Rivers in concrete pipes are not only a crime against nature, but are a reflection of the cruel, arrogant, conquering, hostile and contemptuous attitude towards the Other who lives Somewhere Else.

Voja Zanetic

Should the reader permit, I’d like to start this piece with a testimony to my own laziness. It won’t take long.

A few years ago, I wanted to write a book titled ‘Sorry, kids’. In that book, on behalf of past and present generations, I would write one detailed apology for everything we have irretrievably spent at the expense of future generations or, worse, relentlessly ruined so much that they can no longer use it. And there were definitely points to bring up.

Democracy, justice, social peace, economic equality, education, informedness, money, and the list goes on – we have been given a lot to use, and we will leave it either corrupt or unusable for the future. Some of this we may be able to fix later. But it seems like we can’t reverse global warming and decrease the temperatures on our planet. Sea levels, too. Plastic bags take 450 years to ‘decompose’, disposable diapers 550. 18 billion pieces of the latter are thrown out yearly in the United States alone.  So we’re in the shits, whichever way you look at it.

Not to go on for too long, it is clear why apologies to future generations are needed. I didn’t write a book, but here it is, at least like this.

* * * * * * *

There is a lot we can do with nature. We can admire it, we can love it, we can be afraid of it. We can also restrain, tame, capture, use, exploit, and even destroy nature. But this new wave of combined greed, corruption, incompetence, carelessness and negligence brought a new, perhaps the most terrible and certainly the most disgusting, form of attitude towards nature. Its humiliation.

A river crammed into a pipe and trapped in it, thwarted by any contact with living beings and the rest of nature, unable to meet rain, earth and the sky, has been humiliated to the maximum. In relation to rivers filled with garbage, which is also a sort of humiliation, there is a clear difference: usually the garbage is unaware of what it does to the river, but the garbage person that put the river in a pipe knows very well what they’re doing. But they don’t care. Because the care is intended for a new jeep, a wardrobe that proves social status, dining in places where similar people can be found and, ironically, travelling to exotic landscapes with – untouched nature.

Rivers in pipes are not only a crime against nature, but are a reflection of the cruel, arrogant, conquering, hostile and contemptuous attitude towards the Other who lives Somewhere Else. Other people, who are not included in the ‘crew’,  who do not fall under the ‘brother / friend’ nomenclature, who we can’t pay to turn a blind eye to their own lives, they do not exist in the world of these people who commit a crime against the world in which we live and others will continue to live.

Sorry kids, we had our own occupiers. And we can’t think of a valid resistance  movement for that.

* * * * * * *

Because we don’t value common good, or anyone else’s. Because neither law or logic are respected. Because they provide for their own, and the descendants of others steal. Because the state is where the counter is, but not where the river stream is. Because now we’ve got domestic capitalism. ‘Our guys’ are allowed everything, until ‘their guys’ come. Because power is where the wallet is. Because ‘it’s none of my business.’ Because ‘so what’ and ‘why does it matter’. Because nature is the grass next to the open Jacuzzi, not the forest in the middle of nowhere. Because this is the reality (TV), the tabloids, the parliament, the institutions, the police, the judiciary. That’s why.

And because what is done to rivers is actually done to us. It’s just that we’ve been in the pipe for a long time, so we can’t see and understand that.

That’s what I wanted to say about mini hydro-power plants.

Sorry kids, for  this Vicinity.