CW 6

To no one in particular,

Funky bourgeois aesthetics: the destruction of extraterrestrial nature and the consumption of a 'hygienic' recreation of it

Sorry if this messages has reached you after a long delay. Our transmitters have been on the fritz after an unidentified ship scrambled the software. 

Eanika decided that she was going to drag me out of the habitat the other day. Mobility, as I've explained is always an issue, especially for her since she spends many of her days indoors with our littlest one. But an ad on her holoterminal for a "farmer's market" at a "stud farm" had her willing to brave the wait for a transporter and the inevitable heat, dust, and polluted air that we'd encounter outside of the habitat. I wasn't too happy about the situation. In fact, I was fairly upset about it mainly because I wanted to stay inside and sleep. But everyone (not me) was excited by the promise of frozen treats, bubble spectacles, and animals.

Things were off to rocky start when we tried to call a personal transporter but then became comical when a trip to a farm turned into a traffic jam on the small farm road because everyone decided that they were going to travel in their biggest, most energy consuming personal transporter. I quickly understood that people from the most urbane parts of the planet had come to be seen in a rustic, authentic setting. Their hair was slicked back. Their shades were polished. Their shoes were polished. Their dress was pressed. And they walked with their servants behind them through a curated collection of stalls selling "homely" jams and tchotchkes made of wood and straw by slum-dwellers who were paid an incredibly small fraction of the exorbitant price they were sold at this market.. A bit of dirt and straw was scattered on the asphalt, probably swept in from the road leading to the "stud farm" to make it look at bit more authentic. Farms are dirty. Animals eat and rest on straw. We wouldn't normally walk on dirt or straw--it's dirty--but we'll indulge in it here and we'll put on our best clothes and arrive in our clean transporter to do it. The farm animals on parade were in pitiful state. A young boy hailed my young ones to come look at the puppies. They were strays that someone had taken from their mother. I saw her as I exited the market. She waited, hoping that the young boy would bring her brood back.

This planet was colonized because it was in an absolutely pristine state and presented the greatest chance for settlers to survive. It is many cases still gorgeous and lively and wild. But we've managed to kill so much of it off. And to a certain extent, I think we know that we miss what we've destroyed. But the natural world has only become acceptable in a hobbled form. The word "hygienic" appears everywhere. Everything is packaged "hygienically." And everyone makes a big deal of things being "hygienic." 

- How was your food?

- It was hygienic.

To be rich means to learn not to live with the world as it is. The servants are quartered away in slums and on the sides of roads. Nature is killed off it can't be allowed to exist unless it can be plundered or be made to conform. We can't allow natural scents. Everything must be overly chemicalized. Natural floral smells will be transformed into scents that will blow your sinuses out. And people pay money for that. And in doing all of this, the air we breathe is brown, poisoned. The water is brown. Also poisoned. The animals are dying. Poisoned. We're slowly killing ourselves and this planet. We've fucked it. And I don't know that there's any coming back from this. We're going to have to settle the entire planet some place else. But not before countless species of plants and animals die and not before the humans that are the least able to leave are murdered by the funky bourgeois in his flat shoes and white slacks who kicks at some dirt before putting in a designer bag the poorly made crafts that his wife bought from the other bougie matron who sold the world.