Water vs Oil: The War Between Healthy and Unhealthy

“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” ~ Aldo Leopold

As predicted, the Keystone Pipeline has leaked. Twice! Once on May 4, 2017, a “small” leak (84,000 gallons of oil), and just recently on November 16, 2017 (210,000 gallons). Then there was the Iowa Pipeline (140,000 gallons) on January 31, 2017, the Rover Pipeline in Ohio (2 million gallons of drilling mud) on May 10, 2017, and the Texas Pipeline (over 50,000 gallons of crude oil) on July 13, 2017. And then there was the Gulf of Mexico oil spill just last month (400,000 gallons of oil). And these are just a few of the larger spills of 2017 from pipelines across the U.S.

It’s time to wake up and smell the oil spill!

It’s time to realize that the real war being fought on this planet is between water protectors (healthy) and oil mongers (unhealthy). Water represents life, and oil represents entropy. But, it’s not quite so simple. There is a kind of yin-yang dynamic going on here. The white dot on the oil side of the yin-yang represents energy and progress. The black dot on the water side of the yin-yang represents pollution. We use oil for energy to propel our civilizations progressively forward but at a great cost –rampant, poisonous pollution.

The problem is that the black dot on the water side is getting out of control, leading to environmental collapse at best and ecocide at worst. If we’re not careful, the yin-yang of our world is going to be a black mass of oily entropy spinning through space –a burnt-out husk of a planet. Something’s got to give.

Oil:

“The prophecy says there is going to be a time in this world when we act crazier than crazy—and I think we are seeing that time now around profit, capitalism, ego and false pride. We are at that time.” ~Krystal Two Bulls, Oglala Lakota tribe

The Keystone Pipeline carries crude oil from Canada’s tar sands to American refineries. It has been protested for years, and was suspended under the Obama administration. But one of President Trump’s first acts in office, no doubt with crooked dollar-signs in his eyes, was to reauthorize the construction of both the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines. This was despite the vehement protests of thousands of environmentalists, Native American groups (Water Protectors), and indigenous cultures from as far as Sweden and Brazil who came together and sacrificed life and limb in the freezing temperatures of the winter of 2016.

Oil was an industrious boon for our species. No doubt. It helped us achieve many technological marvels. But we were naïve to its pollutant power. At this point, the pollution is so bad that it supersedes the gain. Burning oil, coal, and gas is simply too toxic for us and our environment. We cannot, in good conscience, continue to burn through this now outdated mode of using energy. If we are ever going to achieve a Type-I civilization, let alone a II or III, we must switch to solar, wind, electric, tide, and especially hemp, or we will burn ourselves out before we get there.

We have the technology. The problem is corporate monopolies and the exorbitant amount of power that they wield. The oil, coal, and gas giants have a stranglehold on energy and they are oppressing any technology that threatens their bottom-line, and they are willing to use violence to defend it. They cannot see through their oil-dripping greed and false pride. Protesters be damned! For them, it’s profit before people, money is greater than the heart, equity over equality, healthy yields over healthy fields. Beware those who love oil over water.

Water:

“We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.” ~Jacques Yves Cousteau

Water is life. That’s the bottom line. The oil mongers would have you believe that oil adds to life, but that is just newspeak-doublethink used to keep you distracted while they get rich. It’s a red herring at best and straight up deception at worst.

Don’t fall for the trick. Focus on life. Focus on water. These are primary. The energy we need to run our gas-guzzlers and churn the mighty man-machine of father civilization is secondary, if that. Mother Nature comes first. She is us and we are her. Again, it’s the rule of three: air, water, food. You have three minutes to oxygenate, three days to hydrate, and three weeks to eat before you’re on death’s door. All three of these are systematically being tainted and polluted by oil.

The water protectors see this. They saw it last summer, and they see it now. Anyone close enough to the underlying essence, to the interconnectedness of all things, to the rhythmic Earth-beat pulsing its mighty interdependence, can see it. Hell, you can feel it. You can even hear it if you listen to the “language older than words” being spoken (sang) by an ancient voice that precedes humankind. It’s in the water. It’s in the air. It’s in the plants.

Even as our oceans acidify and our plankton choke on microscopic oil-based plastics, even as we cough through the smog saturating the metal-on-metal metropolitan tar-based streets, even as we chow down on DDT-ridden corn-on-the-cob and mercury-laden tuna, nature is finding a way to balance itself. The water protectors are the Nature of human-nature rising up to balance itself out –a personified force of nature. They are drawing a line in the water –the oily buck stops here!

Blood:

“When I act out of realization, I act not out of guilt but out of self-love, a love that includes family, which includes the planet. When I look, I see. When I educate myself, I break through my denial and see that humankind is facing an absolutely unprecedented crisis. When I act from this knowledge, I act not out of obligation or idealism, but because I live in a straw house and I smell smoke. I realize the truth: that, in Krishnamurti’s words, “You are the world, and the world is on fire.”” ~Terrance O’Connor

Red is the color that binds us all, regardless of our nationality, race, or creed. We all bleed the same color. Red is the binding force, the energizing force, the color of love and blood. It is a symbol representing the progressive evolution of the entire species earned through passion and courage.

It’s a story that has been unfolding since the beginning of time: life against entropy, truth against deception, freedom against tyranny, love against hate. Right now, it’s oil against water. And those of us with courageous blood in our veins can see through the thick veil of corporatocracy. Profiting at the expense of life is unsustainable and immoral. Profiting at the expense of healthy people and a healthy environment is unreasonable and illogical. It doesn’t matter if your excuse is as good as “But, we need energy.” Tough shit! That’s not good enough. Find another way.

Blood is water. Water is blood. With enough of each, you have a healthy David capable of toppling Goliaths. You have courageous love. Exponential love. Unconditional love. Love that subsumes the world because it realizes that it is the world. Those who are in love are the personification of fire. The individual in love can survive anything, because the fire inside them burns brighter than the fire around them. The courage in their heart is a howl born of reinforced love, and it will defend that love fiercely and with great honor. It will defend water against oil, because water is life. It will defend life against entropy, because life is love. It will defend love against hate, because love is all that stands between life and death.

As Stephen Levine profoundly stated, “True love has no object. Many speak of their unconditional love for another. Unconditional love is the experience of being. You cannot unconditionally love someone. You can only be unconditional love. It is not a dualistic emotion. It is a sense of oneness with all that is. The experience of love arises when we surrender our separateness into the universal. It is a feeling of unity. You don’t love another, you are another.”

Photo Credit: Getty Images via ABC News