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The UnGandhi Generation
Two young Indian American bloggers challenge the venerated Gandhi. What are implications for our politics?
Few movies have inspired me more than "Gandhi." It seemed to have it all: a great story, great cinematography, and great acting. I still remember the great man's defiance of the arrogant Brits. The courage of the Salt March. The power of nonviolence. But later, as I learned more about him, I was less inspired by Gandhi's view that India should embrace poverty, religion, and tradition against modern prosperity and freedom. Siddhartha Shome, an Indian American man who grew up in India but now works in Silicon Valley, made the case here that building a modern coal plant in India will raise living standards and take dirtier energy sources off-line. Ruchi X, a.k.a. Arduous, an Indian American woman, is spending the year not buying anything new and trying to drive less -- harder than it sounds given that she lives in Los Angeles (see especially her harrowing account of a bus ride that could have come straight out of the movie "Crash") -- while chronicling the experience on her blog. Arduous is not as strict as Colin Beavan, a.k.a. No Impact Man, was during his year of living frugally. Colin took more drastic measures in the name of melting polar bears, such as turning off their power and, more famously, recycling his family's biological waste. But her witty musings on things like thrift fashion and why she shouldn't be invited to your party make for great reading (her tagline is "over-ambitious and challengicious," a spoonerism that seems to describe Arduous to a T).
Against Gandhi Both Sid and Arduous have written posts criticizing Gandhi for his asceticism and anti-modernism. In her May 8 post, "On Asceticism, Gandhi and Tagore," Arduous writes: Gandhi is famous for having rejected what was British or Western from his life and his self. Adopting a platform of swadeshi, he called for a national boycott of among other things, British goods and British centers of education. She praises the great Indian poet Tagore who criticized Gandhi's "political asceticism." In his post, Sid begins by acknowledging that there are many good and great Gandhis, but there is also one that is the Gandhi of Hind Swaraj, the repudiator of modernity and technology and "Western-style" industrial development. It is this last anti-modern anti-machinery anti-consumption Gandhi that is ideologically very close to the eco-austerity movement today. Tagore disagreed, Arduous points out, and wanted India to embrace prosperity, modernity, and the best of East and West. Where Arduous turns to Tagore, Sid turns to Ambedkar, a brilliant untouchable who studied under John Dewey in the U.S and became a founding father of modern India. Here's Ambedkar, "the father of India's Constitution," on Gandhi: Under Gandhism the common man must keep on toiling ceaselessly for a pittance and remain a brute. In short, Gandhism with its call of back to nature, means back to nakedness, back to squalor, back to poverty and back to ignorance for the vast mass of the people. Ambedkar and Tagore had as much patience for Gandhi preaching poverty as Sid and Arduous have for environmentalists preaching sacrifice. The problem with asceticism is simply this: asceticism is a rejection of the world around us. Asceticism places the concept (of nirvana) over the tangible (people). "I don't support conscious suffering," Arduous writes, before quoting from Gandhi's chilling, open letter urging the British people to give into the Nazis. "Let them take possession of your beautiful island, with your many beautiful buildings," Gandhi counseled. "You will give all these, but neither your souls nor your minds." It was a chilling coup de grace to nostalgic Western views of eco-Gandhi. I am inspired by the pull-no-punches blogging of Sid and Arduous. I believe that there is something global about our generation's desire for a politics of possibility against the older one of limits. Sid and Arduous know the benefits of prosperity. When they hear Western environmentalist lionize Gandhi and moralize against coal burning in India, they hear the hypocritical rich wanting to deny prosperity for the poor. None of this is to say that either are joyless in their criticism. For both it seems to be a path to joy -- and to remaking the world. I'll end with this view from Arduous: This isn't just about changing the focus because people respond to positivity better than negativity. This is about shaping our destinies, shaping our future. Is it possible that climate change and peak oil will cause a massive breakdown in infrastructure? Is it possible that competition for oil will result in a zero-sum game where a few very rich people win, while the rest of humanity loses? Is it possible that if CO2 in the atmosphere hits 400ppm "life as we know it" (whatever that means) will cease to exist? Yes, I think it is possible. BUT, BUT, that is not to say it WILL HAPPEN. We are not doomed, people, unless we resign ourselves to doom. 14 COMMENTS:
Even Buddha repudiated asceticism. He talked about the Middle Way. The problem is that our culture is currently not on a Middle Way at all.
The technophilia is killing us and the habitat we depend upon for our health, security and happiness. Not only that, but it is a consolation prize for things of lasting value that improve quality of life.
Because that's the real argument, right? It's not technology or modernity versus the planet. Who cares about technology or modernity except as they symbolize quality of life? Let's be more direct. What's important is quality of life--for everyone.
So technology, in the right balance, is a good thing. But I wonder if the environmentalists don't head towards asceticism because they sense that we've swung too far in the other extreme.
Either way, what I've always said, is that saving our habitat depends on finding a middle path that is neither unconsciously consumes resources nor is self-consciously anti-materialist.
So Gandhi or not, don't throw the baby out with the bath water. I don't want to reject everything western, but I do believe this: No matter how much new tech gives us, we are still going to have to tighten our resource-consumption belts.
And by the way, resource consumption doesn't mean asceticism. I would argue that in some ways we have asceticism. Ask the folks who work ten hours a day and never see their kids.
Resource consumption means planning our resource use so that it improves our lives rather than denigrating it. Building villages interconnected by good, fun public transportation instead depressing suburbs is one example. Getting rid of an industry that deliberately builds things to break down so that we have to buy the same thing over and over is another.
And to be clear, I'm not talking about the Indians and the Chinese. I wouldn't dare. My head is already swimming just from thinking about the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. I'm talking about the Americans and the Western Europeans who have already gobbled up so much more than their fair share of the atmospheric carbon dioxide reservoir.
Good for you for featuring Arduous. She rocks. And she and Sid are never more right than here:
"When they hear Western environmentalist lionize Gandhi and moralize against coal burning in India, they hear the hypocritical rich wanting to deny prosperity for the poor."
It is absolutely our responsibility to transfer sustainable energy technology to the developing world because it is our history that has made it necessary. But meanwhile, as we ourselves (maybe possibly one day?) make our economy more sustainable with whatever existing and new technology is available, we are still going to have to find a way to restrain the resource throughput.
And all the best to everyone,
Colin aka No Impact Man
Posted by: Colin Beavan aka No Impact Man
at June 5, 2008 4:15 PM
And PS, Michael, who do you think you're kidding when you say "our generation" and include you and Arduous in the same sentence? ;)
You are right on Michael, and in fact, many Indians would agree with you. Indians are completely split on their opinion of Gandhi. It is primarily westerners who idealize him and place him on a pedestal. I found that most Indians (not including his direct followers who still wear all white) see Gandhi as a great politician who, despite the incredibly important things he did for the country, had major faults.
That said though, his ideas have a really significant impact on current policies, and I was struck by the frequently detrimental effects of Gandhian influenced policies. Gandhi said that India's heart is in her villages, and while the rural areas certainly have a power about them, they are one of the primary reasons the majority of Indians still struggle to gain a decent standard of living. I know you agree that the future is in cities, but most Indian policymakers and the overwhelming public attitude reflects Gandhi's framework of the urban areas as contrary to Indian identity. As a result, it wasn't until this year that the central government decided to put major resources into improving urban life, and that was after much heated debate.
This is obviously just one illustration of how Gandhian influenced policies and frameworks are detrimental to India's modernity and progress. I'm not trying to contest that Gandhi was an amazing man, but I hope that India can take some of general values advocated by Gandhi and reinterpret them given today's realities.
Hmm, Aden, I have to disagree with you there. Considering that 80% of India's population lives in the villages, I think too little attention is paid to them.
See, for an example, the Sardar Sarovar Dam in Gujarat that displaced thousands of tribal peoples even as most of the water was being directed towards the cities.
I actually have a few problems with Sid's post regarding the coal plants for that reason, including his idea that coal allows village children a "light to read by." Most of the industrialization of India has been geared to help those in the cities, while many of those in the villages continue to live without electricity. In my opinion, India and the world ignore the tribal people of these third world countries at its peril.
To me, the key to the problem is sustainable development projects WITHIN the villages themselves. We can't just continue the industrialization of the cities and expect the results to trickle down. As it is, the cities of India are already over-crowded, they can't sustain forever the mass exoduses from the villages to the cities that are currently occuring.
And I would prefer to see thousands of smaller projects in the villages, rather than one large project, because from a corruption aspect, I think thousands of smaller projects are a safer bet.
Thanks everyone for weighing in.
Colin, while excessive material consumption often does not make people happy, I also think it would be difficult to live in Manhattan or the Bay Area on $10,000 a year (the number that is often thrown around) and be as happy as someone making five to ten times that. That low of an income means living in a less safe and more polluted neighborhood under overall worse conditions.
A recent Brookings paper seems to disprove the Easterlin paradox that greater income doesn't confer greater happiness. The Times' David Leonhardt summarized the research, and pointed to other confirming data:
In the United States, about 90 percent of people in households making at least $250,000 a year called themselves "very happy" in a recent Gallup Poll. In households with income below $30,000, only 42 percent of people gave that answer.
Leonhardt points out that Easterlin's contribution was that money can't buy happiness. But it can buy the enabling technologies and infrastructure for happiness.
Economic growth, by itself, certainly isn't enough to guarantee people's well-being -- which is Mr. Easterlin's great contribution to economics. In this country, for instance, some big health care problems, like poor basic treatment of heart disease, don't stem from a lack of sufficient resources. Recent research has also found that some of the things that make people happiest -- short commutes, time spent with friends -- have little to do with higher incomes.
But it would be a mistake to take this argument too far. The fact remains that economic growth doesn't just make countries richer in superficially materialistic ways.
Economic growth can also pay for investments in scientific research that lead to longer, healthier lives. It can allow trips to see relatives not seen in years or places never visited. When you're richer, you can decide to work less -- and spend more time with your friends.
Arduous, I'm not sure you're actually disagreeing with Aden. It seems to me that one could support development in the cities and the countryside. However, the overall trend with modernization is for people, as they become more affluent, to want to live in the cities, where incomes are higher, there are greater educational opportunities, and greater personal freedom (e.g., to marry whoever you want).
First of all, don't think I don't notice that you're substituting income level for resource throughput, you naughty bait-and-switcher.
And not for nothing, baby, but what you are looking at there is only about a doubling of the number of people saying they're happy for an octupling (I hereby dub thee, octupling, a word, if you weren't one already) of level of income.
Hmmm...does that mean there might be an easier way of making people happy than figuring out how to increase income by a factor of eight?
Like, say, giving every worker five more weeks of free time a year by providing excellento public transportation while reducing automotive resource throughput?
The average American spends five weeks working to pay for the car and running it and another two weeks--at least in LA--in traffic jams.
Economic growth at certain levels of income no doubt makes contributions to happiness. But why does growth have to come from resource throughput?
Why can't a company produce a razor that lasts a lifetime but requires sharpening by a trained person every month? Employment occurs. Money changes hands, but there is no resource throughput.
When the Oregon bottle bill went through in the 70s, the container manufacturers argued that it would hurt the economy. In fact, container reuse caused a net *growth* in jobs. Growth without throughput.
There is no getting around it. At the moment, our economy consists of digging resources out of the ground and then burying them back in another hole in the ground, after they make a short stop in our homes in between.
The energy wasted! The trees cut down! The carbon emitted! The lives of workers wasted making stuff that will get thrown away or working to buy the same stuff over and over.
How about this? How about the great minds over at Apple come up with a cell phone we can keep for life, and then turn their high power IQs to water for the billion that don't have it?
So don't go trying to pin me down with block quotes stringing together words like "Brookings" and "growth" and "happiness" to reinforce old arguments.
Progress does not mean more of the same, baby. It means more of something better!
Quit arguing for more of the same and give me something I want to pass on to Isabella, my household's resident three year old and Zen Master.
All the best to you, as usual,
Colin aka No Impact Man
Michael, let's be fair here. I challenge you to find a place on Colin's website where he throws around the 10k figure.
If you look at that article and the accompanying map, one of the things that strikes me immediately is that people are happiest in the countries with strong social safety nets (ie the Scandinavian countries.) That to me suggests that Colin is on to something when he asserts that there are other (I wouldn't use the word choice "easier" as Colin has) ways to make people happy than to simply throw money at them.
One of the reasons I haven't been buying new stuff this year, is because I wanted to sit back and assess, what is it that makes me happy? What is it I want from the world?
And what I realized is that I am happier spending the money I have on EXPERIENCES as opposed to stuff. I would rather go to a concert than buy new clothes. I'd rather eat at a nice restaurant with my friends than buy a new purse. And I would DEFINITELY rather spend more money on building public systems like public transport and health care than on a cell phone. The research bears me out. Spending money on experiences generally makes people happier than when they buy "stuff."
I know Breakthrough is all about possibilities and not limits, and I respect that. I believe in that with all my heart.
But given that we all have a finite amount of money, and a finite number of hours in the day, we have to ask ourselves, where do we want our money going? And as a society, do we prioritize money for iPhones, or do we want our money going to health care, to education, to public transport, to funding alternative energy?
We can create a new economy, and I keep saying this, because I really believe it. We can create an economy that is not based on crap, because let's face it, crap is crap. We can build an economy that is instead more service based, the offers a greater social safety net, that offers us EXPERIENCES as opposed to junk that will break in a couple years. And I agree with Colin. Stuff is more of the same. Stuff is so 1997, Michael. The future is experiential.
I like money, of course I like money. But if you asked me, would you rather get 2 extra weeks of vacation, or the equivalent amount in the form of a raise, I'd take the vacation, no question. And if you look at general surveys of Gen Y, you'll see that most of them agree with me. We'd rather have the time than the money. That's, I think, why they're so happy in Denmark. It's the social safety net, the health care, the frickin maternity leave. It's not just the money, Michael. It never is.
Just as an addendum, I want to add that this is, of course, only an argument for the first world. I do believe, just as Easterlin originally stated that in the third world, the most important thing is to be meeting people's basic needs. But as you talk about in your book, Michael, once we've met the basic needs in Maslow's hierarchy, things start to get dicier as we search for higher needs like self-actualization. I think we've been told over and over by advertising that buying a new shirt or a new phone can produce self-actualization. But it can't.
I think the whole concept of self-described happiness is a very ambiguous matter. What exactly is happiness? How does one define happiness? After all happiness can come from simply ignorance. Environmentalists often claim that villagers in India are "happy" in their villages cut off from the rest of the world living "in harmony with nature". What does that mean? What if life expectancy in the village is 30 years. Maybe if they knew that life expectancy in rest of India is 65 years they would not be so happy any more. Some have argued that under India's caste system, people were happy. Everybody knew that a sweeper's son can only be a sweeper. So no opportunity, no ambition, hence no disappointment and people are happy. Is that really something desirable? More opportunity is a good thing, though it can certainly build high expectations, and hence disappointment and unhappiness. I know that people in Scandinavian countries are supposed to be very happy, but I've met a number of Swedes who wanted to emigrate to the U.S., not because of more happiness in the U.S., but because of more opportunity.
Instead of "happiness" I subscribe to the idea of "capability approach" to social development advanced by economist Amartya Sen in which he holds that there exists a set of basic human capabilities that are intrinsically worthwhile for a flourishing human life - irrespective of cultural or geographical differences. In this view, self-reported happiness does not necessarily mean that people are flourishing. Whether or not people are "happy", we need to give people health care, education, access to markets, etc. So yes, a social safety net is very important. But so is opportunity and liberty.
Arduous, since you mentioned the Sardar Sarovar Dam, you are wrong in thinking that most beneficiaries will be urban people. The dam is mainly for irrigation purposes, meaning the water will mainly be used by farmers. See Gail Omvedt's article on the dam here. I have also written about it here.
Colin and Arduous -- Wait one second. I wasn't the one who conflated income with "resource throughput" (stuff), you were. Rather, I pointed out that the evidence strongly suggests that incomes far beyond the number economists (not Colin) frequently name ($10k) is strongly correlated with higher levels of self-reported happiness. I didn't claim that this was because higher income people had more stuff. But I'm also not claiming the opposite, either. I suspect it has a lot to do with feeling higher status, which fortunately or unfortunately, may be conveyed by having more stuff.
And yes, Ruchi, I agree that a stronger social safety net in Europe in comparison to the U.S. does seem to be a factor contributing to the happiness of those countries, which we argued in the "Status and Security" chapter in our book.
Sid brings in an interesting point. What is happiness, anyway, and is it the most important thing? John Jost at NYU has found with his colleagues that conservatives have consistently higher reported happiness than liberals, which they attribute to higher religiosity, higher percentage of married couples, and less concern with inequality and injustice. Here's Newsweek's summary:
The right-left happiness gap existed not only in the United States but in nine other countries, too. In part, that's because conservatives are more likely to be older, married and religious, all of which increase happiness.
But those traits explained only part of the gap. What accounted for the rest was how people viewed social and economic inequality, the scientists will report next month in the journal Psychological Science. People who agreed that "it is not really that big a problem if some people have more of a chance in life than others," for instance, and "this country would be better off if we worried less about how equal people are," were happier than those who disagreed.
The latter tend to be liberals, who are less likely than conservatives to see inequality as the result of a fair and legitimate system in which, say, people are losing their homes to foreclosure because they greedily got mortgages they couldn't afford/didn't deserve, not because they were misled by lenders.
As foreclosures and gas prices rise between now and November, hitting have-nots harder than haves, the happiness gap will only grow. And if poli-psych teaches us anything, it is that profound unhappiness with the status quo leaves voters open to profound change.
Michael, you know I love you, but I think this is a straw-man's argument you're making here.
If you look at Colin's first comment, he was specifically talking about "resource consumption" NOT income. Neither of us started discussing income until you brought it up. I'm not against money, I quite like money actually. And I won't speak for Colin, but, considering his wife works for Business Week, I would venture he'd agree with me.
I actually disagree with Bill McKibben when he talks about how it would be a-okay if we made less money. I'm pro-growth. That's why I believe in creating a new economy, because I think we could be happier and maintain our income levels if instead of spending and making money on stuff, we were spending and making money on experiential things. A world with a few more piano teachers and a few less Gap clerks if you will.
But Michael, I think we agree much more than we disagree, and I think there's an opportunity here. As you know, I found the part of your book where you discuss "building an environmental church" particularly compelling. I agree with you completely, but I think what you're perhaps missing here is that we are BUILDING that church. That's what people like Colin, and Deanna Duke, and to a lesser extent myself, are doing day after day.
Every day, hundreds of "personal environmentalists" read and blog about their sustainable living adventures. These people are mostly women (Colin's a lucky man), and, in fact, many of them are stay at home mothers. These are women who are not environmentalists by training or schooling, but are simply women who have started to look at the crises ahead, and are asking of themselves, "What can I do?"
Will any of my actions (not buying, driving less etc) by themselves stymie global warming? No, of course not. I'm not under any illusion that they do. But I believe I am out there, helping to build a social movement. I am building that church. I am reaching out to my fellow women, who, by the way, have been the cornerstone of every social movement from abolition onwards.
You talk extensively in your book about how we need to follow the paths of evangelical churches in creating an environmental movement. That we need to get people invested so they do more than merely throw a $25 donation to the Sierra Club once a year. I completely agree with you. That's what we're doing. That's what the personal environmental movement is about. I think you possibly underestimate the satisfaction derived by us when we walk rather than drive, or when we buy local food from the farmers' market, or, hell, when we make our own butter.
Not only that, but these environmental bloggers, these women, are doing so much more. They are investing in their community both online and offline. When one woman is going through a rough time, they do the electronic equivalent of baking a casserole, they create a blogger tribute. Closer to home, they're going to their city council meetings and demanding city-wide composting programs. They're challenging Brita to recycle their water filters. And they are slowly learning about the policy issues, reading books by Sachs, McKibben, and yes, by you and Ted. After all, we wouldn't even be having this conversation in the first place if I hadn't read about your book on a personal environmental blog.
So regardless of whether you think what Colin or I do makes a tangible difference, remember, we are your number one allies, Michael. We are doing this because we ultimately believe in the same things, because we're trying to build a movement. We are building our church; we're building your church, the best way we know how. So instead of focusing on where we disagree, let's focus on where we agree. There's a lot of energy here, and a lot of passion. We can harness this energy together. We can build a brighter future. "We are the ones we've been waiting for," Michael. Come help us build that church.
I agree with your call to turn the conversation toward points of agreement, so I'll go there.
I think you guys are building a set of important practices, which I mostly endorse, and in some cases practice (e.g., driving a beater car, thrifting, learning guitar, watching very little TV, etc.) I'm not sure it's a church, or even that it needs to be one in order to be effective.
What has made me feel uneasy about it is that I think that personal practices have tended to feed into a very conventional environmentalist politics of limits that says, "We can reduce our way out of the problem." I know that you and Colin don't believe that, and that you both support the major investments into tech and infrastructure we need, and more material development for Indians and Chinese. But I worry that the representation of these practices through the popular media feed the widespread sense among many progressives and environmentalists that we shouldn't need some "big government program," in the words of the highly influential Michael Pollan in the New York Times Magazine's Earth Day issue earlier this year.
So to move beyond that debate I think we need to explore how we can take a set of practices that redefine "the good life" and build a community, a movement, and perhaps even a secular church that supports a political agenda for energy modernization and material development for poor countries and postmaterial fulfillment in rich countries. Is it reaching out to moms' groups and asking them to spend the last 15 minutes of their meetings petitioning Congress to support $50 billion a year for clean energy tech? Is it asking the city council that passed new composting laws to lobby for a federal law that would do the same?
The truth is that since our book came out last October, we haven't had this conversation, and yet we get asked about it all the time. Our friend Adam Werbach, who recently gave an interesting speech on "The Birth of Blue," is thinking a lot about it, and may have ideas. There were moments when we were writing the book that I thought, "This is the most important chapter. This is the stuff that really matters. At the end of the day, we have to build a totally different kind of political movement to have the power to get anything done federally." But then life -- or, more specifically, Lieberman Warner -- gets in the way, and we end up focused on shifting the political paradigm.
But I recognize that there's a movement paradigm that also needs to be shifted, or is in the process of shifting already, what with the rise of blogs and other forms of community-building and intellectual debate which all movements depend upon.
The truth is that I have more questions than answers, so maybe you can help me out. Where does the personal sustainability movement go from here? Can a personal practice focused on consuming less support others (e.g. Indians and Chinese) consuming more? How do we take the enormous amount of good will among American greens and translate it into a movement that is actually capable of electing politicians and holding them accountable to enact a transformative agenda?
These may not be the right questions -- I'm sure you'll tell me if they aren't. But they're the ones I have, and they are in part what has motivated my suspicions of personal sustainability practices. I look forward to your response.
"So to move beyond that debate I think we need to explore how we can take a set of practices that redefine "the good life" and build a community, a movement, and perhaps even a secular church that supports a political agenda for energy modernization and material development for poor countries and postmaterial fulfillment in rich countries."
If this is your creed, then I'm appointing you the pope of the new church! So well said!
The thing is, personal sustainability and the politics of limits that you concern yourself with are different. Actually, I would say that the personal sustainability movement is more concerned with the politics--or at least the lifestyle--of possibility.
People involved in this movement--and I don't mean me--are innovators and leaders and pioneers. They are looking for the next stage of our *cultural* progress. They are saying, "Wait, we're screwing up our home and we're not even sure that we get the best quality of life in return."
The don't want to limit their spirits and their lives. They want more. But to have more, they are realizing, may require less energy and material throughput.
Now to address myself to your questions:
"Where does the personal sustainability movement go from here?"
Maybe we should take stock of where it already is. Perhaps what's most important about it is that it crosses religious and political lines. Liberals and Greens come to it for reasons we don't need to say. But Evengelicals and Republicans come to it because of its emphasis on stewardship and personal responsibility. We're finding things out about how to live.
Where it goes, I hope, is to learn that we can make just as big a difference through civic participation as through lifestyle change. I hope that it empowers us and leads us to cast off our disenfranchisement and to show our politicians that there are some concerns that cut across party lines.
"Can a personal practice focused on consuming less support others in consuming more?"
This thing is about finding the good life and not so much consuming less but consuming enough. Personally, my feeling is that my culture has already gobbled much more than its fair share of the carbon reservoir and what's left belongs to the southern hemisphere.
In my case, I always say that now that we can watch TV on our cell phones we've come far enough. Let's now turn the brains at Apple away from phones and to access for the billion that don't have it.
Translation: We should consume less so that people who already have less can consume more.
"How can we take the enormous good will and translate it into a movement that can elect the right politicians?"
Try everything!
But for one, by not dismissing these people as irrelevant. But instead by engaging them.
This is what we are all still trying to figure out.
Anyway...
All the best,
Colin aka No Impact Man
What an amazing discussion! I'm sorry I'm coming in a bit late...
Michael, your questions are questions many of us ask ourselves every day. I have spent the last 18 years searching for the best way to save the world. How naive was I, embarking upon that journey?!
I began in cultural anthropology, thinking that I could preserve disappearing cultures so that their lives were not for nought, that they could be remembered, and we could learn from them in the future.
Then I pondered law - was that the answer, to fight large corporations at an international level? Was it politics, where policy is made and unmade? Was it social marketing, which creates sustained change within specific populations?
Well, I decided to enter the media world, and eventually became a documentary filmmaker, thinking I could speak out with my voice to an extremely wide audience. I also studied policy and social marketing, and along with the power of emotions, they have become extremely useful in that field.
I've continued to be a documentarian, but I've also become a blogger. I found that with a blog I can reach into kitchens and living rooms on a daily basis, to create more sustained change than any 1.5 hour documentary can.
And it is that sustained change that we need. In the past year of blogging, I've noticed that the number of green, simple living, sustainabilty, locavore, and food gardening blogs have increased exponentially. This is viral marketing at its finest: I host a challenge focussed on growing food from seed. Several people who have joined didn't have blogs before. Now they have blogs about growing things in their own areas of the world. Once they have that blog, they become accountable for their own actions and tend to permanently change their lifestyle. And soon they inspire others to do the same.
Are these small things that we do to improve our personal lives and reduce our personal impact enough to change the world? Absolutely not. On their own. But together, we are inspiring others to change. And they are inspiring others. I went to a bookstore the other day, and was shocked at all of the green living books. I went to the grocery store, and suddenly the ad signs had changed and became all about green living. The vegetables and fruits were labeled with their country and state of origin. Local newspapers have green living blogs. My local tv station features a "guide to green living" on its website, and it is actually not bad. These are stepping stones into a deeper consciousness that eventually leads to lifestyle changes, political awareness, and personal giving to necessary causes.
We haven't reached a critical mass, but the mass is growing. The mass is necessary. The consciousness about every day decisions and every day consumption is necessary. And let's face it, our culture consumes so much more per capita than India or China, that we have to change first and worry about what China and India are doing second. Even asking that question makes people feel powerless to create change, and they are not.
Can we reduce our way out of the problem? We should try to do that on a personal level, because that's how we got here in the first place: consuming way more than we need to without regard for what impact that consumption had. It's not the only answer, but it is a good start. Can we ask mom's groups to petition congress? We can ask them, but they probably won't do it. Or we can raise awareness and reach them in a way that creates a sustained change in their lifestyles, so that they think of doing this on their own.
All this doesn't happen overnight, it feels small compared to what large corporations and politicians can do, and it may be too late to save our planet from some extreme problems. But I believe that only sustained change can make a difference. I don't know about you guys, but that's what changed me and pushed me to become more of an activist.
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