Stories and News No. 1311
Nothing new in the premise of this umpteenth story: a privileged minority exploits the earth's riches, causing suffering and death among the majority of human beings. And the grotesque paradox, which is incomprehensible to any living creature on our planet, is that sooner or later this stupid attitude will harm everyone, without exception.
In particular, today's story is about water. Or what the problem is. One cannot help but agree with Professor Hannah Cloke of the University of Reading in the UK when she states in the inspiring article that more than climate change and population growth, the real problem is social inequality, which causes the situation explained inside the incipit.
However, when I read in the same article that constantly irrigated swimming pools and lawns in large cities contribute to the enormous gap between the few who take water for granted and all the others, this leads me to think that the problem is another one. Or one of the others, but which is no less important than the previous ones.
In my humble opinion, to consider its significance, it is sufficient to use your imagination, which on the other hand is one of the few talents that poverty is unable to erase. Indeed, I think that it is a sort of amplifier of it.
So, I imagine one of the luckiest guys, but not just any one. I am referring to that kind of men who are directly responsible for repeated wicked choices to the detriment of the majority, which suggest a pattern.
The heat will soon arrive and once again they will say that it will break all records, but today's protagonist will not care much about it. Guys like him don't read the weather predictions because they think to regulate temperatures and climate like you do with the TV via the remote control. And this is the greatest illusion that a human mind has ever been able to give birth to.
So, after having breakfast he undresses, puts on his bathing suit and slippers, and after grabbing his bathrobe he goes out into the garden and reaches his beloved swimming pool.
Then, through an app on his cell phone – he has one for every alleged need – he activates the lawn irrigation system, throws his bathrobe on the deck chair, takes off his slippers and dives. Let's even say that it is ridicule belly flop, but these are negligible details. Because there isn't a soul around. He is alone, far from everything and everyone, enjoying his good luck.
I told you the problem is distance, right? I'm referring to the real one, but also the digital version, further fueled by web tools that promise relationships and closeness, instead selling the opposite. That is why some people get so angry when overseas poor people suddenly dare to reduce the miles that divide us by showing up on our shores. They disturb an enchantment that must remain so, i.e. the above scheme.
Well, at this point in the story I would like that my imagination, as well as the world’s outcasts, to enjoy the speed of light, in order to confirm two of the main consequences of Einstein's theory: time dilation and above all length contraction.
Because if that were the case, I'd pay any amount of money to see how the story evolves from here on out. Actually, that's what I see now.
I see the guy refreshing himself apparently undisturbed with a stupid expression, while the pumps refresh his precious leaves without saving.
Nonetheless, a second later I see what he sees, or should see if he still had a shred of human consciousness.
Together, therefore, we see at least two billion people literally without drinking water, to wash or clean food, to survive even just one day.
With the same eyes, we observe twice a thousand million thirsty and exhausted bodies collapsing on that tiny selfish meadow and at the same time massing in an impermissible way up to the edges of that wrong rectangle of water, and then falling into it with a voracity, on the contrary, of unheard-of truth.
Much better than to witness such a plausible scenario on a harmless screen, perhaps sitting comfortably in an armchair or even on a mattress in the pool, through the usual committed film or documentary, or even an environmentalist commercial and a street demonstration, to then return to mind their own business, am I wrong?
Damn distance...