And I think it is partly because so many thing we encounter are fake, that I am so attracted to things that are authentic.

And though we do have amazing capabilities to imagine and create, we too often let others do that for us. We need to be reminded that we can imagine and create our own positive images around authentic experiences and real things.

Bernadette, you are absolutely right. I guess what I meant about the wishbone was about the first level of insincerity — that it is the idea of a bone rather than an actual bone, and that so many times we live with the idea of what things are rather than what they actually are.

And you are right too that there is a deeper level of reality in which an actual bone isn’t even that. It’s only a bone because we have called it that and defined it as such and really it’s a collection of atoms just like everything else in the Universe, including plastic.

And yes, plastic is as real as anything else. It’s just that when we convince ourselves it’s something other than what it is we get into trouble.

And now my head is spinning from being sick and also because the mind cannot grasp absolute levels of reality and so I’m going to thank you guys for your awesome insights and take my sick body back to bed.

But what we create is no less real. I find myself asking the question “should we?” more than “could we?” We have to act responsibly with all of it in mind.

I don’t think a tree is more real than a plastic wishbone–and we might say that it is all illusion. Plastic perhaps gives us a weird ability to control decay. No less real…just more polluting because it doesn’t follow the natural process of disappearing within a lifetime we humans can understand.

Very intriguing post, Beth. Many thanks, as always. And blessings.

What is nature? All that we know – the entire physical world is composed of material built from atoms that are linked together in different ways.

What is plastic? Plastic is a material made from atoms linked together in different ways.

What’s the difference?

The natural world has come about over billions of years of trial and error. If something works, that is, if it can survive in the surroundings it finds itself in, it stays. If something doesn’t work, that is, if it cannot survive its surroundings, it goes.

In the natural world, things happen very slowly by our standards. There is a change here and a change there, small changes, a single bond in a chemical is altered for example. Then lots of time goes by as this change is tested.

The trouble with plastic is that it is not only novel in nature (though based on and derived from natural polymers), it involves lots of chemical changes being presented to the natural world in many places at the same time.

Plastic is not a little chemical experiment with a wait of tens of thousands of years to see if it works out. It’s a deluge of chemical changes with no wait at all to see if it works out. It is a forcing of novel material into the natural world with regard to only one measure of success – can people find a use for it, even if only for a matter of minutes as is the case for plastic grocery bags.

THAT is the problem of plastic. Nature itself has come up with plastic materials, long chains of flexible polymers, but they have developed in the natural world and as such have proven themselves benign not only by not destroying what is around them but also by being present in small quantities so that their surroundings can adapt to them as well.

Nature is a case of many chemical members, animal or mineral, gas or liquid or solid, that more-or-less get along together because they have adapted in concert over millenia. There are breakouts from time to time, alien chemicals that may destroy or promote neighbors but it is all going on at a pace that humanity cannot detect – over lifetimes – that passes beneath our notice.

Humans are hypercreatures – a frantic life-form that creates prolifically and at a pace that nature has never seen. The very embodiment of our frenzy is plastic – the material of a billion forms. The miracle material that is the color and texture and density and size and form of any dream a creator might have. And we are flooding the world with it, a world unable to adapt with the same speed as the flood spreading over it. The plastic world is truly our world, one entirely of our own making.

There is nothing inherently evil about plastic, it’s just another bunch of chemicals in a world that is purely chemical anyway. The problem dimension is the one that human beings cannot understand – time. We are a product of eons of evolution but our minds want things NOW! and our intellect can conceive of things in a flash and our production processes spit out tremendous quantities of anything in an instant. THAT’S the problem – we are overwhelming a world that does not operate on our idea of time. What we don’t realize is that WE are the giant asteroid crashing into the planet, altering it profoundly.

But in the end, we, too, are part of nature and plastic, our legacy, is natural as well.

ps…omigod if you went and investigated where your meat came from and how it was killed…you would be my hero because i could never do that. did you see the video of sarah palin giving an interview at a turkey farm and you could see the guy KILLING the turkey in the background. omigod i think i almost fainted. we had it on in the background last night and i just happened to start watching it at that point and im like…what…is that guy…doing…with…is that a turkey OMIGOD TURN IT OFF. heh. literally that’s how it went.

pps…are you feeling better?
*marika