I’ve lost my faith. Once, I believed as most believed. It would be a virtue to own a Ferrari. It would be a sign that the gods had smiled upon me and blessed me with prosperity, or at least with the right to carry huge debt servicing charges. But the central myth that fueled that belief has fallen under the march of modernism. A fundamental tenet of my faith was the conviction that our resources are limitless. Always, there will be gasoline to power our Ferraris. Always there will be landfill sites to receive their worn-out bodies. Always, the planet will forgive our excesses.
But the demystifying light of modern reason has blasted our primitive assumptions to smithereens. We could well exhaust our oil fields. We could easily turn our planet into a giant garbage dump. And, as recent extreme weather events have shown us, the planet is not as forgiving as we might wish.
Like most who lose their faith, I grieve, and I grieve in all the ways that grief manifests itself. I deny that anything is wrong and fantasize about a day when I, too, will get my Ferrari. After all, the gods have not forgotten me. Then I grow angry. I blame all the stupid people who have contributed to the problem, who drive their Ferraris like there’s no tomorrow. All the while, I ignore my own bad habits, like the two truckloads of garbage I shipped to the dump the last time I moved. When the anger subsides, I resort to bargaining: please, oh god of the Ferraris, at least let me have a Tesla. If not a Tesla, how about a Prius?
When oh when will acceptance come? When oh when will I accept that the old gods of the Ferraris are dead? Why can’t I simply accept that the modern world can easily accommodate feet and bicycles?
Sometimes, especially when I loll in a haze of nostalgia, I remember the good old days when the world was a simpler place, when my faith was true and my future certain. But after I’ve snapped out of it, I realize that it would be horrible to own a Ferrari in these times. I would have to drift in a state of perpetual delusion, believing that all those people who stare at my sweet ride and photograph me as I whiz past churches are staring in admiration instead of quietly thinking to themselves: there goes another Luddite asshole clinging to his primitive religion!