The recent train derailment in Ohio that spewed over 100,000 gallons of vinyl chloride (over one million pounds) is a tragedy. It is also another opportunity to examine this culture of progress and how it views such incidents. Vinyl chloride is a flammable and carcinogenic chemical that is used in the manufacture Polyvinyl Chloride (a kind of polymer) and finds it way into electronics, automotives, construction, medical supplies, packages, and paints. Almost every household has items that are manufactured with vinyl chloride. This cancer-causing and hepatotoxic (i.e., poisonous to the liver) substance is transported as a liquid and frequently moved on rail cars. Given enough time, some accident is going to occur that causes the release of this chemical into the environment at the cost of all those beings who live in the vicinity. Is Norfolk Southern to blame for this catastrophe?
Yes and no (in my opinion). We are a society that does not want to accept Culpability for anything (it is one of the 5 C’s of this industrial culture that I will discuss in an upcoming article). It is always Big Business, Big Ag, Big Pharma (etc.) who is responsible—not the people actually buying the products (which are … us). Strange, because if we examine many other situations, we have blamed those who purchase the products as being part of the overall problem. The scenario with Norfolk Southern is analogous to someone buying a gun and not being responsible for its inappropriate use (solely blame the gun manufacturer). This is similar to someone crashing a car into pedestrians and only blaming the automotive manufacturer. It is also comparable to someone getting lung cancer from chronic smoking and exclusively blaming the tobacco growers. We don’t like to accept any responsibility. There are always reasons why it is someone else's obligation. This is something I like to refer to as “ego preservation”, and it is an oft-used tactic to maintain the status quo and refrain from making any changes to our comfortable and convenient lives. But, it comes at a cost—not much will ever shift.
I would like to offer that if we are willingly purchasing environmentally harmful products that we do have some responsibility in the spills that occur because without our demand, the products wouldn’t be manufactured in the first place. We’ve been blaming Big Business for a long time, but it isn’t changing anything because we keep leaving out some key items: (1) we fund big business with our purchases and (2) Big Business is made up of individual people who choose to be employed by it. If we stop trying to pretend that we are innocent of (i.e., not culpable for) environmental catastrophes such as Norfolk Southern’s train derailment, we might actually make progress in reducing the amount of pollution entering our soil, air, and water.
I encourage you read these words and not get defensive. Just let them become part of our collective understanding. You were indoctrinated into a specific way of living and viewing creation by this culture of progress. You aren’t to blame for what you were taught as a child. But you don’t have to defend this ecocidal lifeway that is leading the earth’s sixth major extinction event. Just because its easy living (from a comfort and convenience standpoint), it doesn’t make it morally or spiritually preferable. Part of becoming an adult is understanding our role in what occurs around us. We have to learn to see the consequences of our wake as we move through our lives—like the ripples in a pond when a stone is thrown into it. This is a concept that stealthy hunters have learned—their movements and sounds can create a disturbance in the forest that alerts the animals they hunt. Therefore, they have trained themselves to observe the corresponding activity and sounds of the non-prey animals around them to identify how silent they are (this practice is sometimes called “bird language”). We can take this ancestral skill of the hunter-gatherers and apply it to our entire life. I contend that elderhood includes accepting culpability for the ripples that extend outward from the decisions we make.