Manifest Destiny: An Allegorical Painting by John Gast 1872

It’s one thing to need a reality check and another to want one.

Ideas of sustainability, of what can make human life last on this planet, at times, will readily fall on deaf ears in a country whose creation myth is completely at odds with those concepts. On stolen land, with genocidal dreams, the work of building a country was as much on the backs of a stolen people as on the so called continent of North America.

The divinity of Manifest Destiny pushed people pushing westward…to the coast. It left in its wake greedy state lines that envelope huge swaths of Mexico. An “ever yielding” land bankrolled hundreds of millions and a rush for gold that never ended became the dust that settled on everything here. We breathe it in daily.

The limits of this land is where the sun sets on Western civilization. Here the stolen land meets the majesty of the Pacific ocean. The tide’s ebb and flow forth and back mimic the motion of America’s commitments down to our very constitution.

Just as this nation hit its continental limit for expansion westward, the kind of energy fueling our current desires will hit a limit. Our time on this planet will hit its limit, so will that be sooner or later?

Will we arrive at the edge of the West and say, “My lifestyle must not be compromised” or will we say, “Our futures must not be compromised away?” Will we be able to accept the reality check we need or reject it because we don’t want it?

Be Sociable, Share!

•