I find it amazing how circumstance can dictate the course of reality.
A year ago the courtyard in front of our library sported a lovely even lawn: the pride of any gardener. But now that campus construction is diverting the ant march of students on their way to class the lawn is reduced to a sorry state.
Just think the life of that poor grass is entirely determined by scenario: there’s no other way to get to class; therefore we must walk on the grass; therefore it must die. It’s merely a description of fact.
Or is it? Is there something else that worked against those green little individuals to their undoing?
Obviously there is another way to get to class other than trampling the grass – namely walking around the grass. Are not the lives of our verdant friends worth the five seconds it takes to spare them?
Clearly not to most of our minds for the grass is withered and mostly gone forming a barren strip of human senselessness.This scenario is indicative of a modern phenomenon of thought. Entering into our calculation of how to lead our lives is a new measurement aside from cost and benefit: convenience.
Indeed the reliance on convenience now defines much of how we conduct our lives. Modern products from the automobile to the iPhone all revolve around our pathological need for it.
Such convenience is not inherently bad but when chosen over another higher value (say the life of grass) it can be downright immoral. Perhaps it is time to set aside our obsession with convenience for the sake of lawns everywhere.
If we were willing to take the slightly less convenient route to class (it’s a matter of seconds) that grass might be alive. Quite literally our mania with convenience is killing the library’s lawn. If we are able to take a step back hopefully we can see that the value of life far outweighs such a small measure of convenience.Understand that I am not only talking about grass – it’s a metaphor. I believe the wanton and careless destruction of the library’s lawn is an insightful image of the way we think as a society about the measurement of values against convenience.
No one can say with any seriousness that they don’t care for nature. But it’s a different matter when we are asked to attest to that value in the face of a loss of some degree of convenience.
We don’t care that carbon emissions destroy the environment because we love the ease of our cars; we don’t care that our garbage contributes to waste because we don’t want to have to bother to recycle; we don’t care that the grass in front of the library dies because we want to save five seconds by walking across it.
In the modern war between value and convenience sadly but not surprisingly convenience seems to win a startling amount of the time. Is our convenience really that valuable?
We’re not talking value against value we’re talking value against convenience and that should be no contest. You may say that convenience is itself a value but undoubtedly it is of a lower order than life justice and the like (which includes grass).
Let us then sacrifice a bit of convenience toward the greater good toward environmentalism at large and toward the restoration of our lovely library lawn.