The idealism of youthfulness

There is something innocent yet incredibly observant and extremely powerful in the youth pointing out the flaws in decades-old trends and culture, just like Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen have. It says, "How could you let things get to this point?" It also says, "We are inheriting this Earth after you. Why are you debasing and defiling it?" In that, all the criticisms of this culture, these politics, are crystallised. In it, the idealism of youthfulness is at play.

There are of course things that are seemingly more fundamental and timeless than others, things that don't change. For example, "Be nice to people" seems like something more fundamental than "Marriage is between a man and a woman". It is so because most no one would say that being nice to people is something we should not do. There are no objections. But marriage between two people of the same gender? That becomes murky for many people.

Many of the timeless lessons come just from human experience and time. Things have a way of revealing themselves to you. All you have to do is live, and, well, be observant and a little bit reflective and reflexive. When we are young, we can be petulant, abrasive, and say mean things to people. (I actually know a lot of people of my age, 26, and older that still behave that way. Just check out the Republican primary debates.) But as time goes on, hopefully people become kinder and gentler and thoughtful and more dynamic. At the same time, it is hard not to notice that there is something about the way that we've cultured ourselves, that as we get older and older, we get more and more drawn in to everything that is degrading to this Earth, and the human spirit. It is pretty clear, if you talk to your parents, grandparents, or anyone older than you, that as time progresses, people become more and more wary of change. We become part of "the system". We get jobs, get families, try to feed those families by buying food from box supermarkets in which produce has traveled one thousand five hundred miles. We see no way other than addressing things through bureaucracy. We seem to get mired in the same political debates that have now become so fractious that there is seemingly no way forward.

It is in these circumstances that imagination of the youthful breaks everything down, and creates things anew. Whether it is imaginary friends for children or pie-in-the-sky dreams for those seeking change, it is that idealism that must temper and dismantle the "pragmatism" that is grossly inadequate.

John Paul Lederach, Professor of International Peacebuilding speaks to this from experience. What he says is relevant and accessible to all of us, trying to address the manifold issues we face. His words are positive and constructive. Listen to his beautiful conversation with Krista Tippett (above). Or, read the excerpt below.

Ms. Tippett: You've talked about how you've seen that violence destroys a person's capacity to perceive themselves as an integrated part of a whole, and that makes it difficult for people to see themselves in a web of relationships that has to include their enemies and some imagination about their enemies' grandchildren, right? I mean, it's almost like you're asking the impossible of people.

Mr. Lederach: Well, it's — it's the impossible until you consider the alternative, which we've watched now evolve in so many places across decades, half-centuries. Columbia is a half-century. Middle East can go back centuries. In other words, the notion that it's more realistic to pursue the other avenue, the one that's supposed to be more pragmatic, shows itself over and over again to basically reseed the very things that create the cycles of violence that we're trying to supersede.

Some thoughts on inequality

We have equated the worth of people with the money they have. This materialistic, consumeristic society has done a tremendous job at equating the worth of a human being with the amount of money he or she has. Those with money get better public services, those with money are looked at more favourable under eyes of the law, those with money can get away with ecological catastrophes by paying the government or the people. Money opens doors to those that have it, and stands as an oppressive barrier to those that do not have it. For those caught in the vicious cycle of poverty, inequality, and discrimination, capitalism's lack of compassion provides no hope. This isn't the case only on an individual basis in "rich" countries like the US, but it is also the case between the "rich" global north and the "poor" global south.  Inequality furthers ecological degradation, particularly because of the vested interests of the powerful, and their unwillingness to deal with the impacts of their choices. The poverty created by industrialisation and globalisation leave only one option to the poor--either industrialise, or be left behind. And this industrialisation takes advantage of industrialising nations' willingness to participate in the game of globalisation, as well as the fear of retaliation from industrialised nations.

In a powerful episode of Speaking of Faith (now called On Being) titled Seeing poverty after Katrina, Krista Tippett talked to Dr. David Hilfiker, co-founder of Joseph's House in Washington, D.C., about urban poverty in the US--its causes and its rootedness in our economic system--in light of Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina brought to the national spotlight the massive discrimination against the people that have borne the brunt of our economic system. The shocking treatment of the poor in New Orleans was followed by an even more shocking statement when then FEMA Director Mike Brown said, "Katrina has shown us people we didn't know existed." How people in national government didn't know the inequalities that the economic system creates is inexcusable. Many such elites are either sheltered, or are unwilling to admit the existence of such inequality, because they are the ones that have benefited most from the rigged system.

How might we deal with such inequality? Dr. Hilfiker provides guiding advice and wisdom on how to deal with the issues of inequality in our daily lives, which is the exact way in which we must understand and deal with ecological degradation. We must confront these issues head on by not denying their existence, and by accepting fully that our privileged lives contribute to their existence. If we confront their existence, we will be better suited to understand the causes behind their existence. Dr. Hilfiker explains this by talking about how he took his young daughter to a homeless shelter to meet and talk to a particular homeless person, after she was saddened by seeing a homeless person on the street. Realising that the homeless are those that have been left behind by the very same forces that offered her privilege made her less fearful of the homeless, first of all, while making her understand the unjust economic system we have founded our society on.

We must get real about inequality.

Living with all of our capacities

I have realised that this blog has, at times, taken a markedly spiritual bent. I have realised that in my efforts to try to tread more lightly on this planet, in my conversations with people about environmentalism and being, it is not that only the planet is being transformed, but ourselves. Not in any superficial way, not in a consumerist "Oh, I will buy this instead of that" way, but rather a deeper, more durable way. This durability, this inner reflection, I believe can allow us to live more consciously no matter where we are, to be more open to experience, to be more open to the present, to a be a more satisfied people.

As an engineer, I am taught the ways of western scientific traditions. Data are obtained, and they can be reproduced, given the same conditions, elsewhere on Earth. Of course, these data are reproduceable given the right conditions, given an understanding of the methodologies of "science," given the so-called "laws" of nature. But then again, we are stuck with a culture that is destroying this Earth's capacity for life. There is no doubt about that. And in this secularisation of our worldly experience, we seem to lose track of what makes us human. I am in no way differentiating humans from non-humans, but rather speaking to what makes us human regardless of what the rest of the natural world is like. 

From an evolutionary standpoint, yes, we are "animals," we compete, we fight, we try to pass on our genes. One may think of everything that we partake in, culture, capitalism, industrialisation, education, as just a manifestation of evolution. We want to dominate so that we can survive. But, as linguistics pioneer Jean Berko Gleason says, we also have consciousness. We contemplate, we have an understanding of presence, and it is this consciousness that allows us to reflect on our experiences. I believe then that we temper the evolutionary forces at play, our biological urges, with this consciousness.

So then what is it about this secularised culture and worldview that allows such destruction? Physicist Arthur Zajonc, a contemplative of the Western tradition influenced by Rudolf Steiner, believes that we are not fully engaging ourselves when we try to face the challenges before us. Indeed he says, there are various levels of experience. And these various levels affect what we bring to the table. The only level we deem fit right now is that of secularism and science, devoid of emotion, emotion that is brought up through observing the world in different ways. How do we get to different levels of experience, then? Well, we must calm ourselves, direct attention, sustain that attention, and open up to what is normally invisible. Things then show themselves to you, deepening our human experience. Zajonc says profoundly, that

"[i]f we are committed to knowledge, then we ought to be committed also to exploring the world with these lenses, with this method in mind and heart. And otherwise, we are kind of doing it half way...when we go to solve the problems of our world, whether they are educational or environmental we are bringing only half of our intelligence to bear...we have left the other half idle, or relegated it to religious philosophers. But if we are going to be integral ourselves, from a perspective that is whole, then we need to bring all of our capacities to the issues that we confront."

My mum has always talked to me about such spirituality. A few years ago, I didn't really think twice about it. I had a full faith in science and its secularism when conducting myself. But I have now realised, through this journey, that in any action that takes a stand for something other than oneself, that tries to make a durable change in the world, more must be brought to the table. that our consciousness, our capacities for compassion and empathy play as much, if not a bigger role than science, data, and numbers.

Wangari Maathai - inspiration

When you think of role models, who do you think of? It is not difficult to see that many people don't really have role models, because if they did, people wouldn't behave the way they do. They would strive to live, breath, and act on the ideals of their role models, social "norms" be damned. And if people do look to others for "inspiration," look who is paraded around as role models these days--reality TV personalities, uber-consumerists, and people that make a lot of money. For some reason, the "realities" of the world--that we need to destroy the Earth for us to survive, that as individuals we are helpless in the face of systemic oppression--seem to supercede any wisdom we can gain from true sources of inspiration. We are left with truly slim pickings as role models.

Having said that, few others come to mind when thinking about how one person can move masses of people and their hearts to take up the cause of fighting against injustice and ecological degradation. Wangari Maathai was that person. Maathai, the Kenyan environmentalist and women's rights advocate, died last week. As a founder of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, she has helped Kenyan women plant more than forty-five million trees across Kenya, "mobiliz[ing] community consciousness- using tree planting as an entry point- for self-determination, equity, improved livelihoods and security, and environmental conservation." How amazing.

She definitely stood tall and strong, social "norms" be damned. Here is how Richard Black, the environment correspondent for the BBC has explained Maathai's past.

Opposing a major government-backed development in Nairobi, she was labelled a "crazy woman"; it was suggested that she should behave like a good African woman and do as she was told. Her former husband made similar comments when suing for divorce: she was strong-willed, and could not be controlled.

I had heard about Maathai a few years ago when listening to Speaking of Faith (now called On Being). Krista Tippett, the host of On Being, writes...

A Remarkable Woman for All People and Places

I am so glad I experienced Wangari Maathai in person, in her time on this Earth. She had a wonderful voice and an infectious whole-body laugh. You will even hear her sing if you listen to the end of this hour. I experienced her as immensely gracious but rather subdued until she started speaking about her work. Then, sitting across from her, it was not hard to imagine that this woman had stood up to a dictator and won, and that she had fought off encroaching desert by leading thousands of people to plant tens of millions of trees. 

Planting trees was both a simple response to their crisis and a dramatically effective one. It restored a simple link that had been broken between human beings and the land on which they live — the kind of link that we often take for granted until, as Maathai said, we move away from the world we know — spatially, economically, or spiritually. For several years before her environmental work began, Wangari Maathai had been away from Kenya. When she returned, she saw with fresh eyes that "the earth was naked. For me, the mission was to try to cover it with green."

For a quarter century, Wangari Maathai and the women of her Green Belt Movement faced off against powerful economic forces and Kenya's tyrannical ruler, Daniel arap Moi. She was beaten and imprisoned. Nevertheless, the movement spread to more than 600 communities across Kenya and into over 30 countries. After Moi's fall from power in 2002, Wangari Maathai was elected to her country's parliament with 98 percent of the vote. 

My curiosity, of course, always drives towards the spiritual and ethical questions and convictions that drive human action. And though I could find few interviewers who had asked Wangari Maathai about this, she was happy to talk about the faith behind her ecological passion — a lively fusion of Christianity, real world encounters with good and evil, and the ancestral Kikuyu traditions of Kenya's central highlands. She grew up there, schooled by Catholic missionaries, and she remained a practicing Catholic. But life taught her to value anew the Kikuyu culture of her family's ancestry.

The Kikuyu traditionally worshipped under trees and honored Mount Kenya — Africa's second highest mountain — as the place where God resides. That mountain, as Wangari Maathai only later understood scientifically, is the source of most of Kenya's rivers. And the fig trees considered most sacred by the Kikuyu — those it was impermissible to cut down — had the deepest roots, bringing water from deep below the earth to the surface. The volatility of the environment across the Horn of Africa now is compounded by the fact that those trees have been cut away systematically for decades, along with millions of others, by colonial Christians as well as African industrialists.

That intensity of voice and passion I also heard in her conversation with one of my role models, Dick Gordon, when he interviewed her shortly after she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 on a show called The Connection.

The significance of Maathai's work cannot be understated. Anna Lappé and Frances Moore Lappé defended the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Maathai by saying,

Maathai’s genius is in recognizing the interrelation of local and global problems, and the fact that they can only be addressed when citizens find the voice and courage to act [emphasis added by me]. Maathai saw in the Green Belt Movement both a good in itself, and a way in which women could discover they were not powerless in the face of autocratic husbands, village chiefs and a ruthless president. Through creating their own tree nurseries – at least 6,000 throughout Kenya – and planting trees, women began to control the supply of their own firewood, an enormous power shift that also freed up time for other pursuits.

Let's draw from Maathai's wisdom and genius.

 

To see more interviews with Maathai, you can go to Democracy Now!

On entitlement

A couple of days ago, I was listening to an episode of On Being. The guest was Barbara Kingsolver, and she was talking to Krista Tippett about the ethics of eating. Barbara Kingsolver used to live in Phoenix along with her husband and two children, but then decided to move her family to a farm in Virginia, which they had been regularly going to for several years. The reason why she moved was because she realised that the food that her family was eating was coming from very far away, and that from an ecological perspective, this was terribly damaging. She is right, of course. And so over the next year, she and her family grew their own food, prepared everything themselves, ate seasonally, and so on. What struck me most, though, was the fact that rather than staying in the Sun Belt of the US in Arizona, (which has the second fastest growth rate of all states in the US...consider the fact that between 1990 and 2000, the population of the Phoenix metropolitan area grew by 45%) she moved away from it, recognising its role in the unsustainable society we've created for ourselves.

Places like Arizona and the arid West have bloomed from damming of rivers, there is no doubt about this. Yet while people have been moving in droves to these places, their expectations have remained the same. Wherever we go, we want what we've had in other places, and if this comes at the detriment of the environment, then so be it. Take a look at this picture of suburbia in the Phoenix area, which shows parts of Ahwatukee, Chandler, Gilbert West Valley, SW Valley, Scottsdale, and Mesa. You see most every house accompanied with a lawn, maybe with some desert vegetation. And so even when we move to an arid region, we expect our physical landscape to look like that from the water-rich Midwest. In places like Phoenix, outdoor water use for things like lawn account for two-thirds of resident's water use. As Chris Martin, a horticulture professor at Arizona State University mentions, "If you withhold water, desert plants do use less water, but your yard looks like a desert. So there's this big paradox. People say,' Well, I'll plant desert vegetation, but I want it to look green and healthy, so I'll irrigate it so it grows like crazy.'"

There is an entitlement that pervades this culture, an entitlement that allows us to conflate our rights and our wants. Clearly, having a green lawn in Phoenix is a want. But the fact that water from the Colorado River is being channeled to Phoenix under the facade of abundance allows us to demand, almost righteously, that the water be available for whatever we want to use it for. This is the same entitlement that allows us to not think twice before eating a strawberry in winter. It is the entitlement that allows a continued export of a materialistic "development" philosophy to other parts of the world, in the expectation of course that it will benefit us more than it will benefit them. In the end, however, we all lose with this philosophy. Our right to freedom does not allow us to freely destroy. Further, our entitlement to this freedom doesn't mean that the way we've behaved so far is the only way we should behave. What we must do is break from this entitled, abundant past, and accept and embrace a scarce future. We cannot continue to expect that we can have both ecological protection and rejuvenation and a continuation of the lifestyle we've grown accustomed to, indeed, entitled to.

On meaning

A four day break from writing has been refreshing, and I am happy to say that there are so many thoughts running through my head that there is plenty to write about for the next few weeks.

I went to the Michigan Social Justice Conference yesterday - there were several fascinating panels and discussions, with issues ranging from divestment and sex trafficking to the power of allies and workers' rights. There was also a workshop on the social justice issues of trash and waste, which Sherri and I were grateful to help with. The keynote speaker was writer and activist Derrick Jensen, whose essays I have been reading in Orion. He has written more than a dozen books and has thought deeply about issues of social injustice and the environment. He talked at length about the root causes of all social justice issues - as I have tried to articulate previously, most all of the problems we face in the world stem from the same moral and ethical deficiencies. One of the key roots he said, was the issue of meaning.

Jensen is influenced highly by Native American cultures and traditions. These cultures had survived for several thousand years in harmony with their environment (let's avoid discussion about the ecologically noble savage here). He talked about how having lived in a place, these people assigned meaning to everything around them, from the trees to the salmon. The meaning that is assigned to these different sides of nature shape our perceptions of what it is that promotes harmony and unity. For example, while walking through a forest, someone who thinks that trees fill a pivotal niche in the environment, by providing habitat for birds and animals, will treat it differently than someone who sees trees as a way to make paper and money. In one case, the broader environment is at the centre of consideration, and in the other case, the economy may be at the centre of consideration.

Jensen mentioned that what organised religion has done (one of them in particular he dislikes) has been to take meaning away from the visceral and tangible to the arcane and unphysical, i.e. god. This, he feels, has led to a meaningless worldly presence, and the domination of nature because of it. In the same way, he feels as if science has had that same domineering quality, which allows us the ability of violence against nature. This is interesting, because it wasn't even a few days ago that I heard on an episode of Being that before the very notion of god existed, only the notion of the other existed. What dominating notions of god and science have done have taken away the nuances of understanding of place and time, and the consequent designation of meaning to them. The constructs of science and many organised religions have embedded in them the notion just two things - right and wrong.

This past year has made me think a lot about place and time and the meaning of everything that surrounds me. Each one of us will assign different meanings to different sides of nature. That is okay. I just hope that there is a convergence of the outcomes resulting from these meanings.

Speaking of meaning, how much this past weekend has meant is immeasurable and beautiful.

What will we use it for if we don't understand what it means?

I want to follow up on my post from November, Ethics in research design and longevity of interest. I want to do so because I have been thinking about technology constantly over the past weeks - I am interested in understanding why humans are compelled to find technological "solutions" to social problems, especially ecological crises. Over the past few weeks, I have been reflecting on what it means for me to be studying chemistry, and why I am doing it, and what it may really mean for the world, if anything at all. But I have been further contemplative about technology after listening to Krista Tippett's conversation with Jon Kabat-Zinn on Being, as well as looking forward to tonight's upcoming Jeopardy! episode, in which Watson, a computer developed by IBM, will be competing against humans.

I have been trying to understand the unique position of humans to the environment, and this has allowed a great deal of introspection, both of my relationship to the world, and my responsibility to my neighbourhood and community and family and myself in living in a less destructive manner. What this has entailed has been to boil down my life to what matters to me the most, and what matters involves only in some small sense the technology I am surrounded by. Of course, you wouldn't be reading this if technology didn't exist. But I do feel that I have been allowed time to reflect through a purging of things, including technology. Kabat-Zinn made one of the most insightful remarks on our very rudimentary understanding of the influences of technology in an increasingly connected world. He said that, "...technology is becoming more sophisticated than our understanding of ourselves as human beings without technology." With our technologies, we are able to have our phones ring in the middle of the night with the arrival of an e-mail, and we are able to ship apples from New Zealand to the US with just the burden of customs. Technology has become so second-nature to us that we now cannot envision a world without it. If we cannot envision a world without it, how does that affect our moral selves, and how does that affect answers to increasingly complex problems? Potential answers to questions of what it means to be human, and what it means to be good, and what it means to live in an ecologically sustainable world still feel as far as they have for millennia. By adding more complexity in the picture through technology, we obfuscate an already complex understanding of ourselves. At the same time, I am in no way taking a position in which I am saying technology is unequivocally bad.

Dale Jamieson and Wendell Berry write at length at the compulsion of applying what we know, even though we don't have a full understanding of the impacts. A great example of this is nuclear waste being used as ammunition in Iraq. But what might the motives be for developing the Watson? How does having developed the Watson answer pressing questions? How does this move us forward morally and ethically?

On change

I have tried to write over the past few weeks about the economy and its relationship to sustainability. My intention with this blog is to try to lay the foundation of understanding problems facing society and the Earth, with the hope that this rudimentary foundation will serve to guide introspection and action. Today's post is about both introspection and action. I want to talk about a word so incredibly overused in the recent past, and a word that is now bubbling to the surface again with the new election cycle - change.

In a recent episode on Being, Krista Tippett spoke with Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founding director of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Tippett articulated that we have placed incredible trust in something that we assumed was logical and rational, that is, the economy, which was in fact highly irrational. With the decline of the economy and staggering numbers of foreclosures across the country, people stood shocked that something like this could result from a free-market, deregulated financial sector. In fact, irrationality and unethical practices were paraded with the mask of profit and social good, especially with the mortgage crisis. With a declining economy, our government and financial institutions have tried to "reform" corporate behaviour to a certain extent, with significant backlash from those with vested interests in the economic system staying the way it is. Thus, the notion of change, the locus of President Obama's election campaign, has been highly tempered, such that dominant principles of conduct have gone largely unchanged. In this context, Tippett quoted Sharon Salzberg, a Buddhist scholar and spiritual teacher, who said "Change and suffering are inevitable parts of life."

With ever increasing amounts of ecological degradation, change is at the very heart at the concept of sustainability. A true and radical change is necessarily at the opposite end of the status quo, and any tempering of the concept of sustainability means that meaningful and durable change will always lay beyond arm's reach. Unfortunately, the dominant discourse around sustainability has been around the concept of "sustainable development." In fact, "sustainability" has come to mean "sustainable development," especially within the circles of the governing elite, including the United Nations. The most commonly cited definition of "sustainability," the definition of the Brundtland Commission, is an elitist definition of "sustainable development." This definition in no way questions or changes current structures of governance and societal behaviour, but rather further embeds past behaviour in future visions of the world. Aidan Davison wonderfully critiques the notion of sustainable development, in his book Technology and The Contested Meanings of Sustainability. 

Do you have any thoughts on the concept of change?

A new kind of Pareto optimality

Given any policy or allocation of resources, if one were to make a change to this policy or allocation, making at least one person better off without making anyone else worse off, the change is a Pareto improvement. If we keep making such Pareto improvements, we will reach a point at which no more improvements can be made. This is the point of Pareto optimality. In practice, it is likely that a person that is made worse off through a change in policy will be compensated monetarily, given some quantification of their worse position. This is how a lot of public policy is made. This may make sense from a neoclassical economic perspective, but it is such thinking that leads to people wanting to be compensated for interests that are clearly environmentally and socially harmful, or leads people to compensating other people with money for a harm that is incalculable. For example, monetary profits made from having a landfill close to people's residences might be divided in some part to people at those residences, to compensate for their distress at having the landfill close by.

But given continuing environmental harm, burgeoning populations all over the world, and the ever increasing size of human interventions in nature (larger dams, larger swaths of forest cleared for reaching oil sands, deeper mines), there is a likelihood that any choice that is potentially harmful to the environment and communities may have much larger consequences than in the past. However, it seems as if powerful interests are willing to increase monetary compensations so long as they can function viably. For example, the BP-Macondo Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico led to BP setting aside $20 billion to deal with settlement claims and cleaning the oil.

On an episode of Speaking of Faith (now known as Being), Jean Vanier talked about how it is essential that we lives our lives and make decisions with those most vulnerable among us at the centre of the decisions. Vanier gave the example of a new born child - the child is the most vulnerable member of a family or group, and once it exists, our decision making must accommodate the needs of this being. It is fascinating how this creature, although completely incapable of doing anything on its own, can control an entire group, its minds and hearts. This seems to throw a huge wrench in the Pareto way of thinking. Unfortunately, however, when it comes to how our governments and corporations make decisions today, it is the interests of not the most vulnerable among us, but the interests of the most powerful among us that are front and centre. Indeed, the Pareto condition is centred around those that are already well off compared to most of the rest. And then, there are the silent - nature and other living beings, who are potentially more vulnerable than the most vulnerable humans. What if we were to consider the interests of nature and ecosystems in the Pareto condition? If we are to constantly improve people's lives, can we do so without making the provider worse off?

 

V. Pareto