Tangled Bank: Writings from Orion

The High Price of Getting Hip

126 The High Price of Getting Hip Forsaking the out-of-doors for any shopping mall is my idea of the Seventh Circle of Hell. But not long ago, on a perfectly good Montana Saturday, I found myself driven by necessity into a Target store. Having found the needful item tucked among acres of shiny products, I made my small purchase and sought a quick escape.The little skillet needed no packaging, so I turned down the proffered bag. “Why don’t you want a plastic bag?” inquired the tall youth at the checkout stand. “Too many at home,” I said, and should have left it there. But I just had to add,“Besides, way too much plastic ends up in the landfills. It’s all oil, you know.” The checker returned a stare as blank as a big-box wall. In turn, I felt both sanctimonious and alien. But he thought it over for a moment, and then said, “Oh, don’t worry. We’ll always have enough of whatever we need.” I left Target that day wondering whether I envied that callow lad’s complacency. The catalogue of clichés and aphorisms pertaining to the curse of knowledge or its absence is long and deep. On the upside, we have “Ignorance is bliss” of course, “What you don’t know won’t hurt you,” and even “Ignorance is Strength” from the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s 1984. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing” voices the same sentiment from the inverse view, as does Aldo Leopold’s undeniable dictum that “the penalty of an ecological education is to live alone in a world of wounds.” But my personal favorite is Bob Seeger’s brilliant and enigmatic lyric from “Against theWind”:“Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.” Sometimes ignorance is merely the state of learning-in-progress.This was the case for a long time with carbon-induced climate change. But there comes a point when the absence of understanding becomes willful. We have a whole other set of sayings for this state, having to do with 127 The High Price of Getting Hip ostriches and fools in paradise. Then there is the kind of ignorance that is innocent, if not altogether innocuous. Most Americans who notice butterflies at all tend to think all big bright ones are monarchs.Usually they are referring to yellow-and-black tiger swallowtails, rather than orange, tailless monarchs.This common error doesn’t disturb me unduly—at least these folks are seeing, contrary to Nabokov’s plaint about “how little the ordinary person notices butterflies.” But the common confusion of two very different butterflies, one abundant, one at risk, does impair efforts to raise conservation awareness on behalf of monarchs. Enter Scotts LawnService,a national company connected to Ortho and Smith & Hawken. Like ChemLawn (now part of theTruGreen empire)— another entity high on my list of should-be-endangered species—this company seduces naïve householders into a deal with the pesticide devil through the peculiarly American peer pressure arising from lawn-envy. By signing contracts for periodic lawn care, homeowners assure delivery of toxic chemicals directly to their children’s play-place. Nowhere in Scotts’s promotional come-on does the word “pesticide” appear, yet the company employs an arsenal of dangerous chemicals including 2,4-D, carcinogenic glyphosate, and various potent insecticides and fungicides. (Some products they used for years and insisted were safe have since been withdrawn by the EPA.) Not only does Scotts exploit our national state of naïveté over household toxics, but it does so under the lulling logo of a butterfly— one that manifests the company’s intentional “ignorance” as none other could. Every Scotts van—I saw one on the way to Target—bears the clear image of a swallowtail’s shape, but overlaid with the coloration and pattern of a monarch! The friendly lawn care folks accomplish this bizarre metamorphosis in the utter absence of conscience,celebrating their cynicism all the way to the bank. Sowhocares?Themeretwistingoftruthmightmatterlittleifitconcerned nothing worse than a case of mistaken identity among butterflies. In fact, that logo would be hilarious if the product were benign.But the company’s hypocrisy is stunning: in its promo brochure, the “before” picture shows a diverse lawn that butterflies might actually visit, while the “after” shot depicts a sterile sward barren of butterflies or any other native pollinators. [3.142.196.27] Project MUSE (2024-04-18...