Nurdle Hurdle

chicken little

 

“Walt Disney never did justice to Chicken Little’s hurdles.” — Richard Martin Oxman

There’s a NEW obstacle, a fresh difficulty you must face in your race to right the wrongs of society… if you’re a proactive concerned citizen dealing with any one of our many collective crises. And there are far too few activists engaged in meaningfully confronting the multiple challenges which plague us, regular reports of worldwide protests notwithstanding.

I’m saying YOU must do something that you have never done before. On the personal level and on the plane of interaction with others. Do not wait for anyone else to take the bull by the horns. And sound the societal horn loud as can be, to plea with people to wake up… Chicken Little-like, if you will. Willy nilly, the scorecard is in, and it must be considered a sin now for anyone to remain on their personal indifferent treadmill, killing the planet with silence or business as usual in or out of activist circles.

The seaborn nurdles which have given South Africans something unprecedented to cope with currently are getting far too little press. At the very least their threat should serve as fine fodder for the mainstream media which just got finished applauding “advances” being made in the fight against plastic use in the UK and elsewhere. But you’d be hard put to find a single story delving into the depths of depravity which they now represent in the waters off of South Africa.

I’m writing this story this morning because my partner alerted me to the fact that Sky News had a short segment on the catastrophe, noting that there was brief footage spotlighting concerned citizens on hands and knees on the beach picking up nurdles one by one, sifting them through a hand-held something or other, and then depositing the minimal pickup into a bin. Having cleared the beach, she said, the activists hauled the bins away… but, then, a new wave washed in bringing in more nurdles… overwhelming volunteers on the shoreline once again.

As of this moment, my sources in South Africa tell me that a World Heritage Site (South Africa’s first, cited in the link above) has indeed been inundated with the toxic plastic pellets, soon to make innumerable fish inedible.

How does one process what is going on — bottom-line — at the bottom of the Dark Continent? In our dark world, for that matter… losing more and more of our precious light with each heartbeat.

I will tell you.

It must BEGIN with each and every person — including writers, reporters, readers et alia — being absolutely honest about what’s going on. EVERYONE. And force “honesty” on others; press the issue with The Press.

And that includes, of course, those responsible for the “journalism” at Sky News… and the viewers of the UK’s Sky News… and the viewers of ALL their media counterparts. People must complain vociferously when they pick up on THE TRUTH about a given situation that’s misrepresented, and insist upon media outlets properly helping the public to self-educate and act. As per Andre Vltchek’s recent piece, we cannot any longer tolerate media outlets who claim to be objective.

But we don’t even have time to read interviews like the one Danny Haiphong submitted. Not if doing so means we won’t have time to ACT in the wider world in new ways… honoring the real deadlines we face collectively. The “deadlines” which are not really being acknowledged, as I write. Which are being shoved under the rug, in fact. By writers and readers of very decent alternative outlets, very decent people who have simply confused securing information with DOING something about the crises that documentation delineates.

But that’s just part of why great parts of the Sky are falling.

Look at the latest Sky News segment which I just came across. If I remember correctly, someone notes that the handfuls of citizens on the beach involved in clean-up have managed to secure nine tons of the forty-nine tons that went overboard. That has to be an ABSOLUTE LIE, and the mendacity does as much damage psychologically as the plastic is doing environmentally.

There’s no way in hell — in this Hell on Earth we’ve created — that a thousand workers working ’round the clock for years could have made that kind of dent in the billions of pellets which are washing ashore now. Folks who think otherwise simply don’t know what a billion represents, the absolute number.

Perhaps authorities in South Africa — all bent out of shape over the Rape of the Cape right now — feel the need to project (force feed) some (false) hope to a populace on the precipice.

I don’t know, but this very human hurdle has to be handled differently. With more plastic having been produced in the last ten years than was produced during the last century, every soul on earth must now act as if “The Sky is Falling” (and that they can do something about it!)… not resign themselves to merely jumping hurdles here and there which are politically correct. Talking as if talk mattered, carefully keeping their words in a girdle.

Rachel Olivia O’Connor is a member of the Oxman Collective. She no longer spends much time editing pieces submitted, as she rushes them out in between getting down with real world action in solidarity. She has recommendations about what she fancies should be done right now, right away, and she’d welcome being able to share that with others… quickly. She can be reached at [email protected].

 

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