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"Many moderns love to crow about the benefits of growth economics. Presumably, they choose not to recognize that much of the modern world lives in impoverished, oppressed conditions due, in no small way, to the extensive exploitation of the resources and peoples upon which, both historically and currently, such growth economics, together with the concomitant geo-politics that guard and enforce it, are predicated.

"Apparently, many modern-thinking people tend to overlook the intimate connection between the disease, hunger, death, and unhappiness of times past and times present. Throughout history, oppression, and not economic and technological backwardness per se, has been one of the biggest determining factors in the incidence of disease, hunger, death and unhappiness existing in the world at any given time.

"Technology and capitalism are just as likely - and, in, certain respects, perhaps more so - to lead to the oppression of people as is any other kind of non-technological and non-capitalistic system. Technology and capitalism are just able to accomplish such oppressiveness with greater speed and efficiency than any other kind of system.

"Every period of humanity, including our own, has had problems with hunger, disease, wars, death and social problems. However, two of the major differences between modern civilization and ancient civilizations are the following.

"On the one hand, modern civilization, unlike ancient civilizations, has brought all of life, including humanity, to the brink of a total ecological collapse. On the other hand, the disparity between the haves and have-nots in modern civilization has managed to subject people to hunger, disease, wars, death and social instability on a scale far, far greater than ever before in human history."

"There were a number of things, Mary, that crossed my mind," I said, "while listening to you. First of all, if the Aum Shinri Kyo, the Japanese cult that released the nerve gas, sarin, in the Tokyo subway system, or if Iraq were releasing these chemical toxins into the environment, we would be labelling them, and justifiably so I believe, terrorist monsters and ready to declare war on them.

"Apparently, however, everything is alright if one is motivated by certain kinds of establishment economics and, in the process, serve as a shining example of capitalism in action. Under these circumstances, politicians, government regulatory agencies, the educational system, and much of the media - present company excepted, of course - largely ignore, deny or cover up the true extent of the damage being done to eco-systems, communities, families or individuals.

"I remember reading somewhere that approximately ninety percent of the products we use, although not necessarily need, involve, in one way or another, the kind of chemicals to which you are alluding. Furthermore, these products, together with the industrial processes generating them, constitute almost half of the gross output of the Earth's collective economies.

"In addition, I've seen some of the financial estimates that outline what would have to be spent if the human race is to deal adequately, responsibly and quickly with the presence of toxic chemicals in the environment. The costs are absolutely staggering and would place governments and the economy under an incredible, and, perhaps, completely debilitating, set of stresses.

"Most businesses don't want to do anything because their precious profits would be affected. Most governments, irrespective of level, don't want to do anything because they could lose votes, tax revenues, economic spin-off from these industries, as well as lose power and nice sinecure positions.

"Most individuals don't want to do anything because their pay checks, patterns of consumption, pleasures, and conveniences would be affected. Most educators don't want to do anything because they would lose their jobs when businesses, governments, consumers and career-minded students object vociferously to the former's pessimistic, profane heresies concerning economics, progress, growth, politics, the environment, human survival, and the nature of our modern civilization.

"Most branches of the media remain relatively silent since to take these issues seriously would be to commit commercial suicide. The advertising revenue, together with the various kinds of government and/or public support, that underwrite the media's existence, would disappear quite quickly if the latter were to make a sincere, concerted, protracted effort to help resolve the problems facing us.

"The occasional editorial, article, program, series or documentary is fine. Business and government can live with this because they know, from their own experience, how these sort of isolated forays into the public's consciousness are unlikely to take root and bring about any sort of effective, response on the par of individuals and various community groups.

"In this fashion, business, government, education and the media can all extol the virtues inherent in free speech. Simultaneously, and behind the scenes, they can take the steps which are necessary to ensure that very little of what is spoken about ever has the opportunity of spilling over into the sphere of action.

"Heaven help the media, however, if they should violate the principles - both legal and unspoken - that favor corporations, money and power, and by which much of humanity is held hostage. Sacrilege in modern civilization is anything that would cause substantive, long-term difficulty for, or interference with, an array of deeply entrenched, vested political, economic and cultural interests that are busy keeping things running in accordance with their master plan for themselves, and by way of ramifications, for the rest of humanity and creation as well.

"Just take a look at the impact that one kind of chemical compound - alcohol - has on human society. Every year, tens of thousands more people die or are killed through the effects of alcohol than die or are killed in conjunction with all the terrorist activities of the world combined.

"The ramifications of alcohol consumption are costing billions and billions of dollars in lost productivity, medical and hospital resources, property damage, and legal/court expenses. Moreover, a great deal of the increasing instability within the community and the family - due to the many forms of rape and domestic violence, together with the rampant physical and sexual abuse of children - is shaped in significant ways by the presence of alcohol.

"The highways of the nation have become proving grounds for the alcohol-saturated terrorists in our midst. The same neighbors who smile at us and pat our children on the head are quite willing to put our lives, and the lives of our children, at risk so they can indulge their whims and pleasures.

"Yet, as with all of the other chemicals which are pouring into the environment, we all have complicity in the problems entailed by the presence of alcohol. Advertising firms, publications needing ads to survive, bars, corner stores, restaurants, resort areas, hotels, many aspects of the entertainment industry, sporting events, governments, the legal system, and every single individual who consumes alcohol and, therefore, helps subsidize an industry that earns huge profits at tremendous costs to society, all of us have complicity in the creating of the problems entailed by the presence and consumption of alcohol.

"Many o f us have vested interests - whether as a function of personal pleasure or economic benefit or tax revenues - in keeping the alcohol industry going. As a result, many of us are in deep denial about our role in the toxic cycle of alcohol production, commercialization, consumption, death, destruction, violence and disease.

"Alcoholics, arguably, have an excuse, of sorts, for why they are locked into patterns of behaviour that have destructive consequences for themselves and others. However, I can't help but wonder about the rest of us.

"What is our excuse for becoming locked into a set of behaviours which are so obviously destructive, counter-productive and costly. Instead of bein ashamed of ourselves and the ways in which we derive benefit from keeping the status quo going, vis-a-vis alcohol, we would rather point fingers at the alcoholic and say: 'there wouldn't be a problem if not for him or her'.

"In reality, we have a co-dependency with the alcoholic and the alcohol industry. We are prepared to allow all manner of evil into our midst in order to be able to continue to live in accordance with our own selfish and short-sighted hierarchy of desires and priorities.

"We use the vocabulary of individual rights and freedoms to mask what actually is going on. We are addicted to a certain kind of life-style, and we can't bring ourselves to admit this or deal with the implications of such an admission.

"We need to dress up our addictions in the lofty language of a discussion involving jurisprudence and political philosophy. Yet, this is merely part of the process of denial and rationalization that goes on within us in order to direct our moral sensibilities away from the essential issues that are at stake.

"The problems associated with the specific chemical, alcohol, is a reflection, in miniature, of the problems associated with the presence of chemicals, in general. I could just have easily used the tobacco industry, or any number of other industries, as a paradigmatic example of the principles at issue.

"Despite rising levels of pollution, pathology, death, medical expense, environmental degradation, insurance premiums, and so on, that are associated with the continuing, if not escalating, release of chemicals into our bodies and the environment, few of us - whether in government, business, education, the media, or as private citizens - are prepared to come to grips with the multiple crossaddictions which give expression to this thing called modern civilization. We are addicted to money, to comforts, to pleasures, to conveniences, to consumption, and to our unceasing desire for the technological and economic envelope to be pushed back in all of these areas with more and more products and services.

"Naturally, like any good pusher, commercial enterprises are only too eager to supply our habits. After all, businesses are as much addicted to consumers as the latter are addicted to the former.

"We are not just painting ourselves into an impossible corner. Like some bizarre, surreal cross-fertilization of Poe's The Cask of Amontillado and The Premature Burial, we are walling ourselves up in a variety of designer sarcophagi within an economic crypt, loaded with technological extras - all, I might add, at a very reasonable price - where we are waiting, with varying degrees of horrified awareness, for the end of human existence.

"Together, the demand and supply sides of economics come together to form an ultimately self-destructive co-dependency. The end toward that our economic system is leading us, like so many lemmings, is misery and death, not wealth.

"Furthermore, our economic system is not allocating resources in the best fashion for the common good. Rather, our economic system is allocating resources for all the wrong reasons and in the worst way in order to serve the very limited, exploitive agenda of a small segment of humanity.

"Just as there are ecological principles regulating the dynamics of different eco-systems within nature, so, too, there are ecological principles governing the dynamics of various eco-systems within human beings, both individually and collectively. The fact that in the case of human beings the principles which currently are dominating these dynamics are largely pathological in nature doesn't make them any less ecological in character.

"Indeed, the ecology of pathology that now has dominion in the sphere of human activity helps explain why so many of our problems seem to be largely intractable. The links among different aspects of this ecology are so numerous, subtle, and complex, there are a variety of feed-back and synergistic mechanisms which tend to preserve a number of the inertial characteristics of any given individual or social eco-system.

"Even if one comes up with a way of dealing with one such feed-back or synergistic dynamic, any number of other, alternative routes of interaction ar quite capable of filling the vacuum. The ecology of pathology has its buffers just as does the ecology of natural systems.

"Supposedly, western intelligence agencies have discovered a chemical weapons plant being constructed at Iarhunah, near Tripoli, in Libya. Authorities here are worried about the fact the facility is being built in such a way- deep beneath rocky outcroppings, so as to be virtually impregnable to all bombing attacks except, possibly, a direct, nuclear hit.

"While I share the worry of western authorities concerning both the construction of this kind of facility, as well as the uses to which it may be put, western authorities do not exhibit anywhere near the same kind of concern or anxiety with respect to the chemical war being waged by industry against humanity and the eco-systems of the Earth. I wonder if these authorities have considered bombing attacks, or a nuclear strike, against such facilities?

"Probably not. These business people are devilish clever in the manner in which they build their plants close to civilian populations and use that population as sort of s human shield to protect the industry from any steps being taken against them."

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