Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 18:39:41 -0500
From: Betsy Barnum {at: http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pfvs/jun99/msg00749.html }
Organization: Great River Earth Institute
To: positive-futures@igc.org [no longer hosted there. D.]
Subject: Re: [pf] Re: Giving things up when no one else does
Well, gang, I got a little carried away in this answer to tully, so I'll warn you
up front that it's long and if you don't want to read further, feel free to delete
now. This has been a very thought-provoking exchange, and in my typical fashion, I
have let that carry me into convoluted fields of prose. I acknowledge this, and
apologize to those for whom this is any kind of problem.
Now, on to the discussion.
tully wrote:
> OK. That was one rationalization and you've provided others, so it seems
> fair to say that lots of rationalizations surround this idea of why
> sustainability is not possible.
I am not saying sustainability is not possible. I know it is. We already know how
to do it. And I think a lot of people who aren't leaping with both feet into a
sustainable way of life *right now* feel the same -- sustainability is both possible
and desirable.
I don't really think we disagree, tully, as you said before. What I would like to
say is that even if a person like me is not living in a tipi, off the grid, with no
car, no furniture and no food coming from farther away than the immediate
neighborhood, I can still be committed to sustainability and to pushing the
cultural change that has to happen for it to become a reality.
Your comments the other day came off as extreme, and it *did* sound to me that you
were saying all-or-nothing. I understand now, I think, what you meant. And I do
have a somewhat, though not fundamentally, different perspective on these issues.
I think it is essential to address the cultural barriers to sustainability--not
just the big heavy systems that are in place, but the beliefs and worldviews that
block people from moving rapidly toward a sustainable life. How can it be that
people see the destruction, know the situation is getting worse, know the life
they're living isn't satisfying--and yet they don't do anything? I don't think it's
because people are just lazy and have lots of rationalizations and follow the crowd
in a sheep-like manner. There are a whole complex of reasons for this.
- We live in a culture that puts tremendous pressure on us to be consumers--to the
point of addiction. Consumer culture has been deliberately crafted over the past
century or so by the captains of industry to ensure continued growth in the economy
and money in their pockets. Advertising and marketing now use the most
sophisticated information available on human psychology to get their messages past
even our unconscious defenses. It is even becoming common for anthropologists to be
part of market research. They're finding every way possible to get us to buy.
- It's my opinion that people in Western culture, which is where the
high-consumption life developed and is spreading out from, learn to see the world
and themselves in ways that encourage lack of groundedness, isolation, low
self-esteem and a competitive approach to life. This is due to a society that has a
long history of separation from the Earth, worship of science and rationality and
discounting of spirituality and the more "right-brain" ways of knowing. To the
person disconnected from the Earth and discouraged from understanding herself in a
spiritual sense, consumer messages to find happiness in a new car or bigger house,
silk blouse or kitchen gadget, find a ready ear.
- Even when we become committed to changing our way of life, our system doesn't
offer sustainable choices, and for most people, without the support of a community,
finding ways to live sustainably is extremely difficult. Mass transit, as Nan
pointed out, is a good example.
Even where mass transit exists, often it is so inconvenient that a person would
have to trade a 16-minute freeway commute for an hour-and-a-half bus ride with a
20-minute transfer in the middle that involves standing on a downtown street corner
at rush hour (my situation a few years ago). It's no good saying that a person who
chooses the auto commute is rationalizing. She has kids at home, she has a life, or
would like to, apart from getting to and from work.
- And this leads up to what I think may be one of the most significant barriers to
sustainability, and that is fear. Fear about the ecological crisis, the
overwhelming size and scope of it, the almost unthinkable possibilities, despair
about the clearcutting of trees, the extinction of species, dread about global
warming. The despair and fear are so huge, people can't face them, so there is
denial and willful ignorance, a putting down of the head and focusing on one's own
life, not looking up. In our society, there is *no* place where talking about this,
or even crying about it, is acceptable. This fear has no outlet.
And then there's fear, also, with regard to money, job, security. It's not just
fear of the unknown--it's a life-or-death fear, a survival fear. Again, it's partly
the way our system is set up and partly the way we learn to think about ourselves
and the meaning of community. Consumer culture needs us to be isolated, so we will
each have to buy all the things instead of sharing them. We are told over and over
that we need money to meet our needs. It's the only way. Cash. To get it, we need a
job, and we need to keep the job even if we dislike it or we are overworked or it's
a toxic situation. Some people's reaction to "Buy Nothing Day" has been anger,
because if people bought nothing, they'd be out of a job. This is something that
efforts toward sustainability and simplicity just can't ignore or discount. It is
big.
Attitudes to community are also ambivalent at best, for lots of people. It's not that long ago that people in the U.S., and everywhere, lived in mutually
interdependent communities. Even the neighborhood I grew up in during the 50s and
60s was connected--all the mothers knew each other, the kids played in a big gang,
the dads took fishing trips and the couples took dance lessons together. We were in
and out of each other's houses all the time. Those days are gone.
But we also know that communities used to be much more connected than that. Women helped each other give birth, and prepared the dead for burial. Men helped each
other get the crops in and build the barns. Go further back, or to other cultures,
and every adult in the village was like a parent to every child. Young people
learned trades and skills from adults in apprenticeships. Go further yet, and the
earliest human groupings survived *only* because people helped each other, shared
food and shelter, cared for infants and pregnant women, cooperated both to get food
and to avoid becoming some other creature's food.
We're made to cooperate, but we learn that it's each person for himself, each
family alone, and that is how we behave. When it comes to sustainability, or the
idea that we could meet a lot of our needs for so much less money and resources if
we shared and helped each other, we just don't trust it. It's not like money in the
bank. Like Nan says, we have to learn how to be together, and it's not easy.
- One other reality we need to take into account is the global economy. In the
past hundred years corporations have manipulated the political system and the
federal courts to obtain the rights of individual citizens. From this place of
legal protection, where it is very difficult to challenge their actions except one
at a time, corporations have accumulated tremendous financial and political power.
Now many of the largest economies in the world are not nations but corporations.
With trade agreements like NAFTA, and the World Trade Organization making decisions
that supercede laws, corporations in effect have more power than governments. They
are running things, and their goal is continued economic growth and profit. The
destruction of ecosystems, extinction of species, obliteration of human cultures,
or any other result of the drive to maximize profit are considered unfortunate but
not very important. Only money matters.
I think these realities about our culture need to be acknowledged and addressed in
order for any movement toward sustainability to really succeed. That's why I take
umbrage at statements or implications that people, themselves, are the problem for
not doing what they ought to be doing. There's so much more to it than that. I
think people are fundamentally good, caring, delightful creatures but are shaped
and influenced by cultural assumptions that we take for granted and never even
examine, and circumscribed by forces like the global economy and the speed of
technology over which we have no individual control or say-so.
> I think we *can* take big steps and show how beneficial and
> self-satisfying they can be, as well as how much less impact will
> result. Simplifying can simply mean changing, not sacrificing anything of
> real importance.
This is where you have a job of convincing to do. This is one place where you run
into the above barriers, I think--people's unexamined acceptance of consumerism,
their fear of economic consequences, their fear and even revulsion at the idea of
becoming interdependent with other people in community. I agree that this kind of
big change can be very appealing to some people and at some times, but it isn't as
easy as just saying, hey, it'll be fun and not a sacrifice.
I live in a very community-minded neighborhood near downtown Minneapolis. Lots of
old hippies here--to them, this was a place to live and raise their families when
they got done with the University. But even here, community is more of an idea than
a reality. People want to live in a neighborhood that's connected, but they really
don't want to do much to maintain that connection. They want to consume it, just
the way they have learned to consume everything else.
I'm starting to sound pessimistic here, and I'm really not, at least not most of
the time. I've been *very* frustrated with my neighborhood lately, trying to get
some interest sparked in organizing a barter network or at least a directory with
information about who has what skills and interests. It seems people don't really
want to extend themselves to this degree to connect with their neighbors.
I have to step back and remind myself of all I've just said -- and not think of these
people as lazy and complacent. But it has been discouraging....
[Betsy: ]
> >Two, I think it is overwhelming for people to think of going from the typical
> >middle-class American way of life, to one of *no* fossile fuel use, *no*
> >electricity on the grid, *no* food from farther away than 200 miles, and
> >so on.
[tully: ]
> Not if the ways to do it are developed and demonstrated properly. Not if
> the consciousness of the people is changed to where we all *feel* the
> horror of what we are currently doing. Not if we can reach people's
> hearts. I think alot of those hearts are ripe for the picking, so to speak.
But this is the big part, tully -- changing consciousness, changing hearts. Do you
have ideas for how to do this? To me, this is the key to the whole thing. It's
exactly what my work is aimed at, inviting people to examine their values and
habits and assumptions, and bring their living into congruence with the values that
really mean the most to them. This is a means to change hearts, and it is a
one-by-one process, not fast. But I don't know any faster ways that are as deep and
lasting.
However, I also think that it won't be necessary for everyone's heart to change, or
even half the people, or even a third. I think it will take a small percentage
making a worldview shift, comprehending the consequences of their lifestyle, and
connecting with the Earth and with each other and *choosing* to make big changes in
their lives, to cause a wave that will sweep over the rest and bring the change
into fruition.
And I agree that lots of people are ready for change. Nan refers to Paul Ray's
statement that 25% of the people are "cultural creatives," the opinion leaders, the
action leaders, the hopeful ones who are already seeing how things could change for
the better. Robert Theobald says that he thinks most people don't need to be
convinced that change is necessary, they just need to be shown that it's possible
because they're afraid and this territory is uncharted.
Which gets back to your "developing and demonstrating ways to do it." I think you
and I are both doing work essential to this "Great Turning," as Joanna Macy calls
it: I am showing people that they can see the world through a different lens than
that of consumer culture and economic growth; so are others on the list, like Nan
and Priscilla. And you are showing them how to live in that new world, and so are
others on this list like Tom. Everyone who is living simply is a demonstration;
everyone who talks with friends and family and raises these issues is helping to
shift vision. And everyone who dreams of a sustainable world, meditates on it,
prays about it, envisions it, is also doing indispensably helpful work toward the
future.
> This does sound like an excellent direction. What does the acronym CSA stand for?
> I take it is somewhat different from your standard organic food co-op.
CSA is for community-supported agriculture. An organic vegetable farm sells
memberships, people pay up front and then receive fresh produce once a week through
the growing season. You eat what is grown, in season, so in June the bags contain
lettuce, radishes, spinach, peas, and in the fall they are heavy with squash,
onions, potatoes, tomatoes, corn. In between is eggplant, broccoli, kale, carrots,
cauliflower, fennel. Every week herbs, basil, cilantro, parsley, enough to use
fresh and dry some. You get the best available organic veggies, you support a
farmer in a non-harmful form of agriculture, and you get to be part of a community
of other urban dwellers who care about the land and want to be connected to the
source of their food. It's really, really wonderful, and a rapidly growing movement
in the U.S.
[Betsy: ]
> >I'd give up right there, because I *know* I can't do it.
[tully: ]
> Why? Because you'd feel you were sacrificing something not worth sacrificing?
Not "not worth sacrificing." Just not replaceable in my current life. I'm no
complacent, me-generation boomer. I long for a sustainable way of life. I long for
community. And I am working continually on reducing my resource use, including
putting in a masonry heater that will heat my whole house on about four logs of
cordwood a day, and a solar water heating system. Where I live (Minnesota) and the
orientation of my house won't allow complete solar. And it's expensive.
But I am not going to go off the electric grid or get rid of my car, certainly not
all at once tomorrow. I simply don't have the alternatives available. *Lots* of
people are in this situation. It doesn't mean I am not working toward
sustainability. I think it's very unfair to imply that people are selfish if they
don't give up everything *right now* and live in a tipi.
[Betsy: ]
> >And I don't think this is *all* about making a visible dent in the situation.
> >When it gets down to my life, my choices, my individual impact, it probably *is*
> >negligible in the context of the overwhelming size and scale of the
> >problems. But that is not the *only* reason why I live as I live. This is
> >what I was getting at in talking about effectiveness. I don't *live* my life
> >primarily to have an impact somewhere on something. I live my life
> >to please myself, to be happy,
[tully: ]
> Ah, the mantra of the "me" generation...
Ouch. Really, though, don't you think at bottom we all do what we do because it
pleases us in some way? Don't you live as you do because it pleases you? It pleases
me to reduce my consumption. I don't regard it as a sacrifice, but as a desirable
thing. The key to simplifying society, I think, is not expecting people to make big
sacrifices (pretty Calvinist, don't you think?), but helping them to see that the
consumer lifestyle is *not* pleasing in the deeply satisfying ways that a slower
pace of life with more focus on relationships is.
I sometimes think the work I do (study circles regarding values, check my web site
below if you want to know more) is more trouble than it's worth--requires me to
have a computer, use up paper, spend a lot of time writing grants trying to get a
little money, drive sometimes, speak in public, make a lot of phone calls...if I
weren't doing this, I could get a part-time job at the local cafe for income and
spend a lot more time gardening, rig up a rain water catchment system for my house,
knit, mend, can a lot more than I do, take long walks, organize my neighborhood.
In some ways, that would please me more than staying as hooked into the culture as
I have to be to do my work. But this work calls to me, and ultimately, I do it
because I must, and because I know I would *not* be pleased with my life if I
turned my back on it. Is it a worthwhile tradeoff to do this "good work" and still
drive a car and use a dishwasher? I don't know.
I do think that all the evidence points to the fact that many, perhaps most, people
are not really pleased with their lives in the modern world. Showing them how
sustainability *would* be pleasing and satisfying is, I think, our best bet for
saving the planet.
[Betsy: ]
> >I do my best to reduce cognitive dissonance because it stresses me.
[tully: ]
> Whereas I am a warrior and am willing to fight if I must.
Cognitive dissonance arises for me when I know that the consequences of my choices
are negative, and I must sooner or later choose to stop doing that which is causing
the distress. This is one of the missing pieces in modern life, an awareness that
actions have consequences, and I think there is a deliberate effort on the part of
corporate consumer culture to blur this, especially when the consequences aren't
immediate and local but far away and fall on someone else.
The Mall of America, that egregious shrine to consumerism which hulks near the
Minnesota river bluffs about five miles from my home, had a slogan a year or so
ago: "Who told you you can't have it all?" This is the message being hypnotically
droned to people in advertising and commercial messages, of which the average
person is exposed to 3,000 every single day, from waking up to falling asleep and
every minute in between. It's a deliberate effort to soothe down the cognitive
dissonance that information about the ecological crisis creates.
[Betsy: ]
> >I don't view my choices to simplify as sacrifices, but as actions that are
> >bringing my way of life into alignment with my values. And I do feel good
> >about the positive impact I *know* I'm making, even if my actions alone
> >aren't going to save the world.
[tully: ]
> But your actions "could" save the world. So could mine. So could anyone's
> actions. I want to try to save it. It is well worth saving.
Tully, I really object to this! Of course I want to save the world! Haven't you been reading anything I've written on this list lately? I did a whole treatise on saving the world [see below],
just a couple of weeks ago! I'll send you a copy if you didn't get it.
I'm aware, however, that my actions alone are not going to save the world, unless
in some metaphysical way I am at the fulcrum of the universe (which I do believe is
possible, but it is not likely). I've been in the place of believing that I had to
save the world myself (some long-time list members may remember a conversation
about this, around 2 or 3 years ago), and it is not healthy. I need to keep a
perspective to avoid the panicky, ungrounded, rushing-around frenzy that I've
experienced when I have the notion that it's all up to me.
> And here is the key IMO. This is the opposite of "me" that is there in
> many of our hearts, and we only need to resurrect it, remember it, if you
> will, since it is at the core of our being, I believe and I think of it as
> our spiritual source, our connection to each other and the whole
> world. Our love for all creation and how we can again be part of it, if we
> choose to be. How can we continue to hurt ourselves and all we love so
> much by continuing our materialistic and utterly selfish ways? We can't
> and we must stop it.
Yes. We all have this, it is in our bones, in our blood, in our DNA. We are social
creatures biologically adapted to live together and cooperate, to be connected with
other beings and to gape in awe at the beauty of the universe, as Brian Swimme
says. What we have to overcome, as I see it, is the cultural conditioning--we have
to unlearn the messages of individualism and consumerism and competition, and let
those naturally adapted tendencies of togetherness and connection and awe come to
the surface once again.
I don't think it's really easy to do this, but I think it's very possible and I am
very hopeful about the potential. I don't think it will happen by ladling the guilt
onto people for not making the right choices, but by having compassion for each
other, and for ourselves. I know a lot of people don't like this idea, but I think
we are all damaged by the culture we live in, and I think it will be several
generations even after changes start to happen on a large scale, before people will
be completely free of the negative cultural values and behaviors and attitudes that
are typical of peoplewho grow up in an industrial, patriarchal, capitalist,
consumer culture.
I've gone on *way* too long, and I apologize to those with small mailboxes. This
stuff is very close to my heart, and I welcome the opportunity to expound. And I
know I tend to take it too personally at times, and overreact, and I apologize for
that, too.
Tully, you say you are a warrior. I admire you for that. Warriors are essential.
But I don't think everyone can be a warrior, do you? Somebody needs to be keeping
the home fires burning while the warriors are out fighting. Somebody needs to be
ready to do the healing, the soothing, the caring for the warrior when she gets
wounded in battle. And somebody needs to be doing the negotiating, the intelligence
work, the infiltration and behind-the-lines stuff,. Somebody needs to keep growing
the food and washing the clothes and caring for the babies and elders, and somebody
needs to keep praying, to do rituals for the warriors, to plan the celebrations, to
play the music and make the art and write the stories.
Maybe the war metaphor doesn't really work, but my point is surely obvious--we each
have our contribution to make, and we can't really any of us do what we do without
the others doing what they do. Your impatience and high expectations help push us
slower ones, and hopefully our reasons for slowness can help nurture you when your
impatience gets too much. And, in the final analysis, the final battle, if you
will, we'll all have to fight, and if it comes to that, I hope to take courage from
you in that moment.
Betsy.
--
Betsy Barnum
http://www.oocities.org/RainForest/1624/
*****************************
Anything we love can be saved.
--Alice Walker |
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