tires. When you’ve found the one that you want to change, help the people around you. Help them find their faulty tires. You may not be able to change them individually, but as a group? Well, that car may as well have wings.

Final Thoughts

This article is my first attempt at patching these tires. While I would love to be more involved in my community, I’m also overwhelmed. The fact is, the digital space is where these missions and messages get lost. If you came away from this article with hope or a sense of empowerment, please share your thoughts with others. Not digitally though, but the people in your locale. Start the conversation, and patch those tires.