Empire State Building Before Earth Hour

From Susannaspeier.com

Twitter Fail

Earth Hour may have hit the #1 spot on Twitter but from what I could tell, the social media hype was disproportionate with the event’s reality.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love what the World Wildlife Foundation is all about.  In fact, last year and this year I embraced their Earth Hour wholeheartedly — shut off the lights, unplugged the power strips,  Poured the wine, lit the candles and swapped my technologically-obsessed social media addict hat for my luddite-for an-hour one, determined to embrace this globally observed energy conservation ritual’s radiosilence.

Brooklyn Fail

I looked out my window to the windows across the way.  The shadowy brown and black silhouettes of the surrounding turn of the last century highrises girding Grand Army Plaza’s marble arch’s white and violet glow had not changed at all.  Something was off, yes.  It was not the electricity, though.

It didn’t matter what the likes, hashtags and Twitterstream surges had been and were continuing to indicate.  Brooklyn was oblivious to Earth Hour.

Not a single one went out.  True to my intentions, I spent unplugged the hour scribbling observations on a yellow notepad by tea candlelight.

Ritual Fail

Rituals with sticking power are infectious as a hit summer blockbuster.  They are not the created by well intended non-profits. They are a cultural invasion and an accident.  Rituals with sticking power surge up from a deeply visceral collective impulse that is rarely understood at the time of the surge.  Whether they want to be or not, people get sucked in by their centers of gravity.  Rituals, like languages, evolve through practice as their context is defined and re-defined.

Empire State Building During Earth Hour: Note that with the exception of those three major buildings, none of the other lights got shut off

From Susannaspeier.com

Esperanto Epilogue

Think about this this way: Earth Hour is as synthetic –not to mention well intended– as Esperanto. The 20th century language was developed by a utopian global village advocate. The political and sociological driven language, however soon proved itself to be devoid of sticking power.

Though designed to be easy to learn, Esperanto’s inherent lack of spontaneity was its downfall. Although small clusters of Esperanto devotees can still be found all over the world, there are far more Ancient Greek speakers in the world than there are Esperantists.