The Shower AKA Power Saver

Atop the toilet seat sits the laptop, which blasts Disco. The heating in the bedroom has already been cranked, in preparation for the exit. Step into the shower, and the water hits you and is piping hot. It’s lovely. “Enough is enough, I can’t go on,” Donna and Barbara (1) scream in the background as you squeeze into your hand a quarter size dab of shampoo (Read: Lab manufactured-non-Ph-neutral concoctions, many unfit for our environments let alone our bodies and allergies). The same can be said of the soap, which I lavishly slather all over my body. Twice.


The shower is long and hearty, lasting three to four tunes. In terms of Disco, that’s a long, hot, luscious shower complete with fresh apple or coconut scents heavily abode. “We are family, get up everybody and sang!” (2)


So, if indeed we are family, then we are somehow responsible for the well being of one another; to what extend is arguable. Nonetheless, most of us, as societies, animatedly debate the topic. We discuss environmentalism, and squabble over resources such as water, petroleum, land and food. Rights of trade are but the pawns, and we, at times, simply the sheep. What I assert to be at the core, however, is the American’s right to his or her shower.


Many talk the talk of love, peace, and respect for one another, a just foreign policy, or a globalization that far exceeds the ambitions of a mere consumer capitalist globalization. Yet, from where I stand, under my high pressure, massage shower head, and as I rock my hips, squint my eyes, snap my fingers, bop my neck and stomp my feet, I know the reality is that few of my compatriots are genuinely prepared to adopt this attitude in their daily lives. Few anywhere, I believe, are prepared to share resources even with the knowledge that global hunger could end today if resources were ever so slightly more equitably distributed. Too few really, really, really monopolize far too much.


“Clams on the half shell and roller skates. Good times! These are the good times!” (3) In the United States, there are good times for many. In fact, for those involved in certain industries, good times never cease; for Halliburton and the Carlyle Group , for example, wartime is high-profit time! Yet, what is indisputable is that for the nations most prosperous and an increasingly sizable cohort of systematically poor, values are skewed concerning the link between, decimation of natural resources, global poverty and hunger, and the ways in which the individual interacts with such resources commonly available to them in their environment. With this, I genuinely question the progress that we as a global people are able to make to end suffering, much of which is caused by mismanagement and abuse of natural resources.


Nobel Peace Laureate Professor Wangari Maathi asserts that the global community’s (Read: Humankind) relation to the environment is essentially the root of massive human suffering in the line of poverty and hunger. As these lines are written and perhaps being read, we degrade our environment to such an extent that agrarian peoples who formerly sustained themselves and their kin for generations are no longer cap/able to provide for their own; profit driven dreams and ambitions of some place these peoples in line for the development dole. It is clear that global hunger could end immediately if existing food resources were more equitably distributed.


In her Nobel acceptance speech, Dr. Maathi offers the challenge to redefine peace, with the understanding that “there can be no peace without equitable development; and there can be no development without sustainable management of the environment in a democratic and peaceful space.” In extension, the personal is the political; the manners in which we live our daily lives do concern the political realm.


If those who monopolize these resources could be as empowered as the citizens involved in the Green Belt Movement to affect their respective government’s environmental policies by both ensuring democratic participation and representation as well as incorporate efforts to stall the desecration of natural resources in their daily lives, a significant shift could be made towards peace. Yet, as it stands, gasoline is remarkably inexpensive in the United States as are energy expenses in general. As a lifestyle, we waste, and expect the rest of the world to shift resources towards our needs. This is indeed unsustainable for the message is spreading that there is a cyclic relationship between the way we degrade the environment and the way we erode democratic participation in governance. Further, the role of the multinational corporation in degrading the environment and contributing to global and local poverty is increasingly placed in public awareness and debate.


Knowledge is power and ignorance aids in monopolizing that power. Power is addictive and corrupting. “I don’t want a cure for this. I got the sweetest hangover.”(4) This is perhaps the tune to which we gluttonously drive huge gas-guzzling vehicles with technologically retarded government sanctioned filtration systems. Power, when used responsibly, can facilitate peace. Irresponsibly however, or drunkenly mused by the sweet fruits of the exploited labor and resources of others in our global community is not acceptable.


1) Donna Summer featuring Barbara Streisand, “No More Tears (Enough is Enough),” 1979

2) Sister Sledge, “We are Family,” 1979

3) Chic, “Good Times”, Epic 1976

4) Diana Ross, “Love Hangover,” 1976