Sunday February 25, 2007
Location: Piikani Reservation, Alberta

I was just having a conversation about elephants. Elephants are going crazy around the world these days and people have begun studying the phenomenon. Post-traumatic stress disorder is what the experts are saying. Supposedly elephants experience post-traumatic stress, and when a trigger awakens that stress they go on rampages through circus tents.

An image that came up in the conversation was one from a documentary on the subject. Picture a circus. An elephant is dressed in sequins as a man gives orders to perform tricks. All of a sudden the elephant goes wild and in desperation, to save his colleague, another circus performer, in a tight blue sequined jump suit comes to his aid. The elephant knocks the man over, and then in a deliberate motion, bends forward onto its knees and literally crushes the man with his forehead.

What do I make of all this.

Sometimes, humanity is just plain stupid. If we dress up an animal, often weighing up to thirteen tons in sequins and try to make it dance around for a cheering audience, we may be in for some unexpected problems.

What strikes me most about this story is how it’s a really good metaphor for so much of human stupidity. We consistently mess around with natural forces, and feeling that we are in control we then act surprised when things go awry. We dump millions of tons of pollutants into our air only to be dumbfounded when our children wake up with asthma. We work 8-12hrs a day under artificial lighting and go home to frozen dinners and television sets only to find we’re somehow dissatisfied with life. We don’t spend enough time with our children and we don’t spend enough time with ourselves. We’ve created artificial and disconnected systems everywhere around us, and yet we find it strange that something is missing.

In my opinion, sometimes I think we’re happily dancing around in blue sequined jump suits, ignoring the elephant that is bearing down on us.
What really affects my hope is I feel very few people actually see the elephant, and then even fewer people understand why it’s so pissed off. This reality makes me wonder if humanity really stands a chance in the next hundred years or so. We are constantly being hammered by the facts of how the world we’ve built is unsustainable and heading towards havoc, yet at the same time we choose to ‘stay the course’.

I often feel that there’s no way we can turn this ship around in time, and that we’re basically headed straight towards distaster. Maybe only then will we finally pay attention to the elephant that is standing in the room.