Image credit: Lisa Gesbocker Driessen
“The aesthetics were the tell, all along” notes Rick Wilson in his Aug. 21 Friday Brief. Those words struck me as particularly spot of this morning and an accurate indictment of the current state of humanity. I thought I’d dive into it a little and juxtapose Mother Nature with this gut wrenching truth.
It’s a slow bleed to misery, and big lips and butt implants are the stepping stones, if not the final threshold. But to say that there have not been warning signs along the way would be to deny the truth staring us straight in our botox-filled faces. I mean look at the rise of the manufactured lawns since the 1950s, the fake plants and flowers that people now keep in their houses pretending they’re real (I know, you have allergies!). Look at the rise of cheap, synthetic fibers used in most clothing these days (thanks Travolta, but did you have to wear it that well?). Walk through the perfume section of any department store or even Bath & Body Works (don’t get me started on Abercrombie & Fitch) and just try and avoid the tsunami of hyper-potent, petroleum-derived aromas that invade your entire body and leave you feeling like you absolutely must be immediately hosed down by the most powerful fire hose available.
I mean, I walked into our local neighborhood landmark Italian restaurant (est. 1952) the other day and was greeted by what I can only describe as more lips than body, and it took me a moment to figure out what the hell was going on. Then I scrolled down and was even more confounded. What the hell is happening people??? This is a crisis! We are losing our grasp on reality here.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to judge. A little botox here and there I suppose isn’t the worst thing. But it’s a slow drip is my point. And I think we’ve reached the end of the IV bag people.
So, we’ve gotta dig ourselves out of this quagmire somehow (and I’m not just speaking about the one in the Middle East). Fortunately for us, there’s this thing outside our overly sanitized front door called Nature. And it’s just out there doing its natural thing. Not begging us or yelling at us or scolding us (well maybe a little scolding). It’s just out there blowing around and basking in the sunlight and soaking up the water when it falls (which is another issue, but I digress), and figuring out ways to survive while we drive by billowing fossil fuels all over it while we pretend we have no clue how we could possibly survive without them (the fossil fuels, not the plants).
So yeah, aesthetics. It’s a tell. And the aesthetics of things are telling us to wake the fuck up people.
If you really look at the nature around us, conformity is the last thing it wants! Diversity and symbiosis is where it’s at. Plus, my face is everyone else’s early warning system, and who am I to deny them the chance to rethink what they just said. 🤣 You’ll never catch me ‘fixing’ my face.