When Everything Changed by Edward M Wolfe Page B

the earth’s population
was too much for the planet to sustain, and with our previously over-crowded
cities and the fact that seven billion people live on the planet, I always
assumed they were probably right. But the Guardians said that we only use a
small fraction of our land mass and that our real problem is that we’re overly
condensed and we try to support too many people in too few locations. So they
started an expansion project, building new cities and spreading out the
population.
    They explained that having people live in smaller communities
instead of metropolis sized cities enhances the quality of life for everyone
and reduces crime and antisocial behavior. In a big city, everyone is anonymous
and doesn’t fear committing a crime against the strangers they live amongst.
But in a smaller town, everyone is at least familiar with everyone else and
they’d know for example if one of the residents robbed the pharmacy or raped
someone.
    Another thing that’s really cool is that there are more artists
now than ever before. If you have real talent, or even potential talent, then
that becomes your job with full training and education – at no cost. But even
though you might call that “subsidized art” it’s not like people are putting a
crucifix in a jar of urine and calling it art. I’m talking about real amazing
paintings and music and sculptures and new forms of art we never had before. I
can spend an entire day in an Art Centre and not even notice the time passing.
    When you go outside now everything looks fantastic.  It’s
like our cities are brand new with fresh paint everywhere and no broken down or
abandoned buildings. There’s no graffiti on buildings or signs. Trash doesn’t
blow down the streets or accumulate in the gutters like it used to. Everywhere
you go there are trees and flowers and streams and ponds and birds and animals.
 And fruit grows everywhere. If you get hungry while you’re walking down
the street, you can always grab fresh fruit right off a nearby tree.
    The fact that we had people around the world dying of starvation
is one of the things that made them very angry with us. They said food grows
naturally, but instead of planting seeds everywhere that food could grow, we
constantly reduced and consolidated the number of food producers while always
increasing the number of consumers. And because of our greed and self-centered
way of living, in our country we literally threw away tons of good food every
day that no one purchased, while others would forage in garbage bins outside of
restaurants to stay alive.
    Crime is practically non-existent.  The way they eliminated
crime from our cities is a perfect example of how they didn’t change us
directly, but they caused us to become different by altering other things that
affected us. They told us that personal crime and national crime were among the
primary reasons why they came here. They were disgusted by how we treated each
other. They called us “functionally insane.” They said we not only failed to
come up with solutions that should’ve been obvious to a child of average
intelligence, but even worse, we failed to adopt solutions that our few wise
ancestors gave to us long ago.
    As far as violent crimes against people go, you could say they
have a zero-tolerance policy. And it’s not like the stupid version we had
before they came. They don’t arrest children for bringing plastic soldiers to
school because the soldier has a tiny, plastic gun, for example. In our
pretense at “doing something” about crime, we’d arrest harmless children with
harmless toys as if they were dangerous criminals, which did nothing but
demonstrate what awful role models we were and did nothing to solve real
problems.
    At the same time we turned homicidal maniacs loose upon society
after they “served their time,” knowing they’d kill and maim again.
    They say we are like blind, greedy children, only worse, because
children don’t typically