Iatrogenesis

The unintended consequences of civilization spill out into reality

Setting up the anthropocalypse which looms over our future

Ironically, civilization was seen as the planet’s healer

Carefully shepherding nature into something new and improved

Giving proof, we thought, of our superiority

Validating our entitlement to have dominion over everything else

But it seems like the patient is suffering iatrogenesis

Taken ill with the flesh eating disease of runaway capitalism

Starving on empty calories while becoming morbidly obese

We drain our aquifers to water golf courses in the desert

Cut down rainforests to factory farm cattle for fast food burgers

Building monuments to consumption like oceanic garbage gyres

Blindly buying crap we don’t need made by slaves we don’t see

We live on borrowed credit in houses which are bigger than we need

While others shelter in improvised shacks

Or get swallowed up into prisons to be drafted into gangs

We poison the water, the land and the air

And wonder why things aren’t the same anymore

We let democracy fade away through apathy

As corporate plutocracy takes control

Instead of rising up and declaring our own sovereignty

We sit back and watch performers pretend that life is good

We amuse ourselves vicariously and identify with illusions

Through inaction we turn ourselves into ghosts who scare nobody but ourselves

As civilization sickens into the decadence of the dying

Infected by fear and paralyzed by our lack of vision

 

 

David Trudel  ©  2013