Why?

I have written several times about the role of language in shaping our perceptions of reality, of the problems that face us, and what we choose to do about them. I want to revisit language today by writing a little bit about the importance of questioning.

With much of this recent debt talk, and "bail outs" of governments and corporate entities in the European Union and the US, I wonder how long we can continue to think that the problems our society are dealing with are superficial - that we're spending too much, that we aren't collecting enough taxes, that interest rates need to be kept lower to encourage borrowing (let alone the ecological problems facing us). I wonder how those that have the power to do something about these problems are actually framing the problems. I wonder if they ever wonder about the problems, "Why?"

The importance of this question cannot be understated. because it leads us down a path of questioning that inevitably leads us to question our morals and ethics, those parts of our mind and spirit that guide our behaviour toward people and place. Such questioning would allow us to stare in the face of our deficiencies and weaknesses, as well as strengths and positives. Indeed, it allows us to gain a fuller understanding of why we're facing the problems we face. If we aren't able to clearly articulate what "the problem" is, how can we have any faith that "the solution" will do anything for us? Will the so-called "solution" just worsen the situation?

And so the question "Why?" plays a powerful role in framing and articulating the problems that face us. It allows us to use language, to construct other questions, to point out alternatives that hopefully take us in directions that are novel and meaningful. The language we use broadens or narrows the scope of our imaginations. It seems that we are being held hostage to a narrowed, myopic imagination. What is needed more than anything else at this point in time then is a broadened imagination, a broadened morality, and more meaningful dialogue regarding the problems that face us.

Each and every one of us uses the question "Why?" in the metaphysical sense all the time. We wonder why we are on this Earth and why life came to be the way it is. And while the metaphysical is fascinating, it is easy to lose ourselves in such thinking. What about this world? Our society? This culture? I think we need a thorough application of "Why?" to the physical consequences of our society and to our daily actions and choices. If we are unwilling to tackle the problem head on, in our individual lives, in our collective lives, the solution is only going to make things worse.

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.

Limits, of another kind

I have mentioned in a few posts that there are limits to the human mind. There are limits on cognition, understanding, complexity, interconnectedness, scale and intricacy. Nature is truly complex, truly interconnected, truly intricate and of a magnitude of scales. We cannot comprehend everything, and we will never understand everything. At some level, it isn't worth trying to. We want to know things so we can control them. We want to know various laws of physics and chemistry such that when we want to make a computer or atomic weapon, we'll know how to do it. But there is also a loss of freedom, as Wendell Berry states, of the living species we try to know and understand. Knowing more species of plants and animals, although will give us a clearer understanding of our negative impacts on the planet, can lead to exploitation of their skins and bones, blood and enzymes.

But there is a limit of another kind I'd like to talk about. I started thinking about this after my friend Lydia sent me this picture:

Lydia is a Geology PhD student, and her work takes her to Tibet and Western China. This photo was taken in town of Xidatan in the Qinghai Province of China. She said to me, "This, I would say, is probably one of the cleaner towns we saw. I'm not sure if that truck actually dumped a pile of trash in the middle of the town, but that's kind of what it looks like." Well, Lydia, I think you're right. That looks like a pile of trash to me, in the middle of pristine Earth.

Clearly, our ethic for living on this Earth has been dominion, domination and anthropocentrism. This has left us with no where on Earth that is untouched, unscathed, unchanged or unmodified. Wherever we go, we must leave our mark - our mark through trash. Is there a way to define our limits to dominion? Is there a way to say we will leave a pristine patch of creation (for the religious readers out there), Earth, soil, water and air to itself and the forces of nature? The problem with our communities and societies is that we don't live in a place anymore. We are on the move, always looking for something new, something different, something to change, something to extract. Indeed, if we defined our boundaries, we would have to have greater moral, ethical, social and cultural imagination to make sure our Earth in a particular place can sustain us, the frogs, the fish, the birds and the trees of that place.