The Overgrowth of Overgrowth

This is an opinion meant to poke fun of all the companies, schools, hospitals, homes, government buildings and other places that are showing how "GREEN" they really are by growing Goya or Ivy plants to cover buildings under the guise that it will save on cooling costs and emit oxygen and filter out harmful carbon monoxide. I do not mock and poke fun of the ideology here. I think it is great to do what we can to enhance the environment. But I am not convinced that this was thought through for very long. 
In England they have old homes covered in the green foliage and there is a quaint nuance about it. But the majority of it is covering BRICK buildings. This is important. I have seen over the years Ivy type foliage do serious damage to buildings and frames and in my old home that we lived in for a couple of years in Torrance we had this mystery beast Ivy.

It was a mystery because I lost so many toys in that mess. My favorite hot wheels gone. The greatest jumbo marble that could win every time... ricochet and landed in the lost world. Look as hard as I could it was consumed by the beast. We even had plants consumed by the beast. There was a five foot tall Yucca tree but it was being mummified by the ivy. It was evil and sinister the way the beast slithered up the tree and one day we notice it was almost gone.

The real final straw that happened to cause the beast to cross a line was when it allowed its weapons of defense to get out of control. The bugs were like something from Beetle juice. they were everywhere. That is what hindered most search and rescues for my hot wheels. The wolf spiders were horrendous. Who ever was first out of the house in the morning was met with a series of disgusting spider webs spanning our walkway. I'd sometimes walk half way to school picking webs out of my hair. This was one website that I truly hated. The crossing the line was when my Mother was almost mummified by the webbing while leaving the house to go to church. She felt gross and wanted to change her clothes. You always have that eery thought okay where is the stupid spider?

That week the Ivy was doomed.

In Japan, there is a push by the religion of environMENTALism. It appears under the umbrella of ECOism. It's friendly and green. I stress the mental part. Like a lot of religion the mental state of ones adherent can be quite cultish. What is driving a lot of today's bandwagon knee-jerk reaction is fear. Fear of a negative label. The other thing is greed.

Negative labeling is the weapon of choice for humanity gone wild without morality. When people don't like something they just shoot it with a negative label. Intolerant is like the "S" word in this religion. Fanatic is another one but not too bad. The worst is the big "F" word of "Fundamentalist Evangelical Christian!" This tactic has been around since the Garden of Eden. Satan used it to label God in a way that deceived Eve into doing something that, had she truly thought it through, may have never done it. The believers in Jesus during Acts were labeled as "Christians". Meant to be a derogatory word but wound up becoming a word of honor. I think though we have come full circle and once again are being labeled as a negative thing to be a Christian.

When a sports star commits a sin in the eyes of the world. Don't get me started on the hypocrisy here in this religion. They all know the person is sinning but as long as no one says anything there is the "No harm no foul" commandment. Yet when harm is cried then the rule kicks in. Those associated with sponsoring such a villain will be labeled as well and banned and punished for their support of such said sin. As if a corporate sponsor knew anything about their life or cared. But as in many cases it is the sponsors that egg on bad behavior to bring about a profit. Their loud voices booming the mantra and goose stepping with the mainstream media condemning the star, "We are shocked and disappointing at this turn of events. Though we are neutral on this we must remove ourselves from the negative press." This loyal act causes stock prices to climb as the ECOist applaud and cheer for the alleged martyrdom. Which leads into point two that the driving force of today's corporate mentalism is greed.

The greed part is that they have discovered there is money in green mental-ness. The companies are getting people to throw away perfectly good products for newer ones. to prove to be a dutiful follower and show loyalty by diving in financially and showing you're one of the faithful. The hybrid car craze, or the 100% recyclable products, or the Eco friendly AC units all are part of the greed driven mental state. Now I am not saying a hybrid car is bad. It's great. The car company though is deceitful in its representation of facts and qualifications. Like they take a car in a class and change out the seats for light cheap ones. They take the tires off and put on smaller ones and lower the profile and change the weight. Then they get a better rating according to the guidelines set to sell the normal car as a special ECO car. They can take an over taxed car and push it as Eco and you fell like your getting a discount but your getting ripped off from the cool ride you could have had. The 100% recyclable products deal is good. But aren't all products, if you really tried, recyclable? Some electronics are not I know. But this is a ploy to toss your bad not real 100% recyclable product in the trash thus creating more trash and then selling you a cheap item that jambs and slurps recyclable ink like no tomorrow. The recyclablity of a product rests solely on the consumer to take responsibility to properly trash can the item. If you trash can a 100% recyclable product guess what? It ain't getting recycled. The AC units are really a joke. You throw away a good machine for a machine that makes you feel good. but then you're told to not run it at full power. You must set it to maximize the ECO features so that it cools less and saves energy. You sweat your brains out feeling good about how cool you are with your piece of junk. If you want to have true eco AC. Just open your windows it'll probably be cooler and cheaper.

So back to the reason why I am writing this. The companies, schools, hospitals, homes, government buildings and other places that are now reacting to pressure to conform for the new religion are not thinking about things. I forsee a Logan's Run type future where all buildings are overgrown with overgrowth. In the "Jungle Book" King Louey's palace was covered in foliage. In the secret garden the gate was overgrown. The garden was a secret because no one could find the entrance.

The future in japan is going to be a tremendous amount of websites that need to be deleted. The spiders that spin off from this will entrap society in a web of frustration and wondering where that stupid spider is at. The other frustration is people won't want to go to a place covered by a beast that will eat their money and gross them out, and cause hair raising problems.

I really wish the people of Japan would think through their Evironmentalism. They are going to be like a lot of blind cultists who are groping for a door of opportunity only to find themselves locked out and consumed by the beast. That or they will be doing the spider web dance of wanting to be free.