I live in Calgary, which is the center of the oil patch in Canada. Everyone here, from the Engineer in the office, to the doctor in the clinic, the teachers in the schools, the gardeners with the city, the hairdressers in the salons, the piano teachers in their studios (that would be me!), and the kid manning the till at the local store, relies upon the oil patch for their livelihood. All 1 million or so of us, whether we admit it openly or not. It is because of the income generated from the oil industry that we are able to go about our lives at the level of comfort to which we have become accustomed. We have food, shelter, heat, education. We have green spaces, bike paths, and health care. We have services for the elderly and those with special needs. We can go get fancy haircuts, take vacations, have a latte. We weathered this latest recession relatively well. And why? Because of the oil patch. It's probably safe for me to say that all of us who benefit from this appreciate what we have, and would be very sad to lose it. And thus the conflict,which is....
What part of our existence do we protect? Certainly of concern is the immediate economic uncertainty. If we withdraw support for the oil industry we risk much.... the loss of our homes because we can no longer afford to pay the mortgage. The whining of our children when they are no longer able to play hockey. Our depression as we sit in our homes thinking of how we had intended to go for that nice beach vacation in Mexico. Having to watch our children go hungry because we no longer have the means to provide them with food. Those calamities that we see on the news which occur to "others" and which we most certainly don't want to have happen to us.
But.... what about all that is being said about the dangers of the oil industry? The illnesses reported by those living near to petroleum production areas? The spills, on land and water? Claims that the damage caused by such is irreversable, or maybe it isn't? The air pollution? The reduction in our water levels, at a time when we hear talk of intense debate between our country and our neighbour to the south on who, exactly, gets rights to that water which is flowing from our country, in anticipation of water shortages? We do care about other people. It matters to us if people are getting sick because their home location is dangerous to live in. Many people here donate money to help establish clean water for people in places known to be lacking in such. Others volunteer their time for the same or similar endeavours. We also care about the preservation of our world. Many of us, especially here in Calgary, enjoy the outdoors. We regularly go out to the national parks situated oh so close by, we camp, we ski. We pick up our garbage, we recycle, we compost, we refrain from washing our cars in places where the runoff will go untreated into the river. So it's not as though we are inherently self-centered and uncaring about others or the world which supports us, or unaware.
And this is where the individual conflict comes in. The conflict within ourselves which, if left unacknowledged, can eventually lead to some of those more disastrous consequences mentioned earlier, like aggression and death, but which also can simply lead to no decisions being made, no consensus being reached, no real solution being found. It is the conflict arising from the question of which security do we need, or, how much of each of the competing securities do we need. This is a difficult question to answer, and therefore a difficult conflict to address, even if a person does have accurate, certain information. And in this situation we don't. We don't know the economic impact on our personal lives if we limit oil production or transportation. We don't know, for sure, how many spills there will be, or the extent of the leaks, or what the long term impact will be. We can not say, for certain, that those high rates of cancer are, really, a result of the higher number of wells in the area. Most of us do not have the background to really disseminate all the information being passed on to us by all the different people involved, so the prospect of attempting to do so is, to put it bluntly, frightening. And the consequences of a wrong decision are also frightening. So many of us practice avoidance. It is easy to do. We form in groups and out groups. Everyone who says something that may bring up that side of the conflict we are running from is part of the out group, whose knowledge and opinions are worthless anyways. Our in group provides us with the psychological support we need to stay strong in our conviction of this, and to provide reinforcement of the aspects we are focusing upon. This holds for both the environmentalists and the industrialists. Subconciously all those aspects of our psychological functioning which are studied so assiduously by those in marketing, commercial and other, such as the tendency to read only information which will support our position, run rampant. We distract ourselves, keeping busy with the minutae of our everyday lives. And we reassure ourselves that "others" who "know what they are doing" will look after it all. And in the meantime, people get frustrated. Others who are not in the situation judge those who are, saying they are self-centered, or naive, or money-hungry. Those who are in the situation form factions, labelling those on the other side as extremists, environmentalists, oil workers, naive, unrealistic, greedy, uneducated, all words which are used as degradations here. And the individual conflict spreads to the outside, intensifies on the inside, and the perceived need to ignore the roots increases.
So here we have, in Canada, a first world country, the same conflict which appears the world over. The conflict that people must face in this larger world of ours, between our immediate existence and our broader existence. I think, for all of us, we do not struggle with this necessarily because we do not understand a scope of existence broader than our own immediate physical condition, but because we are trying to resolve competing needs, and this is difficult, and frightening, and uncertain. We all wish to live happily, we all wish to keep those good things we have. I think most of us are truly concerned about other members of humanity, and the world that supports us, but, sometimes, fear of facing that conflict between our needs and desires for our immediate physical condition and those of the broader world, or even our more long-term personal existence, drives us to bury this concern, using whatever tools we have, and there are many, to do so. It is understandable, but it causes great pain. Because the conflict is still there, the nagging doubts still exist. And it spreads. If we could only join together to grab the courage we need to have confidence in ourselves and our abilities to make decisions, to live with those decisions, to find happiness in multitudes of ways. We don't need to fight, we can work together. We can listen, and we can hear, and we can trust in our ability to find a way. Just some thoughts to consider when we find ourselves on the verge of discarding another's thoughts, actions, or opinions out of hand....
