Chris Jepson: Conflating the issue

At some point in your life you’ll ask yourself, “Is this it?” Your age, intelligence, disposition and history will, no doubt, influence when you pose the question, but inevitably we all wonder, “Is this it? Really?” Scary or as unsettling (or not) as it may be, most of us intuitively know the answer.

Organized myth (religion) attempts to offer the answer. For some, that is enough. Yet, even the faithful have doubt. “Fake it until you make it,” comes to mind. I imagine it a comfort to think of Elysian Fields or to hope for an eternity basking in the glory of God, that if one lives a certain way, death is just a doorway to another existence. Actually, that is an accurate assessment. Literally, to dust.

The folks I typically run with don’t subscribe to religious explanations for our (human) temporal condition. I came to “grips” with my own mortality decades ago, yet I ask myself a variation of the, “Is this it?” question.

I look around America today (Florida in particular) and ask, “How can this be?” I’m not at all concerned with the question of an after life. I am, however, deeply concerned with this life and ask, “How can it be?”

How can it be that 16 or 17 Republican presidential candidates do not believe in evolution or that they deny, as well, the “science” of climate change? How is that even remotely possible?

How can it be that those who “led” us into Iraq with thousands dead, trillions lost and with all the accompanying unintended consequences (see: ISIS, etc.), how can it be that those war perpetrators (make that: perpetraitors) have not been strung up by their thumbs, tarred and feathered, caned, and charged with crimes against humanity?

How can it be that such a tawdry, fraudulent flim-flam insurance huckster be elected and re-elected Florida governor? How can the electorate turn over the reins of government to such a man or elect Republican majorities in both houses of state government such that they thwart the rightful implementation of the recent voter-approved Amendment One dealing with land and water conservation?

How can it be that we are so callous with our environment that we accept the pollution of our groundwater such that the state’s estimated 900 springs (arguably the most on Earth) will inevitably be compromised, diminished with algae?

How can it be that developers are given the green light to bulldoze every living thing (every tree, etc.) on a development site and then have the gall to call it “Southern Oaks?” There must be some list of irony-ladened housing development names?

How can it be that our response to traffic congestion is to construct toll roads on existing “free” ways (see I-4), a scenario that will not relieve traffic?

How can it be that we lack the collective will to establish building codes requiring architecture that inspires?

Is it relevant that a church owns approximately 2 percent of all the land in Florida and will undeniably lobby “our” government officials that its Deseret development be allowed to bring an estimated 500,000 more residents to Central Florida by 2080. A population that will need over 100 million gallons of water daily (more than Orlando consumes today).

How can this be? It is because we conflate private profit with actual human progress. Someone profits but whether or not society benefits is entirely incidental. More’s the pity. To our lasting shame.