The massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues to pump oil out into the sea.

My friends are dismayed, and want action to remedy this problem, and its cause(s).

When I see the pictures, my heart drops like a stone, and I’m unable to really think clearly, without sadness and pessimism clouding my mind.

Worse still, after my mind begins to wonder at this devastation, it moves on immediately to similar environmental disasters that human beings are committing all over the world right now.

Can we change this? How? What is the source of this?

I see one source in the dissociation of people from their “tools.” From everything they use, they are further and further removed. Things become “mere things.” We suddenly are no longer connected in a cycle of creation and destruction. We stand outside of it and look on…passersby, observers, voyeurs of our own self-destruction.

Don’t look at the images anymore. Look into your heart. Find it there. Where did that self come from? What sustains/sustained it? That is the path out of this mess.

To “go under,” as Nietzsche once said…