06/04/2001
The San Francisco Chronicle
FINAL
E.10
(Copyright 2001)

THE BUDDHA SAYS that we take wisdom where we find it. Perhaps the Buddha does not say that, but it's not a bad idea anyway. The Buddha would have said it, maybe, had he not been saying the other things. 
Our enemies can teach us lessons. Our adversaries can make us stronger. They can be consumed with greed and contempt, their very breath can be toxic, and yet their actions can open upward-flowing paths.
Take Enron, the energy company, or Chevron, another energy company, or El Paso Natural Gas, yet another energy company. These organizations are the minions of Satan. They pillage and they profit. They are in the ascendant. Their enemies fall before them like cordwood. Ordinary citizens cower and meekly hand over tribute. 
And yet we thank them. We send our investigators after them and we pray that their executives land in jail, but we thank them. They have shown us the nature of our enslavement. They have defined the nature of our sloth. 
We have believed the Big Lie. We have believed in the free lunch. We have trusted those who would pander to us. We have eaten energy in great dripping gobs. Did we know it was not infinitely renewable? Oh yes. Did we understand that energy companies could create "shortages" whenever they wanted merely by closing plants for "maintenance"? You bet we did. And did we confuse the energy companies with charitable organizations and/or alchemists able to repeal the laws of nature? We did not. 
But it was more convenient to forget those things, and so we did. We have busy lives. We must do the things we must do. The infrastructure is everywhere crumbling, and we are patching it up ourselves. We are paying bureaucrats with taxes, but the bureaucrats are inadequate, so now the spirit of volunteerism is much praised. 
Volunteers are people who do jobs that other people are being paid to do but don't. 
AND SOMEHOW, EVEN in a society as relentlessly materialistic as this one, we forgot about our own checking accounts. Already seduced by the idea that credit card debt is good clean fun, we decided to waste a lot of money using energy we didn't need. 
I'm not talking about using a washing machine instead of going down to the river and beating your clothes with small stones -- I'm talking about washing machines with quarter-full loads and settings far too powerful for the task at hand. Right? Lights burning in unoccupied rooms. Appliances plugged in but never used. 
We pay for it. We send our wonderful money straight to the largest villains in American commerce because we are too stupid to do anything else. You wonder why they have contempt for us. You wonder why Dick Cheney believes he can fool all of the people all of the time. Because he has. 
Look: Last week the secretary of commerce suggested means-testing Social Security -- that is, means-testing a pension plan. You gave us the money, we kept it for 40 years, now -- prove that you need it! 
Why did he suggest that? Because he can! Why did PG&E demand additional compensation for its executives, who are moral dimbulbs and social criminals under any fair definition? Because they can get away with it! They will get away with it! You watch! 
I AM NOT saying that we have no one to blame but ourselves. There are active villains, and there are people who allow villainy to occur. Everyone in a corrupt system is corrupt. The fools are the ones who don't end up with any extra money. 
We are the fools. If we understand our foolishness, we begin to be wise. We send lovely bread-and-butter notes to Enron -- once we were blind, but now we see. And we await developments, or create them.