We Decided to Make It Permanent

This is an idea I am developing for a book, inspired by a short news story I heard on NPR about the beaches in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. I hope to write a short story, or a fictional account, that analyzes humans' need to create the illusion of stability and permanence, and study the irony of being at such odds with our environment.

If you took a geology course or lived on a coast somewhere, you probably know about coastal erosion. Well, nothing is different in Fort Lauderdale -- the beaches are maintained by a coastal committee, a government agency I think. They pump sand from the ocean floor to maintain the white sandy tourist attractions, and make sure the pier and hotels remain in place. If they didn't, things would not appear how they do currently. At least one pier would be completely under water by about 10 feet, the interviewee of this NPR story says.

For the time being, here is the link to that story, "Importing Sand, Glass May Help Restore Beaches,"by Jon Hamilton:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12026379.

Along these same lines, I just saw an ad for a forthcoming nature drama show/investigative report on TV that's called something like "What if we controlled the weather?" I can't find anything about it online, perhaps because I can't remember what network its on. Regardless, in Daniel Quinn's book Ishmael (can't figure out how to italicize on this keyboard), when he's talking about the spin-off effects of human beings harnessing the productive power of the earth in agriculture and what an impact developing those first farming systems have had on nature, the environment, our big brains and our big egos, he mentioned that weather was basically the last aspect of nature that humans have not yet successfully been able to control (not that we haven't tried). Now here comes this show. We have to watch it, because I'm curious, what are those meteorologists doing with tornados and hurricanes? Where do they go?

I suppose there are still earthquakes left to try and control. And there's still mind control, but we already have social norms, violence and poverty, so why move to something so obscure when its already so easy? And drugs.

I'm off topic now. Getting back to superimposing permanence on our ever-changing world, let's turn to the Tao te Ching, told by Lao Tzu so long ago. Whatever translation you have, you should be able to glean the idea that nothing is stable in the world, and that everything you perceive as real is just a shifting of a former shadow's self, so to speak. Meaning that "nature, in its wayward, wandering nature" (as Alan Watts would say), cannot be pinned down. At least that approach is the antithesis of what it means to simply be. I was going to say "develop" or "grow," but those are our artificial, view-from-above concepts.
Here is a sample of what I'm referring to on the off chance that you don't have a copy of the Tao laying around, or you don't know what it is. This is the first few lines of verse 8: "The highest good is like water./ Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive./ It flows in places men reject and so is like that Tao."

As members of our shared environment, we are not exempt from the laws of the universe. We cannot, despite illusion, stop time or ward off death. Things end.

There is a widespread theory that people fear change because deep down, they fear death. I don't really think this is the case. Perhaps people fear change because we have trained ourselves to react immediately to situations presented to us. We are the culture of the quick response (think driving). This habit is tied to immediate gratification; both may be borne of the same source. Sameness, or predictability, allows us to control our environments. To exert our will over our predictable circumstances. If you know the route you're driving because you drive it everday, you don't have to think about how to get where you're going. If society says the way to happiness and normalcy, the starting points or building blocks of everything you'll ever want and need, begin with marriage, children and owning a home, then maybe we should do that. Get ourselves into legally binding contracts of all sorts that we create to pacify ourselves on a superficial level that things will remain constant, and we don't have to fear ... abondonment ... poverty ... solitude ...

Fearing change itself. But not because we fear death. Is it the fear of thinking? Of finding a new way to be successful after we've already paved our path and proven ourselves? It can't be that simple. That stupid guy wrote "Who Moved My Cheese" based on that theory, and it was only marginally OK or applicable/relevant for certain people in the workplace.

Well, there are certainly more thoughts here. Don't despair. This is my first blog. I promise that if I develop this idea, it will be developed with the use of proper nouns, reliable sources, quotes and comparisons to other works, and the name of that TV show, etc.