A changed relationship with materials

I have spent the better part of this past semester thinking about technology and materiality. We live in a material, dualistic world, one in which we think of ourselves as separate from the world we inhabit, and one in which materials are a source of happiness. We have structured entire cultures and economies on this philosophy, and while it would be wonderful to live in a culture that was non-dual and less materialistic, it is difficult to see inroads into how that culture would be spawned. Such a drastically different culture is necessary, although it may not be possible.

Humans are no longer only homo sapiens sapiens. We are now homo faber--man that makes. We make little toy trinkets for children and we erect mega dams that can block silt and water from following gravity. We build infrastructures, some in space like the GPS system, and some under ground and under water like the oil distribution network in the Gulf of Mexico. We technologise and we valuate materials.

But these technologies and materials are not valuable in and of themselves. Rather, it is how we perceive them, the politics imbued in them, how we are sold on them that lends them their power. These materials and technologies shape our world, our views of the world, and our views of ourselves as human beings. They lend many people a great deal of power, and allow people to affect politics in their interests. For example, no one can disagree that fossil fuels have lent the Western world a great deal of power, many times to the detriment of those people living in the Middle East. It is clear then that our cultural identities are tied to materials. We will go to any length to gain access to these materials. We will wage all sorts of wars, physical and those guised under "diplomacy". A competitive material world is the race to nowhere of megalomaniacs.

A similar picture can be painted for our individual lives. A broad survey of television advertisements and street corners during move out days in a college town seems to say that the value of our lives is proportional to the materiality of them. We are judged by our materials--the more the better it seems. We thus fill our homes and fill our lives with stuff we buy from our weekly trips to the mall. We line up to get the newest cell phone just because our service provider says that we are "eligible" for a new one. We brag about the time we will spend suspended off of the slide of a shear cliff with a new set of modular crampons from Petzl. Materials lend us status and power in small and intricate ways, whether it is bragging rights or whether it is climbing a rock.

It is difficult to separate ourselves from our materials. It seems that everywhere you look, you find someone interacting with some manufactured material. While we did interact physically with the world millenia ago, power and control now form the foundation of material use in our daily lives, and for our governments. And so, I understand that our views of ourselves are shaped by what we have--infrastructures such as roads just cannot be done without now, it seems, for everything from our daily commutes to our food makes use of such an infrastructure. Our cell phones become tied to our capacity to communicate with loved ones.

But I still feel that there is something we are forgetting about ourselves in all of this--that our fate cannot be tied to our ability to constantly change our world materially in the way that it currently does. My contention is that no amount of solar energy or wind energy or new efficient technologies will address ecological problems. They will indeed create their own problems of an even larger magnitude, of that I am certain. Our demands will change from wanting wind energy in the first place to wanting wind energy to provide enough energy so we can drive our Hummers.

Can we imagine a different relationship with the materials of daily life? How might this unfold in our communities and in our governments? Part of it surely comes from changing the framework from thinking about how newer things are more efficient to how newer things out to be more sufficient. But can this be taken a step further to make what we already have sufficient?

When positivity rests on the ability to degrade

Cut trees, pollute waters, pave prairies. Industrialise, "add value", compete, sell. Increase wealth, move away to the gorgeous mountains. Manage from afar, while sipping a margarita beside your pool. Give charitable donations to groups you support. Feel good about yourself.

I wonder, Why do we have to degrade before we can collaborate and construct? This is the typical argument that is presented by "developed" countries--degradation of the Earth and its effusive offerings must occur to increase our "standard of living", and once we have all of our basic needs met, we will have more time to care about other things (like the Earth, which, ironically, is what provides us our basic needs).

"Development" lends itself to degradation more than it does to construct and sustain, for two reasons that I can think of. The first is that it assumes that our "needs" can be fully met. Unfortunately, this culture has done a tremendous job at conflating our needs with our wants. Think about it. How much have your needs gone down as you've grown up? If our material needs went down, our houses wouldn't look like hoarding units, and landfills and oceans wouldn't be places as thoroughly filled with junk as they are. The second is that if we are to live in an equitable, peaceful world, then the traditional ways of accumulating 'wealth', like mining, warring, etc. cannot be ways in which we continue to seek wealth.

If we look at the countries that give the most foreign "aid" (details here and here), the list is made up of those countries that have monetarily profited most from ecological degradation. Benevolence is not about lending dignity after rape has occurred. The rules of the game are structured so that these countries, and their organisations and institutions, win, every time. They are already powerful under current regimes, with aid being wagged like a carrot or a stick whenever appropriate to do so. If you believe even a shred of what John Perkins says in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, then you can see what I am getting at.

Many times we feel as if the only way to have access to power, to have control over our own lives, to do what we want to do (positively), is to be first subsumed by the system, and then create our own bubble within it when the opportunity lends itself. We must bite our tongues until we are granted permission to let loose. My contention is that the things that we aspire to, the things that we wish to see in the world, can be created by us, right here, right now. Building constructive dialogue, building community, enriching our lives, these things are impossible if we burn the bridges we will need to cross. We must engage in creative, thoughtful, respectful, cherishing ways from the outset, for then we will know with certainty that the outcomes are those that are in the collective and individual good.

How appreciation is activist

It is not hard to see that there is much that is not working around us--everything from government's continuing failures to a lack of community resiliency and a reliance on others to make decisions for our personal lives. Much of these failures arise from our continual cultural want for more. We want better infrastructure, cheaper access to things made around the world, continued materialism. And the providers of our wants can't keep up with our demands. Furthermore, there is a differential access to provisions, further exacerbating inequalities that currently exist. I will be the first to admit that this power dynamic must change, but maybe the way we are going about creating the change is futile. Are there ways in which we don't have to directly feed the system and cause these changes? Might appreciation be activist?

Activism as we currently think about it is about taking a stand for something, generally with political motives and outcomes. That something could be promoting firearms legislation allowing everyone easy access to guns. Activism can also be about taking a stand against something, like trying to block firearms legislation that allows such easy access to guns, again, with political motives and outcomes. But I also think that activism can also be about doing something we are not culturally programmed to do, and to appreciate is one of those things. And that's what turns appreciation from an acceptance of the way things are to something that is political.
 
This is a system, a culture, that is driven by a decided unappreciation of everything--of our bodies, of the land beneath our feet, the air we breath, and the water we drink. We cherish and respect the things we appreciate. We seem to violently demolish everything that we don't. And because this is a kind of activism, a way of being that this culture does not know, it does not know how to deal with it. If we are to change "the system" fundamentally, I think that we must act in activist ways that don't lend legitimacy to the system, but rather in ways that destabilise it. Appreciate what you have. This appreciation then opens up our lives to more positivity, and more control over ourselves, rather than continually giving proxies to others.

Some thoughts on control

One of the central themes that has come up to the surface in thinking about trash, waste, and ecological harm is the notion of control. Control comes in many flavours and shades, and operates (or not) at scales ranging from extremely macroscopic (large government, transnational organisations), to extremely microscopic (the self, our being).

At times we feel as if we are in control of our lives, and at times we feel like we must move with the macroscopic flow of our societies, regardless of how we feel. At the largest level, control operates at the scale of government and industry - laws and policies dictate what is acceptable and what isn't, what will be mass produced and what will not. In this situation, there is very little that each one of us can do. It is as if decisions are made for us; for example, the electricity we use will come from coal, and there is very little I can do to stop that. Either I can choose to be a part of it and use electricity, or I can somehow choose to opt out. (This I explored in a previous post a few days ago.) Another example is that of the large economy - if the "economy is down," society is down, people lose their jobs, and that means we as individuals are down. Many people feel that there is little that we can do individually to change the situation, apart from debate with people, and hope that the imaginary forces of the market do their thing. They feel that we have to wait and hope so that the "economy is up," and so that we can resume the normalcy of their daily lives. Indeed, it seems to them that we are in control of our lives when the collective we are in, our communities, neighbourhoods, and societies, are "stable" as defined through neoliberal economics.

What we've done then is given up the power of decision-making to people that work in government buildings and boardrooms. We have given them proxies to provide us with the only choices from which we must choose. We have become reliant on others. For example, if you are fortunate enough to have enough money to go grocery shopping, you have a large variety of things to choose from. Yet what is provided to you is defined by the proxies we (the collective) have given to others to make decisions for us. You are thus provided with foods sprayed with toxic chemicals, uber-processed, and full of empty calories. This outcome not only negatively impacts our bodies, but also negatively impacts the environment. Unfortunately, the choices we are being presented are those which will continue to degrade our land, our air, our water. (This is obvious with continued expansion of something like oil exploration.) What is left then is a very small space within we can operate and exercise control. We are left with only unpalatable choices. Now, while I cannot expect everyone to be an activist (that would be awesome, though), I can encourage people to make responsible choices for themselves and the environment in the small space in which they can exercise control. Most all of us, especially those who are able to access this blog, are completely and totally empowered to exercise more responsibility toward the environment in our daily lives, and serve as role models moving forward.

Against the tide

As you may have come to realise, one of the main reasons why we face such dire ecological crises is because contemporary societies have designed themselves to be "outside of nature" with the desire to control our experiences. Our interactions with it have been minimised, and our bubble has been built around extracting energy and material from nature and the environment around us, and depositing degraded materials and energy back outside of our bubble, into nature. Our ethic is defined by doing what we want "in here," and not worrying about what happens "out there," as long as the flow of materials and energy in continues, and as long we can continue dumping what we want out there. We have created this disconnect in order to shirk responsibility in dealing with shortcomings of our philosophies and mental capacities, and in our humility.


I am reading this fascinating book by Alan Weisman, called The World Without Us, in which he envisions how nature might take over human structures and landscapes such as houses and cities. We have many times fought against nature in creating spaces for us to live, eat, and sleep. In having done so, we constantly struggle to maintain what it is we've invested in. For example, in having "reclaimed" land, like in The Netherlands, we are compelled to keep the forces of water at bay by constructing something like Maeslantkering.

Weisman describes the fascinating case of what it takes to keep the New York subway system running smoothly. Everyday, those running the subway must keep 13 million gallons of water from overpowering the tunnels. Because there is little soil and vegetation to absorb rainwater and groundwater, subway tunnels funnel the water into themselves. There are 753 pumps, maintained by crews, that have to pump water uphill constantly, because of the depth of the subway tunnels, and natural groundwater that gushes up from bedrock. Weisman writes, "Following the World Trade Center attack, an emergency pump train bearing a jumbo portable diesel generator pumped out 27 times the volume of Shea Stadium. Had the Hudson River actually burst through the PATH train tunnels that connect New York's subways to New Jersey, as was greatly feared, the pump train-and possibly much of the city-would simple have been overwhelmed." Pat Schuber, superintendent of Hydraulics for New York City Transit continues, "When this pump facility shuts down [because of no electricity], in half an hour water reaches a level where trains can't pass anymore."

There seems to be an ethic, prevalent throughout our interactions amongst ourselves, and with nature, of domination and competition. We want to dominate other people and their principles (leading to armed conflict), and we want to dominate the forces of nature by creating structures that nature wants to topple, and by demolishing violently natural areas for things of monetary "value." What if we were to live our lives not forcefully against the tide of nature, but rather with it?

A life of its own

I just arrived here at the Fishbowl after listening to a talk by Dr. Condoleeza Rice. Yes, the Dr. Condoleeza Rice. (A wonderful way to get you riled up! Try it for yourself!) She mentioned how Japan will not be able to "grow [economically] unfortunately" for a little bit, because of the earthquake and tsunami. Along the same lines, I was reading an article from The New Yorker, Aftershocks, by Evan Osnos, in which he describes how the Japanese have dealt with the recent natural events that have impacted their country. He wrote at length about his interactions with Yukio Okamoto, a former diplomat and high-ranking adviser to Prime Ministers of Japan, who now runs a political and economic consultancy called Okamoto Associates. Osnos asked Okamoto how he thought the events would alter Japan's sense of self. Okamoto replied,

“We were not humble enough to Mother Nature. We were building reactors on the basis of the most hideous earthquake in the Edo period, which was magnitude 8.5. Many experts expected a large earthquake would come, but not 9.0. Nobody said 9.0. Japan was in a euphoric slumber for two decades. Our life has been so comfortable, we became introverted. We forgot the need for struggle, during which time many top positions were taken over by Chinese and Korean companies. It’s too soon to say, with us still facing the threat of nuclear reactors, but perhaps, eventually, this sense of crisis will be the push to the back of many Japanese, and we will regain the strength of the sixties and seventies, when we had a concrete goal. So no doubt our economy will slip down, but then we may bounce back.” (emphases added)

I found it incredibly fascinating how Dr. Rice almost exactly shared Okamoto's viewpoint - that the Japanese are defined by their economy. Well, it may not be shocking that in fact most people and countries of the world are defined by their economies, and their abilities to "compete" in this "globalised world." Our identities as individuals have been tied to large, ecologically destructive social constructs such as economy.

There seems to be a tendency to let our lives slip beyond our control. Of course most of us are a part of society, and we are in a way bound by our emotional and physical relationships to people and places. In a sense, the defined social norms and the constraints put upon society by external factors (like weather, for example) are thrust upon us as individuals, and we are obliged to partake in collective effort, particularly if we want to be accepted. At the same time, society has created constructs, such as economy, that have allowed different sorts of interactions among individuals and smaller groups of people in society. We have somehow been taught or told that it is a duty to participate in the economy, that shopping is the only way we can make change, and that we "vote by our dollar." It is telling how we have let a completely man-made construct take on a life of its own, such that it is this vague, ill-defined, and irrational construct that defines who we are as individuals and collections of individuals. (Many people have placed immense faith in concepts such as economy, and have been let down, not surprisingly. What has happened over the past few years, especially with "bubbles," is now being better understood by terrific journalists and investigators.)

I believe it is important to realise that it is not me, or you, or us, that are defined by such constructs. At an even larger scale, the value of the environment and our relationships to it are not defined by such constructs. Our value in this world, and the value of the world, is not set by people at the Federal Reserve or some government agency. Rather it is you, me, and us that lend legitimacy and credence to these constructs, and it is you, me, and us that define these social constructs, and the bounds of operability and validity of these constructs. It is not surprising then that something like the economy is only a small part of our society, and that it cannot be placed at the same level as society, the environment, or as us, as individuals. Japan is more than its economy, and its ability to make cars. It is a land with a culture, with a history, with nature and trees and flowers.

Experiencing beauty, and the trash borne of it

Trash is borne out of, and is a byproduct of, our desire to control what we experience. Humans are the only animal species I can think of that want to control what happens to them. We build our homes such that air conditioning will keep the air temperature at 70 degrees Fahrenheit year round, we set our alarms to wake us up at predetermined times, and we cook food to our tastes. One consequence of this is that we've lost our abilities to cope with situations we were able to cope with in the past - living off of what we find, for example. But our ability to control what we experience has also led us to places where humans cannot survive, and yet are incredibly beautiful places - the depths of oceans, space, and the peaks of mountains. These places instill in us a sense of wonder and amazement, but to a degree only if someone knows about it, experiences it, and shares the experience. I didn't know about Bahamian blue holes until I read about them, but once I realised what they were, I thought they were beautiful, and it would be a wonderful experience to see them in person. Unfortunately, the only way we can control what we experience is to have something, a man-made product with us. Furthermore, these products, once they have served their purposes, become excess baggage on our voyages. What we do in the end is taint these pristine environments with our presence by leaving behind what is essentially trash.

For example, we have turned Mount Everest into the world's highest garbage dump. There are more than 100 tons of trash lying on Mount Everest. "The government of Nepal has taken steps toward protecting Mt. Everest. Thanks to a 1992 law, if climbers leave any nonbiodegradable trash such as plastic containers on the mountain, they lose a $4,000 pre-expedition deposit. A Sherpa incentive program, instituted in 1994, pays Sherpas for every discarded oxygen bottle they retrieve from the mountain. Glass bottles were banned on Everest in 1998."

But also think about the Clif bar you take on your trip into the woods, or the canister of propane you carry to make some soup while camping, or the band-aid you keep just in case you cut yourself rock-climbing. In our quest to observe beauty, we taint it.

Social interactions without trash

Trash is borne out of, and is a byproduct of, our desire to control what we experience. This has led to the development of social interactions which necessarily involve the production of trash, especially because of sentiments like complacency, ignorance and carelessness, as well as notions of time. There are many simple and fundamental acts that we perform in which we allow trash to be generated. Take for example going to eat at a fast food restaurant. In that light, I am trying to envision a world, a region, a community, or an interaction without trash. I want your suggestions on situations in which you would think trash could not possibly be generated, but ends up being so. Then I want to take trash out of the picture. Say it wasn't even possible to generate trash - what would that interaction morph into? What changes in behaviour would be required to have that interaction? How is this then a critique of our social constructs? Please send in your thoughts. My wheels are turning, too.