Click on first photo to enlarge photos and see as series.
Evolution
If we took every advertisement
that we saw under advisement,
envisioning ourselves in cars
filled with TVs and guitars,
food choppers and Barbie dolls—
everything we saw in malls—
we might buy it all and after,
fill every house to every rafter.
Blenders, stereos and blouses
would pile up in our many houses.
Consumerism would be the key
to how happy we would be.
Lethargic children would sit about
staring at phones in hands, not out
into the world their windows face.
Imagination would replace
a reality no one could cotton.
Our old world would be so rotten—
all it was so ill-begotten
that it had to be forgotten.
Our present world now so diluted
(nature being so polluted)
that the animals our kids would see
would not be out and roaming free
but in some zoo with air protected
and no fluorocarbons detected.
All these things that we could buy
would be what caused our world to die.
Plastic world and plastic lives
would seal us into plastic hives
where we could buzz around in cells
creating our own private hells.
How hard would it really be
to imagine this reality?
How close are we to it already—
Our brains scrambled into spaghetti
by barrages of consumerism?
Could we even heal the schism
that our plastic world has wrought?
Would we give up all we’ve got
for the greener simpler earth
of our great-grandfather’s birth?
Man will speed on toward his doom
in his air-conditioned room
that screens the poisons out while he
sits rapt in front of his tv.
His children, who can no longer stand,
sit, each with eyes glued to his hand.
Only robots will go out
to shop for us and walk about
in air that’s suited only for
machines to venture out the door.
They’ll greet each other in the street,
smiling at each bot they meet.
Perhaps the plastic revolution
was the next step in evolution.
They’ve locked us all within their lairs.
The world they sought is finally theirs
as every human sits and stares
at the unreal world he shares
with every other other fleshly being
that gave up doing for simply seeing.
The prompt words today were key, lethargic, advertisement and envision.
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/18/rdp-monday-key/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/18/fowc-with-fandango-lethargic/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/18/your-daily-word-prompt-advertisement-february-18-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/18/envision/
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
Loved this!
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Thanks, Cheryl.
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I think we are very close to that already and it isn’t getting better.
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Loved your selection of images to complement a cute, but very deep poem.
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A warning – Astutely, if not perhaps a little cynically done! 🙂
Makes no mention of those people who do eschew… or even fight, however futilely, the changes, the corporations, the pollution, the degradation, the apathy, the screen-time, etc.
Having said that i was listening to a university professor discussing how many species we have wiped out in the last 20 years in my country alone (80 and that’s just our mammals!) in part due to the 25-30% less rainfall we get annually now than we did 40 years ago which reduces habitat for local species dependent upon rainfall to survive. We have to pump groundwater into our dams to stop them drying out. We rely upon desal plants and underground aquifer water for our Capital’s water supply now.
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The aquifer is rapidly shrinking in the U.S.–according to two experts on world water I heard speak. She said water, not oil will be what countries will be fighting over in the future..and they already are. The reason for China’s invasion of Tibet is because the three greatest Chinese rivers all have origins in Tibet.
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We have all the water we ever need – we just have to either recycle it or desalinate it from the oceans. The latter can be a bit tricky if you don’t have a coastline however! 😉
Currently in Australia we are managing to fight each other over water – our equivalent of the Mississippi is deteriorating and almost stopped running because of an agreement whereby irrigators, mainly cotton farmers upstream, get the water they need for their crops leaving those downstream short during hot dry spells (Like a 3 year long drought for example).
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Seventeen years ago, the sixty mile long lake I live on was due to dry up in five years for the same reason. Luckily, it was designated a “Living Lake” by an international organization and pressure was exerted to pass legislation so upstream dams would release more water from the main river feeding it and farmers were encouraged not to use flood irrigation. And, the rains increased. Now it even occasionally floods a bit around its banks.
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It’s good to hear one ‘success’ story – implies we do have a ‘say’ – sometimes.
Our lower rainfall pattern seems long term. 😦
Weirdly enough it is now the desert central (unpopulated) area of my state that has virtually daily thunderstorms and rainfall while down here we’ve had under 1/2 an inch in 4 months!
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Scary..all over the world..
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What’s also scary is that while many places are reaching the limits of their local environment to meet community needs for water and food the population of the planet continues its rapid rise. Here in Perth we are expecting to increase the city population of 2 Million by 50% by 2050 and our country is on track to double it’s population within the next half century. 😦 Not looking good.
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And just a bit short of 50 years ago, I was paid to emigrate there! How things change.
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My parent’s became “10 pound Poms” – the Aussie nickname for English migrants who had needed skills and who paid just 10 UK pounds for the application fees and travel here for the 3 of us. That was 48 years ago!
Because we’re an island we don’t need a wall, but our Navy has been co-opted to ensure anyone trying to enter the country by boat without visas ( ie ‘asylum seekers’) are returned to their last point of departure before they can land and claim any legal status. It’s what our PM boasts about to rally any supporters he has/needs in the same way Trump pushes ‘Build That Wall” to his crowd. Lately the PM has repeated Trump’s criminal element speech almost word for word. 😦 (We have our election due in May!)
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That’s when I came.. 1971.
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