Keep at it

I have written a few times about motivation (here) and individual action from various perspectives. In the end, it is up to us to change our lives, and be guided by a new morality. Personal efforts guided by a motivation to to open, honest, accepting, and in the end radically paradigm shifting is essential, but personal action without the goal of broader social implications can be selfish. And  The goal is social change, and it will not come easy. 

Trying to consider the impacts of your individual choices, and of the collective choices of society does not make for leisure time. When living, we can't let our brains go into standby mode. We can't be awake and process only some things. In that case, we aren't fully aware, conscious, and present. And while it takes at least some effort to pay attention to trends, to fashion, to what a materialistic world, this is not the consciousness I am talking about. Rather, this is the state of being that the moneymakers would want you to have - not fully asleep so as it miss their cues, but not fully conscious so as to question their motives.

Being observant and conscious can be consuming, and I mean that in the least materialistic way possible. What I mean is that as soon as you start questioning something, you start questioning another thing, and another thing, and soon enough, you realise that this culture, this society is one that is founded upon "out of sight, out of mind." We shun people, we cut them off, and this allows us to degrade their localities, which means we degrade all of our localities. It doesn't take long to realise that these systems are so ingrained, that as an individual, we think that our efforts are not worth it, that "human nature" is human nature, that greed is fundamentally human. It's a reason why many people just give up.

Over dinner the other night, Crystal asked Professor Larimore, "How do you deal with things not changing? How do you stay motivated?" Professor Larimore replied, "You just never know when something will happen. It's like an earthquake. Over time, the pressure builds, slowly but surely, and then one day, there is the release."

You just never know when something big will happen. Sometimes, it takes a split second. The world can change, or at least, parts of it can. Who knew lasting dictatorships in the Middle East, eras that lasted half a century, would crumble in a matter of weeks? Movements can go from being dormant, to all of a sudden being catalytic and inspiring. But it is important to realise that such massive changes are few and far between. What about our daily lives then? How do we spend time in between these moments? Constantly working toward a change is essential. So her, a woman of seventy years, message is, keep at it. While this may sound cliche, I don't think it is said often enough.

An honest effort

This post is inspired by my mother's thoughts on my last post, We all start at different places, hopefully to end up somewhere together. She said,

"It's when we recognise the problem, that we have to do something about it. Thats the reason most people don't see or address the problem. It requires effort to change something. Most people don't want to make any effort. It is easier to ignore the problem, and live, than make an effort to change it. So people will always complain about things but rarely will try to find a solution. Effort is the key." 

For the privileged, there are few worries. Yes, everyone has their "stuff" that they worry about, but never do we think that we won't have enough food to eat, water to drink, or a place to sleep. The stresses that we face are of a different kind - will I get the particular job I want? Will I be able to get on the very flight I want to be on? What section will I be seated in for Michigan American football games? For many of us that are privileged, it is easy to get through life with few worries then.

Most people do not want to make any effort. By effort I don't mean going to the ticket office to get your tickets (although nowadays everything can be delivered right to your doorstep, including groceries.) What I think this culture has done has allowed many things to be a black box for us. We are able to flip the switch in our living rooms and get light. But what we fail to recognise is that we invoke a massive infrastructure of power lines, engineers, operators, fossil fuel combustion or nuclear fission when we flip the switch. We are unappreciative of the light, but complain when the light fails to turn on. As Aidan Davison has written, in Technology and the Contested Meanings of Sustainability, there is a dichotomy between means and ends.

We have done then is forsaken effort for convenience. I recognise the "effort" (or subtle slavery) that we put in to earn money so that our lives are convenient. But this isn't the effort that I am talking about. The effort I am talking about is the one that is required in response to doing something that is required to lessen our burden on the world, to demolish walls of inequality, to march ardently on the path to sustainability.

What this does is make us think that many things are available without effort. At most the effort that is required for light is the flipping of a switch (and paying the bill), but no more. This then translates seamlessly into thinking that others will solve the problems for us, if they ever arise, and that no effort is required on our part. We hope that the ethereal, murky worlds of politics and policy will result in concrete and tangible outcomes. We then think that effort is not for us. We forget what effort looks like, and what it entails. And then we end up becoming blind to problems, or unwilling to recognise them.

This effort required is more than the convenient and easy, like changing light bulbs and taking cloth bags to stores. These are stepping stones. An honest effort is required of us to stand up to the problems we've created - a moral, ethical, behavioural, spiritual, rhetorical effort.

Objects and materials: Who worked for it?

It should come as no surprise to you that a majority, if not most, of the objects and materials that we use daily have required that someone or something has expended effort and energy and time to make those objects and materials. Effort is expended not only in actually making those objects and materials, but also in purchasing them for home or for someone. I believe that our tendency to think of some things as "disposable" stems from who expends the effort in finally getting those objects and materials to you. It seems like the last exchange of resources (generally monetary) tells us to a great extent whether or not we would be okay with throwing something away.

I want to illustrate this tendency with the example of a plastic trinket. The hydrocarbons used in the plastic trinket were probably extracted from some oil field by several workers, then shipped or transported by several workers, then processed and made into the plastic trinket by several workers, then brought to a store by a driver, then stocked by a store employee. This trinket can finally be purchased by you for yourself or your family. On the other hand, you may purchase the trinket for someone else. If that person knows you, she might keep the trinket, at least for a while, recognising that your money (earned through hopefully "legitimate" ways) went into the trinket. There is a sentimentality that comes along with the trinket. If that person doesn't know you, she might not mind throwing it away if it is cluttering their lives. On the other hand, imagine yourself as the recipient of an object, say a plastic cup. You've chosen to use this plastic cup to drink water from, say during a talk or a seminar, or at a random fraternity party. Clearly, you have not worked for the cup. All you've done is pretty much shown up to the event, and there sat an unused plastic cup perfect for quenching your thirst. Now, I know people have a tendency to use "disposable" objects in their homes that they themselves have purchased, and have no qualms of throwing them away. I could of course go through the various permutations and combinations of scenarios, but that really isn't the point of this post. If you've sweat for something, you just won't feel as compelled to throw it away as compared to the case when someone else, especially someone unknown to you, has sweat for it.

We have the tendency to only think of immediacy - who was the last person that I associate this object with? We don't seem to think of everything done along the way by other people to make it possible to have the objects that surround us. These people are in no way different than you are. Their effort is every much as important to the object as is the last person's money. How might we better value these efforts? I guess this is the cause of most problems that face us - we only think of ourselves and our immediate ones in a world that is clearly a web of interactions.

On appreciation

It's that time of year when the past, present, and future surround us and when many of us are around our family and old friends. These are people that we've known all of our lives, and have influenced significantly who we are today. It is important we appreciate their efforts, past, present and future. Our lives are a summation of past experiences, emotions and thoughts that have made us who we are in the present, and primed us for the future. The future beckons, and this time of year is also marked with new - a New Year, new commitments and resolutions, and importantly (from an environmental, emotional and economic standpoint), new things - toys, phones, electronics and appliances. (And along with the new objects come old tales - of injustice, of environmental degradation, and of trash from wrapping and packaging.) But as Lia mentioned in her post last week, what can be lost in the excitement of the new, of the untouched, of the virgin, of the forthcoming, is a reflection on what we have already, and an appreciation for it. The emotion of this time of year can help us here; it easy to take a look - inward and outward - at the accumulation that has put us, our families, our communities and our environment, in the positions they are in today. It is important to be grateful for and appreciate the investments of time, money, effort, love and natural resouces that have gone into the many objects we take for granted, and to make full use of them before we look to the new. I do believe that we can continue to develop mentally, emotionally and ethically with these objects, before needing to move on to the next fad. It is time to reflect, and it is time to appreciate.

Guest Blog #4: Michelle Price - Closing the gap

The Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute Doctoral Fellows have been having a wonderful discussion about trash, waste and society, and Michelle Price, a PhD student in Applied Physics, posted a provocative thought the other day, which I wanted to share...

"Reading through the many weighty points made in the previous posts, I think we can all agree on two main points. First, a sustainable society of the future requires the majority of individuals to embrace [zero-waste] lifestyles. Second, today’s society makes this type of lifestyle inaccessible to most people without extensive effort, and most people will not make this effort. If our goal is to minimize waste generation on a massive scale, the question our generation has to answer then becomes, “How do we close the gap between the effort required to reduce waste and the effort people are willing to put into this?”

In a cursory attempt to identify a solution framework, I tried to think of something in our society that the vast majority of people do, even if it takes extra effort. The most relevant example I came up with was littering (probably since I’ve been thinking about trash so much lately). With just a few exceptions, when someone in our society generates trash, he or she will hold on to the item until they find a trash can to throw it in. In a discussion about how to minimize trash in the first place, this may not seem very impressive; nevertheless, it represents a societal norm that was successfully developed by closing the “effort expended” vs “effort required” gap (emphasis added). Without having studied the issue in any depth, I can identify two things that made this possible: first, just about every little kid in America learns the phrase “Don’t be a litterbug!” in grade school. Second, in most public places you’re generally never more than a handful of steps from a trash can.

 

So how can we get people to do things like flip light switches, sort garbage, and choose trash-free options without any more thought than holding onto a paper cup until they find a trash can to throw it in? Do we have to add an “environmental impacts” requirement to mandatory public education that already includes standards on reading, writing, mathematics, science, sexual education, foreign languages…? Sponsor external programs to come to classrooms and educate children about environmental issues in the same way visiting police officers reach out through the DARE program? Perhaps the more difficult obstacle will be, how do we decrease the effort required to go waste-free? Part of this will certainly necessitate changes in how we shop for groceries, order food and keep our rolls of toilet paper from getting wet or contaminated between the time they’re produced and the time they’re sitting safely under the bathroom sinks in our homes. How do we handle these issues in a way that doesn’t oppress society with large expenses, require vast energy inputs to collect and sort re-usables as opposed recyclables, and maintains our society’s high degree of hygiene?"

~Michelle Price