What did Leonard Cohen mean by the following exerpt from 'The Future'?

Question

Take the only tree thats left
and stuff it up the hole
in your culture


[I wonder what he meant]

Hey whats wrong with being a whacked out Canuck hippie anyway? At least we're not the ones consuming everything in sight, trashing the world and making millions live in misery...

Answer 1

Leonard is pissed off because western civilization has dirtied its own nest and destroyed the beauty of earth. He insults the culture and breaks with it by saying "what good is one last tree? You might as well shove it where the sun don't shine: right up your blindness."

Answer 2

According to some the future will be desolate with few surviving a nuclear explosion or other technological disaster.
If you are alone in the future, culture as it is will be a past dream. Too few will be left for it to be complete and with the one remaining tree that hasn't been cut down for manufacturing you can fill in the missing and useless pieces of culture that are missing.

Answer 3

The kind of culture that would allow the world to get to a state where only one tree is left, is the kind of culture with a giant, gaping hole in it--not a very good culture at all!

We need to control our culture, change it when it doesn't suit the world anymore--not let tradition continue to dominate us.

Answer 4

I think that Canuck hippy was a little too wacked out on heroin to mean anything. "So Long Marianne" is a much better song anyway.

I think what he really meant is that our culture is depleting our natural resources, and when that happens, take the last tree and shove it.

Answer 5

"Tree" is a metaphor for anything you give half a **** about. Basically saying screw you and screw contemporary societal norms. "Give me the Belin Wall; Give me St. Paul;" He is saying give me back my strife--Paul was Saul, before the Pharisee "saw the light;" and as a lawful-militant Jew he condemned Christians, therefore contributing to the never-ending struggle which so many fine fascinatingly appealing--"It's lonely here, there's no one left to torture." the Berlin wall--even though it was torn down--still exists, as if it were still erect, as a symbol of division, struggle, and--in general--humanity at its "finest." "Things are going to slide in all direction. Won't be nothing you can measure anymore." speaks to the assumption that once religion--any religion which preaches morals and values as a means for one to successfully cohabitate in society--or any moral institution has run its course, humans will inevitably return to a state-of-nature where all will return to the self-serving, egotistical, narcissists which human-kind all are at their very core. Mr. Cohen, here, speaks of the truth which humanity shall invariably discover once the façade of the flesh has been shed.