Bulldozer Theory

Adrenaline Boots is my name, Amateur Philosophy is my game.

The way that I make sense of the world is to create visual analogies that neatly illustrate complex theories. They don’t always stand up to thorough cross-examination, but they are a handy little shortcut to provide some clarity.

The Bulldozer Theory has been kicking around in my head for a while. Let’s imagine that we all come onto this earth as a bulldozer. Not all bulldozers are built the same. Some have natural advantages. Better grip on their tracks. A sharper blade or smoother hydraulics. Every bulldozer is situated on some sort of terrain. A level field of soft earth. A slightly more rocky and uneven landscape or completely hostile and unyielding topography.

Bulldozer’s: Start Your Engines

In this analogy we are the bulldozers and the terrain is our life situation. A healthy baby born into a happy, middle-income home in suburban Sydney is a shiny new bulldozer on a bed of luscious soil. In the beginning the going is easy. They trundle along with barely any obstacles. But along the way, they are picking up more dirt. Every push forward, more of the soil of life accumulates. Some rocks get in the way and slow the progress. If all goes well enough, this baby bulldozer will be doing its work for many productive years. But in this analogy, the bulldozer never gets to dump it’s load. The load grows exponentially. The dirt that it picked up in the beginning is still there at the end….along with a whole lotta other dirt picked up along the way. The dirt is our life experience. We carry our life experience with us from birth to death. The load grows everyday. That is why when we get older, we get more tired. We have more to push. More rocks, more dirt and our machine ain’t what it used to be.

Some bulldozers have been pushing shit up hill from the very beginning. Unhealthy bulldozers in unhealthy societies. Big rocks of misfortune scattered in their path from day one. Pushing a load they are not equipped to deal with. Some sputter out and breakdown early. Others have the resilience to keep going, but it doesn’t mean that their load is any lighter. We cannot compare the loads of any two bulldozers, for every bulldozer is different and they handle their dirt in their own unique way. Every bulldozer is alone in their struggle or their duty or their career or their calling or even their torturous hell of dirt pushing. There are endless combinations of factors that determine how we will fare in life. We did not choose our bulldozer; we did not choose our terrain. We cannot remember every grain of experience and yet it all stays with us.

I suppose the bulldozer theory could be seen as quite depressing, but I don’t intend it to be so. It is merely acknowledgement that it can be difficult to push our load, it can hamper our progress. But our only choice is to keep pushing forward and to be cognizant of the fact that everyone is pushing their own load, no bulldozer gets a free pass. A big, messy pile of dirt and rocks and debris is a sign of life experience, challenges met, time spent on earth. It is not a question of whether life is hard. It is. The question is: can we keep pushing our load with dignity and sift through the dirt of our experience to find the meaning?

Young Bulldozer Pup at the Start of Life