I'll be doing research for the play and immersing myself in the Catskills - the environment that isn't always mentioned in the gas industry's promotion of hydrofracking. Money doesn't grow on trees in the woods.
I'll also be there June 8 and have more conversations with people who are affected by hydrofracking.
In a conversation with D.S. she wanted me to talk with her father because he
is very pro-fracking, but in his actions he is a very liberal person. It's a mystery to her and all of us really how a person can hold a political opinion that is seemingly contrary to the way he or she acts. We all do it, I think, but why? Why support fracking when there is nothing personally gained from it? Or personally lost? Does taking a position on an issue create a persona from which a person can define who they are in the world, so that they can communicate to others who they want to know and how they want to know them? Is taking a position a way to filter out who and what you think ideally would make your world better?
Most of us have ideals that, when challenged by reality, we set aside simply because trying to achieve those ideals means losing too much else that is in really important.
My impression so far in Delaware County and New York State is that HVHF (high volume hydraulic fracturing) is a debate in the conditional tense. The powerful interests of NYC know very well what could happen to the water supply. The land owners know what could happen to their land. They know what would happen with drilling rigs and trucks industrializing their land. The gas companies know what could be invested and what they could get out of Marcellus Shale. They beliive we would be energy independent, we would have more jobs, we would have more economic development and lower levels of poverty, etc. All sides in the debate know what should happen based on what they know could or would happen.
Holding an opinion that is different from how we act, I think, is a reflection of living in the conditional tense in relationship to the real world that doesn't live up to the ideal we crave. We can't live the ideal, so the political persona lets us test the conditions of life and people around us before we have to act in reality. We use the persona as a way to filter out the reminders of reality which contradict our ideal.
In hydrofracking, if the NY State makes hydrofracking legal and anyone can sell mineral rights to a gas company, the person who believes hydrofracking would be beneficial to the local economy might be confrontred with the reality of a company putting up a rig next to his property and contaminating his well. All of a sudden the conditions he is living in are in the present tense. He would start wanting to blow up wells like Weibo in Weibo's War, perhaps.
I'll also be there June 8 and have more conversations with people who are affected by hydrofracking.
In a conversation with D.S. she wanted me to talk with her father because he
is very pro-fracking, but in his actions he is a very liberal person. It's a mystery to her and all of us really how a person can hold a political opinion that is seemingly contrary to the way he or she acts. We all do it, I think, but why? Why support fracking when there is nothing personally gained from it? Or personally lost? Does taking a position on an issue create a persona from which a person can define who they are in the world, so that they can communicate to others who they want to know and how they want to know them? Is taking a position a way to filter out who and what you think ideally would make your world better?
Most of us have ideals that, when challenged by reality, we set aside simply because trying to achieve those ideals means losing too much else that is in really important.
My impression so far in Delaware County and New York State is that HVHF (high volume hydraulic fracturing) is a debate in the conditional tense. The powerful interests of NYC know very well what could happen to the water supply. The land owners know what could happen to their land. They know what would happen with drilling rigs and trucks industrializing their land. The gas companies know what could be invested and what they could get out of Marcellus Shale. They beliive we would be energy independent, we would have more jobs, we would have more economic development and lower levels of poverty, etc. All sides in the debate know what should happen based on what they know could or would happen.
Holding an opinion that is different from how we act, I think, is a reflection of living in the conditional tense in relationship to the real world that doesn't live up to the ideal we crave. We can't live the ideal, so the political persona lets us test the conditions of life and people around us before we have to act in reality. We use the persona as a way to filter out the reminders of reality which contradict our ideal.
In hydrofracking, if the NY State makes hydrofracking legal and anyone can sell mineral rights to a gas company, the person who believes hydrofracking would be beneficial to the local economy might be confrontred with the reality of a company putting up a rig next to his property and contaminating his well. All of a sudden the conditions he is living in are in the present tense. He would start wanting to blow up wells like Weibo in Weibo's War, perhaps.
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