Being dismissed

No Impact Man is a documentary about Colin Beavan, who, along with his family, tried to live for a year in New York City with no impact on the environment. The Beavans lived practically trash free, without running electricity, ate food that came from only a 250 mile radius, and traveled around using only human power, among other things. Many people felt that Beavan undertook the project solely for searching for a topic for his next book, that the project was just a self-indulgent, privileged, power trip. Others thought he was sincere in his efforts. Some people changed their opinions over the course of the project.

Regardless of your opinion of Beavan and his efforts, what was undeniably surprising was the amount of media coverage he received. The blogosphere was abuzz. The New York Times, WNYC, media outlets from Japan, Italy, France, and elsewhere interviewed him and covered his efforts. Good Morning America followed his family around for several weeks.

The part of the movie that I found most fascinating was Beavan's relationship with a long time community activist and gardener, Mayer Vishner. In an effort to be more connected with the food he ate, Beavan helped Vishner work the land in a small community garden. Vishner looked exactly like someone who rallied during the sixties and seventies--long hair, bearded, with simple clothes. He and Beavan would sit in the kitchen and talk about how the project was going, but also about the larger issues that were being raised by the project. What must be done about American corporate capitalism? What about the fact that your wife writes for Business Week, which promotes this corporate capitalism? And what should be made of all the media coverage that Beavan was receiving?

Dorothy Day has said, "Don’t call me a saint; I don’t want to be dismissed so easily." Yet, Vishner believed that this was exactly what was happening to Beavan. All of the attention Beavan was receiving seemed to mean that he wasn't a threat to the system. That his advocacy would be viewed as extreme, impractical, unhygienic, and profoundly anti-American. This was apparent when Beavan was being interviewed by Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America. In one scene, she asks people in the audience whether they could ever do something like this. It sounded more like a parent asking their child, "Will you ever put your hand on the stove?", seeming to goad an answer of no. And that's exactly the answer that she got from the audience.

It is clear that Beavan has been able to reach a wide audience with his efforts, which to me seem sincere. In trying to affect larger policy issues, he has chosen to run for US Congress, as a Green Party candidate, to represent central Brooklyn. But what about his efforts to show people what might need changing in their daily lives?

More reflections on where I live

It has been a while since I traveled at home; I haven't had the directed attention that traveling at home requires. But even still, when I look around me, and I see amazing people doing amazing and creative things, things that are intended to bring communities together, intended to create dialogue and discussion and conversation. While many scenes that I see around Ann Arbor are suffused with privilege, there is more genuineness here than many places I have been to in this country.

It is hard to think that the place I live in is a part of a bigger "sovereign" place whose values don't necessarily align with mine, or many of the people I know in Ann Arbor and elsewhere. But that is okay, I guess, as long as we have the energy for more good work that will turn the tides of injustice, inequality, and ecological degradation, into those of community, kindness, a true acceptance, and a true appreciation for all that we have.

In a previous post, I mentioned how this town provides each one of us the option of choosing to live experimentally and experientially, how this town makes it easy to live so. But while talking to Samantha about living trash-free on the Diag today, I came to a different realisation, one that I am going to go with from now on (until, of course, I have another realisation), and it is this--I realised that given this time, and given this town, living trash-free is the least I can do to fully appreciate where I live. Living trash-free isn't an experiment, and it isn't extreme either. Instead, it is something normal, it is a foundation on which to be more creative and more imaginative. It is the zeroth step on an individual and collective journey of reflection, introspection, and change.

I am very excited about the next steps.

How much should I give up?

As I wrote previously, individual action and sacrifice (here, here) can be undertaken to show that some things are not valuable, but rather degrade the value of everything else because of their existence. Indeed, sacrifice and giving up have incredibly positive meanings, and the acts of sacrifice and giving up allow us to more thoughtfully appreciate the relative importance and unimportance of what surrounds us. Yet a question that always rises when any action is taken is, How much should I give up? I have written at length about how my current actions are not extreme, but are hopefully a step toward an ecologically sustainable world in which such actions would be normal. What is more difficult to determine, however, is how much to sacrifice while still being able to effectively work towards change. This question has been fresh on my mind given my recent writings on poverty and access.


I had a really long conversation about poverty and ethics early this morning with Ashley at Pastry Peddler (awesome!). Ashley is a doctoral student in social work and psychology, and is a cornucopia of thoughts and wisdom on these issues, and she constantly struggles with the urge to give everything up, and live "poorly." This is absolutely analogous to trying to reduce environmental impact, which I wrote about a couple of days ago. However, there are several issues that arise because of such actions, issues that we must be mindful of at all times.

What plagues the environmental movement generally is that many of the things that need to happen to encourage large-scale change involve some environmental damage. My typing of this post, which hopefully a few people will read and react to, is requiring electricity, likely generated by burning some fossil fuel, is requiring plastic from oil, as well as rare earth metals mined from some part of the world. In an ecologically sustainable world, however, such toxicity wouldn't exist. But right now, there are few other options available to me to get my message out. Consequently, I can, along with many environmentalists, be viewed as a hypocrite. Yet, if environmentalists were to completely give up fossil fuels and plastics, right now, at this very place, what that means quite literally is a disconnection from the communities we are trying to change. If we were to go live off of the grid, off of the land, without a car, it would be difficult for us to get our message across. In fact, it seems to me that this is exactly what those who are unconcerned would want. Our disconnection would guarantee the continuation of the status quo, which means continued ecological degradation, and injustice towards people and place.

How much can you give up while still being able to effectively act towards change? The amount that you can give up is probably directly proportional to your current ability to communicate your message to people. For example, if I were to give up everything, people would just count me as a crazy person, and would continue on with their lives. On the other hand, if I were to take some "baby" step, those around me might consider my action as doable themselves, and might choose to take that action. This is because my influence is very limited compared to other people that exist in the world. Now let's think of celebrities. In contrast to someone like myself, if someone like Miley Cyrus or Sarah Palin were to give up everything, people might actually stop to consider and think..or, well, maybe not. But you get what I mean, right?

I do believe in the end, though, that each and every one of us that is fortunate must sacrifice and give up. Many people might that would mean are depriving ourselves, but that depends on your frame of reference and how you choose to view your actions. Of utmost importance is the ability to recognise how fortunate we are to have what we do, and that we live lives of relative ease. We don't have to worry too much about whether we are going to eat, but maybe just where or what. What this means is that there must be a full appreciation of what we have. Yet I recognise that it may be very easy to go down a path in which we choose to give up everything you have. But how does that affect the message we'd like to get out?

Are we fighting the right battles?

The impacts of human behaviour are felt throughout the natural world. If you just scratch the surface of the ecological issues facing us, you'll see that there are issues of all sorts regarding air and water and land degradation, biodiversity loss and persistent organic pollutants ending up in breast milk. Places that we have never even been to are now feeling the repercussions of our collective choices. And more likely than not, there are scores of environmentalists focusing on these issues. There are people that are trying to make sure that the air is clean, that our waters are unpolluted, that the soil isn't eroded. There are people trying to get certain plastics banned, and there are people that are trying to get coal-fired power plants reduce mercury emissions so that they don't end up in tuna that their children it.

As environmentalists, it seems that we're always fighting battles on many different fronts. Yet, as soon as one battle is won, the next one rears its head. There is no time to catch your breath. Oil spills are happening all the time. Once we've dealt with one toxic chemical being released into our waters, industry comes up with another chemical that we soon realise is toxic, too. Then we have to fight to ban that chemical. (Such is the same with human rights violations, which are, to me, the same issues as environmental issues.) There's something wrong here.


It seems as if we are tackling important issues (albeit slowly), but we are missing the most important point. We are saying, "Stop using chemical X," and then we quickly trust and hope that chemical Y that will end up in bottles will be benign. What we aren't doing with our approach, is taking down the systems of oppression, systems that will inevitably result in the constant abuse and mistreatment of our Earth and its people. I don't have to name these systems; it is plain to see what drives ecological degradation and injustice.

I believe that those who are vested in the current norms would have it no other way. They would rather have us fight these individual battles, have us compromise on these single issues, and not have criticise and reform what it is, truly, that results in the multitude of problems facing us. They are probably sitting in their offices and boardrooms, disconnected from the issues, not seeing the faces of people affected by an oil spill, not seeing the birds choking for air.

What we need is a radicalism that drives at the very heart of the crisis they face us. Our societies are founded on inequality and disrespect. We treat the Earth as inferior to ourselves, and we disrespect it. We "use" the Earth to provide us with rare earth metals for computers. We probably blasted a big hole in the ground to get to those ores. We treat those in "developing" countries, or those in places less powerful here in the US, those whose "natural resources" we're using here as inferior to us by disrespecting their lands and mountains and water.

The other day, I wrote a post titled I am not extreme. Indeed, our behaviours, different than those defined by the norms today, need to be those that would be normal in the world we want to live in - a world of equality, humility and respect towards everything. Yet that does not mean that our efforts today should not be viewed as different. In fact, our efforts and thoughts today do need to be radical. We cannot be satisfied with just keeping our oceans clean. If we commit ourselves to such a battle and see satisfaction in that, we will have allowed those that polluted the oceans ample opportunities to find new ways of degrading the land.

Our efforts and thoughts do need to be radical today, and we must reconcile this radicalism with the hope that there will be no need for such radicalism in our world. And we must always remember that we cannot hope for others to think and act radically unless we think so and do so ourselves.

I am not extreme

(I want to apologise for some heat of the moment typing in yesterday's post.)

I have had several people say that what I am doing is "extreme." Many think that what I am doing is "impractical" for them to do, that it isn't having much of an impact, that I should spend more effort in trying to get systems to change. (With that last point, I agree, and I'm trying.) I can see how how this last year is different than what people are used to seeing and being told, but I believe that that is the extent to which adjectives can be used. I am not extreme. I am trying to be normal.

As any linguist will tell you, words shape and define our experiences and what we make of them. They also shape and limit and expand our imagination. Much of this blog has been devoted to language - the language of defining the problems that face us, and the language that can help us move away from ways of thinking that have caused those problems. I believe that we need to be using new words, or different words, to describe the actions that need to be taken, individually and collectively, to move us to an ecologically sustainable world. I think we can all agree that the world we live in, influenced by society, is not that world. There would be no oil spills or hydrofracking in an ecologically sustainable world. There would be no rape of animals and land and mountains in an ecologically sustainable world. The ecologically sustainable world in which we want to live in is in fact radically and extremely different than the world we currently live in. In an ecologically sustainable world, trash wouldn't exist, and behaviours that would lead to trash would be unacceptable. This project, in an ecologically sustainable world, would not be "extreme," it would be the normal.

What I am trying to say is that for us to live in an ecologically sustainable world, we must act in the ways that would be normal in that world. My actions now are moving me closer to those less devastating behaviours.

It is interesting how the perceptions of our actions depend on who or what those actions affect. I am going to use a stark example here, because it is in fact what we're doing. If I was a serial criminal, say a rapist, I would be an "extreme" of sorts. For me to be "normal" and not be a rapist, I would have to make an extreme change. In our ideal world, there would be no rapists. There would be no war. There would be no violent acts. Well, we are raping we are violent, and we are warring...right now...we're doing that to the Earth. (It's just that maybe using the example of raping people is something we can relate to more than raping the Earth.)

We live in a world where other people - advertisers, marketers, corporations - tell us what is good for us. Those who stand to fill their pockets are the ones defining the current "normal." Yet, given all that we know about the state of the natural world, we know that our current behaviour cannot be the normal. And so what I am doing is not extreme. I won't accept that adjective to describe me, and I won't let it deter me, and you shouldn't let such adjectives deter yourself from making bold choices, either.