NOT SELF-RELIANT!

Timely to the editorial example shared in class today about the questionable progress of our country and its dependency on petroleum, I found a link entitled The Price of Our Oil Addiction surfing CNN. The Price of Our Oil Addiction.  The adverse economic and environmental affects of the oil production in the Niger River delta are shown in this short documentary. The oil production in this region first hoped to progress the areas society positively, economically, and socially has degraded the quality of the Nigerian citizens lives. Under condition of oil pipes exploding, poor working conditions,the oil industry has taken over the lives of the Nigerian citizens. The most shocking information was that "the primary food source for the Nigerian community since the 1960s have used the heat from the flare of the oil production to bake their food (cassaba) which is equivalent to using the tail pipe of your car to bake bread." These outlandish conditions bring me to the words of Thoreau in his short essay Economy. "The laboring man has no leisure for a true integrity day by day...he has no time to be anything but a machine...the finest qualities of nature-can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly" The working and living conditions of the Nigerian community fit to perfectly into this description. The Nigerian man wake up each morning in a drone or work that is ever present and never ending. The oil companies are the culprits of this machinery, destroying the lives of a community that they thought had no hope or significance but the truth is that all human beings deserve their rights to prosper and follow their dreams. Conditions like these are prevalent in most third world countries because richer and stronger nations believe they are above these nations. "The gross feeder is a man in the larva state; and these are whole nations in that condition, nations without fancy or imagination, whose vast abdomens betray them." Although the oil companies are not insects in the larva state their mass greed to take over nations that are weaker then them transcends to their inability to connect with the higher being and be self-reliant. In the insectivorous state the power hungry country thrives off of everything but itself, seeking oil products in another country by using that countries resources people and land to make a profit. in light of our transcendentalism texts and the maxims they address, the oil production in the Nigerian delta would be mortifying to Thoreau and Emerson who would have inumerous critiques to bring the situation to overall higher prevalence of self-reliance and individuality.