Initially, I was flabbergasted to be assigned a children’s book to write a journal entry. I vaguely remember the story of the Lorax, how and why am I supposed to write a 300 hundred word response to a story designed for children? I walked away from my computer, frustrated at this assignment. I returned to my desk an hour later and thought, “Ed and Karen know what they are doing, there has to be something I can take away from this story”.
Subsequently reading The Lorax for the first time in well over a decade, it took me by surprise. I felt as though the children’s book was telling a modern tale of capitalism with regards to industry. It is my opinion that this story has been relevant since the original publication in 1971, and has continued …show more content…
The roots of the injustices to our environment reside in our human mentality of ignorance and greed. In the beginning, the Once-ler [in their own mind] was doing no harm, “Look, Lorax, I said. There´s no cause for alarm. I chopped just one tree. I am doing no harm. I´m being quite useful.” This notion that small-scale harm to the environment for human benefit is how I imagine most of the environmentally damaging industrial companies started. The notion of “it’s not too bad, human’s need goods and if someone’s going to make money off of it, it ought to be me!” Capitalism and the idea of “The American Dream” have graced our society with displaced wildlife, rampant pollution, lack of sustainable practices, and all the while greed and ignorance are flourishing. Once these small scale industries learned how much money there was to be made by privatizing profits and publicizing the costs, it’s no wonder we’re in this predicament. The Once-lers’ of the world have continued to make our planet uninhabitable for the Truffula Trees, Brown Bar-ba-loots, Swomee-Swans, Humming Fish, and once their work was done, they left a trail of pollution behind them. Rinse and repeat, the injustices to our environment have uncontrollably ensued across our once beautiful
Subsequently reading The Lorax for the first time in well over a decade, it took me by surprise. I felt as though the children’s book was telling a modern tale of capitalism with regards to industry. It is my opinion that this story has been relevant since the original publication in 1971, and has continued …show more content…
The roots of the injustices to our environment reside in our human mentality of ignorance and greed. In the beginning, the Once-ler [in their own mind] was doing no harm, “Look, Lorax, I said. There´s no cause for alarm. I chopped just one tree. I am doing no harm. I´m being quite useful.” This notion that small-scale harm to the environment for human benefit is how I imagine most of the environmentally damaging industrial companies started. The notion of “it’s not too bad, human’s need goods and if someone’s going to make money off of it, it ought to be me!” Capitalism and the idea of “The American Dream” have graced our society with displaced wildlife, rampant pollution, lack of sustainable practices, and all the while greed and ignorance are flourishing. Once these small scale industries learned how much money there was to be made by privatizing profits and publicizing the costs, it’s no wonder we’re in this predicament. The Once-lers’ of the world have continued to make our planet uninhabitable for the Truffula Trees, Brown Bar-ba-loots, Swomee-Swans, Humming Fish, and once their work was done, they left a trail of pollution behind them. Rinse and repeat, the injustices to our environment have uncontrollably ensued across our once beautiful