Remote wilderness areas - or dense forests - have long been places where Mexican marijuana-growing cartels build their growing operations.  Now many of these glorious places have become like toxic chemical dumps.  These so-called “grow sites” range from the West Coast’s Cascade Mountains - to the federal lands of Kentucky - Tennessee and W. Virginia.

Hang on --- over 700 sites have been found on U.S. Forest Service land - in California ALONE - in 2007 and 2008.  What is the hardest hit place?  The 1800 square-mile Sequoia National Forest.  Home of the giant Sequoia - one of the plant wonders of the world.  The cartels bring in weed and bug sprays - many of them banned in the U.S.  They use plant growth hormones to induce the marijuana plants to growth faster and bigger.  Greed is rampant in these practices.  Greed and a complete disregard for plants - animals - and people.  

Water is diverted for miles by PVC pipes to the growing areas.  Rat poison is spread over the ground to keep animals away from the marijuana plants.  Rotting carcusses of deer and bear poached for food by the workers are strewn about these growing “camps.”  

Ron Pugh - a Forest Service agent - said “These are America’s most precious resources - and they’re being devastated by an unprecedented commercial enterprise conducted by armed foreign nationals.  It’s a huge mess.”

Millions of dollars are expended every year to find and rid the forests of marijuana growing operations - but the Fed officials say no money is budgeted to clean up the governmental mess left behind after helicopters carry off the plants.  Cleanup is done by volunteers - yah the same “tree-huggers” that are trying to save what’s left of the forests of America and elsewhere in the world.  

People remain ignorant of what’s going on in their forests.  If an article appears in the paper about abuses in the forests - people shrug it off and go back to thinking about their mortgage payments.  There is simply too many horror stories to track each day.  Shane Krogen - the executive director of the nonprofit High Sierra Trail Crew - said “Helicopters full of dope are like body counts in Vietnam.  What does it really mean?”

Hang on again --- last year law enforcement agents uprooted nearly 5 million plants in California - 500,000 plants in Kentucky - and 276,000 plants in the State of Washington (my state).  

“People light up a joint and they have no idea the amount of environmental damage associated with it” - says Cicely Muldoon - deputy regional director of the Pacific West Region of the National Park Service.

As of 2 Sept 08 - something like 2.2 million plants have been uprooted in California.  482,000 plants in the remote Sierra of Tulare Country.  Rangers found over 20,000 plants growing in Yosemite.  

I’ll leave you with this: 1.5 POUNDS of fertilizers and pesticides are used for every 11.5 plants.  So those who buy and smoke pot are not just smoking marijuana - they’re sucking in some very powerful chemicals.  Eradication efforts touch but a small sample of what’s actually growing in our sacred wildernesses.  

The Fallout From the Industrial Revolution Now Burying the World

In 1952 - the year I graduated from high school - Albert Schweitzer came to Oslo to pick up his Nobel Prize for Peace.  He did something very unusual - he put forth a challenge to the world - a challenge it has not accepted - it has not heard - it seems to have blatantly ignored..."to dare to face the situation....Man has become a superman [in his mind]....But the superman with the superhuman power has not risen to the level of superhuman reason.  To the degree to which his power grows he becomes more and more a poor man....It must shake up our conscience that we become all the more inhuman the more we grow into superman."

How did this happen?  Erich Fromm - who studied under Freud - then broke off like Rank and Adler and Jung - and whom I've read for over 50 years - has much to say about the reasons the Industrial Revolution has failed and why a dark night of fatalism has set in - the kind of fatalism that would allow marijuana growers to destroy an entire wilderness area. 

Fromm says that the Industrial Revolution was based on two wrong psychological principles.  One - that the aim of life is happiness - that is - maximum pleasure - which he defines as "the satisfaction of any desire or subjective need a person may feel (a sort of radical hedonism being authored into existence).  And Two - that egotism - selfishness (Ayn Rand) - and greed - as the system needs to generate them in order to function - lead to harmony and peace.

Fromm points out that the rich throughout history have practice radical hedonism.  The kings and queens and czars and czarinas tried to find a meaning in life in unlimited pleasure.  People ate - threw up - then ate again.  Things were made of solid gold.  Estates were enlarged - then enlarged again and again.  Every kind of pleasure was devised and practiced.  Pleasure was deemed the opposite of struggle - the opposite of pain - the opposite of what the poor experienced. 

The word "profit" - which throughout much of history meant profit of the "soul" - now in the early part of the Industrial age began to mean material profit - monetary profit.  Even Goethe said "Everybody wants to be somebody - nobody wants to grow."  As a middle class began to form - everybody wanted to have things.  They wanted them bad enough to kill for them - as entire countries began to colonize other countries for their booty - their stuff - their material wealth.

For Hobbes - happiness is the continuous progress from one greed to another. 

La Mettrie recommends drugs as giving at least the illusion of happiness.

Da Sade said the satisfaction of cruel impulses is legitimate - simply because they exist and crave satisfaction.

As with so many other aspects of our lives - Man's behavior - revealing his deep insecurities - his self-loathing - his contempt for the Other - is going downhill faster than we can keep up with him.

In my next post - I'll continue on with the theme of radical hedonism and how we're all caught up in it like a variety of fish species in a trawler's net.