When Nature Isn't Beautiful

I'm watching PBS right now and there is a special on about forest fire. I'm amazed at this program because apparently when they started using prescribed fire in Sequoia National Park, tourists thought the burnt trees were ugly because they were scarred black in places.

How can people be so fucking shallow? How can something that affirms life be ugly? How can something that occurs in nature, without the touch of a human hand, be considered ugly? I suppose many people find it easy to find ugliness in nature; we are so used to contrived settings and manicured lawns.

But I thought the entire point of going to a "nature" sight was to remove oneself from the preordained idea of natural beauty and to experience a place or a thing the way it would be if unblemished by humans? Am I completely off base here?

Lately I am surprised that the human race has managed to survive this long without killing each other off. I am so incensed by stupid people. These people who buy into all the manufactured crap and never question anything except their jobs and their spouses. I am bitter at the world for allowing us as a race to go on when it is so obvious that we've lost touch with all the important things in life.

I'm not saying that I haven't bought in to the very same marketing and crap as everyone else; I am just as guilty as you are. But there is a part of me that is absolutely repulsed that I even care whether or not I drive a cute car or wear trendy clothing. And maybe I'm becoming more and more materialistic (that's probably true since I'm richer now than I've ever been) but this part of me grows louder every day.

When you become consumed with things you need/want to buy, and think about all the ways in which you can spend your money, there is a loss of innocence that is probably irreversable. Even if you are saving money every time you get more you always have a way to spend it, filling the void where your money would automatically rack up if you just left it alone. For what, I wonder?

Thoreau said simplify.

I know what he means; I'm not sure I have the ability to do it, even though I have a strange fear that if I don't follow his methodology I will end up dead of a heart attack at a relatively young (and unhappy) age.