Making yourself irrelevant

In the ideal world, there would be no "environmentalists" or "activists" or whathaveyou.

Activists and social workers frame problems. More often than not, they are the ones on the ground witnessing ecological tragedies such as an oil spill unfolding, witnessing poor decision-making that leads to a group of people being disenfranchised, witnessing human rights violations caused by fracking corporations tainting aquifers forever. It is the activist that is aware. It is the activist that fundamentally questions the nature of our choices and actions. But being aware is only the first step in creating change. Possibly the most important step for the activist comes next: How does the activist frame the problem? Is the problem the oil spill itself? Or the political complex that leads to oil being pulled out of the ground in the first place? Is the problem that people don't have food to eat today? Or is the problem really how oppressive economic structures leave people struggling to make ends meet? In framing what the activist observes, in framing the problem, the activist creates, frames, and dictates the response. The framing of the problem connects the activist with people that have goodwill, filling them with empathy and compassion. But what happens with that empathy and compassion? In the end, are people made to feel that their monetary donation is enough? Or are they made to get off of their seats and actually do something about the problem?

The goal of the activist is to take down systems of oppression, not navigate them with integrity, would say Derrick Jensen. The very need for police states, for environmental monitoring, for refuges from oppressive places must be diminished. In my mind, the goal of the activist is to create resiliency. It is to instill ways of thinking and being that allow for critical self-reflection, and action based on that reflection. Sure everyone sees the world different, and there are an infinite number of means to an end. But are those means socioecologically degrading and unjust? Are those means creating disparities between people? Or are they guided by a sense of constantly putting oneself in another person's shoes? Are they guided by fundamentally creating peace rather than ending war? 


When the privileged go to a place like Africa (because it is more exotic than going to rural Kentucky or a decaying urban core in the US...or even the street corner where the homeless person spends time) it is easy to see that people are starving. Okay...That lets USAID dump buckets of food on them covered in American flags, making the Americans look good but in no way empowering Africans to make them resilient. That is not to say that food should not be given to those that are hungry. But does the donation of food come along with an understanding of why they are hungry? Does the donation in any way empower the people other than giving them energy to survive another day? 


These questions go deeper than mere policy tinkering that still maintains power dynamics, that still keeps dragging the carrot just beyond arm's reach. In framing the problem, the activist must not create more work for herself. The fundamental goal of the activist is to make herself irrelevant. The activist should not, as Wendell Berry would say, be a specialist--one that beats the same drum again and again. In the ideal world, the activist won't need "a seat at the table". Rather, the work of the activist is accomplished when a changed paradigm of decision-making, of politics, of being, comes around. The activist, or environmentalist, or whathaveyou, must go to bed every night thinking, Have I done work today that will diminish my need tomorrow? If the answer is yes, the activist is on the right track. 

A few thoughts on sustainability

While some people continue to deny or belittle ecological issues, others have realised that the Earth we live on is reaching its carrying capacities for this culture we've created for ourselves, which is one of degradation, extraction, greed, rape, injustice, and violence towards people and place. Many people have consequently started talking about "sustainability," and I have written about this concept many times. So many of us have started reacting to the growing crises we see around us--great efforts have curbed pollution, set in place laws that industry must comply with, and created international laws of all kinds (customary, soft, conventions). But at the same time, we have based many of our actions on the assumption that we can still continue to extract from this Earth, produce, manufacture, technologise. Indeed, very few have openly fought out against large-scale centralisation of governance structures and economies. (Although, thank goodness that the Occupy movement has threads of these messages running through it.) We all come across that Brundtland Commission definition of "sustainable development." This definition has monopolised the world's thinking on sustainability. Indeed, sustainability has come to mean "sustainable development."

But wait, wait, wait. It seems that we have lost track of the question we are trying to answer. What is sustainability? How does this question, and its framing, dictate outcomes? (When you have a hammer in your hand, everything looks like a nail.) What is the world we envision for ourselves, and how do we value the world we live in now? More generally, what is the value of the world to us? Does the world in itself have intrinsic value, or is that value only a human value that we prescribe to it? (Of course there are aesthetic values we place on everything. Aesthetics are what makes a mountain beautiful, even though it may have very little commercial value otherwise.) The reason I am asking these questions is because I want to hear your thoughts.

Jason, who always provides me with inspiration, told me how thinking about sustainability quickly leads him down a path of existentialism. But maybe that is the path of inquiry we all need to take. What is the point of living in this culture, which we are made to believe is continually trying to emancipate us from the bonds that hold us back in the past and allow us to do things more "efficiently," "without effort," "abundantly," if we don't have time to think for ourselves?

-------

I went to a talk today given by Dr. George Crabtree, a pretty famous materials scientist from Argonne National Labs in Illinois, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In the beginning, he mentioned how geopolitics, along with climate, affect the supposed costs conventional sources of energy, like crude oil. He then transitioned to talking about the movement away from these conventional sources by talking about the potential sustainability of the usual suspects of sustainable energy production--hydrogen, solar energy, batteries, biofuels, nuclear. But I wondered, Where are you going to get the materials needed to make your batteries and magnets and solar panels? Where will you get the lithium, lanthanum, neodymium, and other rare earth elements? Well, the largest deposits of lithium lie in Bolivia (but also in Afghanistan, now!), with an indigenous President who threatens vested interests by instituting land reform (read/listen here and here), and says "Either capitalism dies, or Planet Earth dies." At the same time, the largest deposits of rare earth metals lie in China (here's something for the techies). What will a country like the US do to get access to large reserves of lithium or rare earths? Well, maybe they go to war or assassinate those whose views are markedly different than their own.

Please do not get me wrong and call me a neo-Luddite. It seems to me, though, that if we cannot take a step back and hit the pause button for a second, that any conceptualisations we have of sustainability will be made to look like a nail because of the hammer we have in our hands. 

There is no single answer

We are possessed by and at the mercy of the powers of centralisation and absolutism. The way many of us think of and frame problems is in the hope that there is some definitive outcome at the end. "The answer is forty-two!" we would like to hear. When we are interested in the outcomes of a policy option, we ask, How many people will this give cancer to? or, How many people will this save from cancer? This is the way policy-making is done--through some sort of quanitfication of outcomes, through cost-benefit analyses, through some sort of Pareto optimisation. Unfortunately, this is a massive mischaracterisation of the problems that face us, and of the way we need to be addressing them.

Engineers like to think about energy, and most of the engineers that are interested in sustainability and ecological issues tend to focus on the issues through the lens of energy. If you were ever to go to a talk on the energy "future" given by some engineer, you will inevitably here this statement: There is no silver bullet. When it comes to where our energy ought to be coming from (in all actuality we should be using less, in conjunction with a move away from extremely ecologically degrading sources), there are advantages and disadvantages to each kind of energy, be it coal, solar, wind, hydroelectric, nuclear, petroleum. Some are more "convenient" than others, some are more "easily produced" than others, some are more ecologically degrading than others, some are backed by more powerful interests than others. We must have the right "portfolio," some might say.

That being said, I want to tie together a few posts and themes that have emerged over the past months, which I have written about in, for example, The right, the wrong, and the other, Traveling at home, and What if you don't live in Ann Arbor?. I have realised that there is no definitive way in which I, or anyone else for that matter, can address the myriad of socio-environmental issues in existence. Issues are specific to time and place. However, what is true is that they have been influenced by a common ethic of domination, violence, greed, disrespect, hegemony, and carelessness. Such an ethic expresses itself differently in different places.

The desire for absolute, definitive answers masks the messiness of complexity, makes us simplify debate in terms of "right" and "wrong," "us" versus "them," and moves us no closer to a much-needed introspection of social norms. This was brought together beautifully, although in a slightly different context, by David Remnick, writing about what we have and have not learned since 9/11, in the September 12th issue of The New Yorker.

A decade later, we also continue to reckon no only with the violence that [Osama] bin Laden inflicted but with the follies, the misjudgments, and the violence that, directly or indirectly, he provoked--the acts of government deception, illegal domestic surveillance, "extraordinary rendition," "enhanced interrogation," waterboarding. The publication of Dick Cheney's memoirs is the latest instance of Bush Administration veterans serenely insisting that they "got it right," that the explosion of popular discontent that began in Tunisia last December and spread through the region is the direct result of the American-led invasion and the occupation of Iraq. This is as dubious as it is self-serving...Ten years after the attacks, we are still faced with questions about ourselves--questions about the balance of liberty and security, about the urge to make common cause with liberation movements abroad, and about countervailing limits. Only absolutists answer these questions absolutely.

There is nothing absolute when it comes to dealing with social or environmental problems, because each place is unique. This we must understand. What works here doesn't work there. Solar power in cloudy regions doesn't work, but it may in sunny regions. Damming rivers nonchalantly doesn't take into account the specificities of seismic activity. Building a bridge in the name of "economic development" at the expense of community, consequently disenfranchising a group of people, just isn't sustainable. On the contrary, empowering people knowledgeable about the place and watershed they live in, a thoughtful education of the interconnectedness of the local and the global, and a sincere understanding and acceptance of the differences that define us, can lead to more sustainable, more respectful outcomes. If we have a fertile foundation upon which our actions can bloom, we will be much better equipped in dealing with the uniqueness of place and time.

The loss of nuance

With the scale and vastness of the problems that face us, it is difficult to not view these problems as monolithic problems. This is not to say that "poverty" or "climate change" as problems are disputed. But what these problems mean for different people, in different places, is different. This is something we cannot get away from, and something that comes up time and time again in thinking about sustainability. What this means is that the outcomes of these problems in different places is different, and it depends on where you lie socio-economically, and so forth. Climate change means something for us here in Michigan than it does for those in Zimbabwe. Consequently, how to deal with the problems changes depending on where you are.

But if you were to hear any politician or any large engineering firm PR person speak, you would think that they have the answer to the problem (however they choose to define it). You might hear someone say, "What we need are two hundred solar energy farms in Arizona, and all of our problems will be solved," or "We need to create a large entity that will regulate and oversee how things happen on Wall Street, and our economic problems will be solved." You might notice that party A wants to do B, and party Y wants to do Z - it's simple black and white. Party A thinks that B should solve it all, and party Y thinks that Z will solve it all. The real issues, and the real solutions, are more complex, and more nuanced than this.

And so this sort of rhetoric is dangerous for many reasons. First, it makes us think that the problems are monolithic. Second, it makes us think that the solutions to those problems are monolithic. Third, it makes us think that they have the solutions (to the problem that many times they created in trying to solve other problems), not us. Fourth, it reduces our thinking to sound bites and Tweets. The problems we face are because of the loss of nuance - the bulldozing of unique places and cultures to give them all the same feel, the homogenisation of tastes and of "development." This is why people think that lawns in Phoenix are okay. 

The loss of nuance is seen in our education, in which we are trained to be one thing or the other, a doctor or an engineer, or a sociologist for that matter. We've applied the same mentality of "secularity" of science and technology to our society and to education, and we are now seeing the outcomes of such a mentality. The problems we've created for ourselves (yes, we) are so vast and intricate that there cannot be blanket solutions. Yet at times what science and technology, government and industry want to do is to centralise these problems, and apply blanket solutions.

As a first step, we must get rid of this reductionism in our lives, though, and not bin ourselves as A or B, but rather a complex melding of A and B, as well as C and D. To give you something to think about, complete the sentence for your life -  "I am not solely an engineer (or whatever you are), but I am also..."

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.

What we take as a given

I would like to continue some of my thoughts from a recent post on giving up, but from a different angle.

It is clear that we live in a culture, of wastefulness and violence. Our culture is wasteful of and violent towards what our Earth provides for us, and wasteful of the potential that lies within each one of us to take bolder actions, to move us away from the destruction and violence. Yet it seems that given all of the information we have, all the data we've gathered, there is still the belief that if we just continue what we've done so far for a little while longer, we'll be able to extricate ourselves from the mess we've created. If we turn the knobs just a little bit here, make oil extraction just a little bit more efficient there, and buy organic apples shipped half way across the world, we feel that this should suffice. Unfortunately, it will not suffice. Fortunately, we can do something about it. What we need to think about most importantly is what we take as a given, and what needs to be made obsolete, in society and culture, and in our individual lives.

What we take as a given deeply affects how we choose to address the problems that face us. If we take industrial capitalism as a given, that limits the solutions and options available to us in our decision-making. If we take coal-fired power plants as a given, we may be left only with efficiency options. However, among those making larger-scale decisions, what is debated is not a restructuring of society, of culture, but the tweaks that can be made such that we can stay the current course. It is evident to me that the severity of the issues hasn't be comprehended by those most powerful in our society. (Or maybe they choose to turn their backs on the issues because it is their choices that have caused these problems.) At the same time, many individuals feel that it is okay to use chemicals on our foods, and drink water laced with hormones. What does this mean for us, those that do not support what is going on, those that know that more needs to be done, yet are still affected by the negative outcomes?


I believe that we need to free our minds from what we've been taught to accept. We must question and view with skepticism everything that is thrown at us, because what is being thrown at us is disrespectful of our lives, our health, our world. Of course, this is easier said than done. Yet it is doable, possible, and necessary. While I hope that people can break from from anthropocentrism and extend the moral community to include the environment, even if you are anthropocentric, and don't even care about the environment, think about how you are feeding your very children food that is sprayed with chemicals (that don't necessarily wash off) that are potentially carcinogenic, that the air they are breathing can lead to asthma. Indeed, a simple thought like so can lead down a path of powerful introspection, the outcome of which is outward choices that can make a difference.

The modification of engineering

As an engineer, we are taught to "solve problems." These problems are generally created by 1) a perceived lack of functioning of a system ("build another road so traffic can be mitigated"), 2) the never-ending quest for improved efficiency, 3) a social myopia that leads to the creation of objects that just don't fit context and are thus destructive (many examples of this are evident in health care). Yet in the end, what engineers do is create objects - objects that try to defy gravity, objects that span nature, objects that destructively use nature, and objects that have serious social and cultural implications (just like the bridge that is being proposed here in Detroit that I have written about in these past few days).

There are a couple of key issues that go almost completely unaddressed in the traditional engineering curriculum - 1) problem definition and 2) the implications of the approach used to solve the problem. Generally, when working for a big company, the orders for what to do come from above. It is the young engineer's job to obey and work on the given problem, many times without context. Indeed, the definition of what the problem really is is generally narrow and focused, and much of the writings on this blog have been about this reductionism. 

In the general engineering curriculum (you can see the University of Michigan's undergraduate aerospace engineering curriculum here), you can see that there is little if any thought about the implications of engineering, and the responsibility that comes with being given the power of such knowledge. In my time at the University, not a mention has been made of the ways in which knowledge can be or should be used. Without an understanding and thoughtfulness of what it means to create and modify, young engineers can be swayed easily into creating destructive objects - people are involved in the creation of toxic chemicals for warfare and polluting industrial processes. Furthermore, many engineers are given very little skills in seeing what they can do with what we have invested in already. The work environment always pushes towards the use of the new and the untouched, which results in destructive extraction from nature. 

Now while some work is being done to address these issues at the University, it is my experience that engineering is a very conservative field. Students are not taught to be critical readers or radical thinkers. If we are to move toward a more sustainable future, several things will need to be done. Engineers must be taught to see underlying themes to the issues facing us, rather than superficially addressing problems arising far downstream from the source. Ethical considerations must move beyond just the professional - issues of justice must be considered. Engineers should design and build only in the situations that necessitate them and should design and build by thinking of how what they are building may be disassembled easily and reassembled to meet any future needs - this might be called "the engineering of modification."

On practicality, reality and idealism

(This post is inspired by The loss of the future, an essay in The Long-Legged House by Wendell Berry.)

As I have written about previously (1, 2, 3), trash is borne out of convenience. Trash can in fact be viewed as an outcome of "solutions" to "problems" like decomposing food and cracked computer screens. Without trash, we would be unable to enjoy getting to places like the top of Mt. Everest (1, 2), we would be unable to transport food to famine-stricken areas of the world, and we would be unable to perform medical procedures on people. Depending on how we weigh the outcomes, positive and negative, of what we do, trash is a natural outcome of solutions to problems, which may be ill-defined. I use the word natural because the way we currently think makes it close to impossible to do anything without degradation, waste and trash. As a society, we claim to think "practically." We do not address problems if the solutions are "impractical." Or, put another way, the only solutions we come up with are those that are "practical." What does "practical" mean in today's world? It means doing something that will, at the most, only slightly nudge the status quo. If a few people will lose their jobs, or funding for a program will get cut, or the vast machine of the US military will be affected, a solution will be deemed "impractical" - impractical because the people you will have to convince to change their ways of being are members of the National Rifle Association, or because they sleep with the board of directors of large oil corporations, or because they claim to advance US interests abroad. Concisely, such solutions are "impractical" because those that need to be convinced wield power - the power of money and the power of violent force. Also, people are not ready to "spend the money" that it would take to make biodegradable materials, or less harmful products, unless it is "economically viable," and unless China will do it, too. What is lost in this "practical" way of thinking is the idealism that needs to be incorporated into our thoughts. An idealism that will address the reality of the situation - of ecological degradation, of social and environmental injustice - is badly needed now. It is easy to lose faith in "practicality," and I have. Indeed, it was "practicality" - of time - that led to the BP-Macondo well blowout (1, 2, 3, 4). "Practicality" has held back climate change talks for more than a decade now. "Practicality" has inflicted serious harm on the nature that feeds us.

Decisions and "Solutions"

The factors influencing traditional decision-making have been narrow
and focused - will a particular policy create jobs? will the use
particular pesticide get rid of a particular disease? What have not
been considered, however, are the many influences individual decisions
and policies have on aspects of our world we thought were disconnected
from that particular issue. We must recognize that we cannot make a
decision in isolation. Our decisions will continue to influence a
complex and intricate web of factors. We cannot think of using
alternative fuels as solving a singular "energy issue." We must think
about how the use of alternative fuel will change landscapes,
communities, and ecosystems. Brazenly cutting down rain forests to
plant palm oil trees is not a solution to the energy problem. It
itself is a problem-creating solution. One thing we must also
recognize is the limitation of the human mind and ability to forecast
the problems that will necessarily arise from any solution we propose.

Limits of the mind, science and society

Why is it we feel that we can "solve" all of the problems before us? I am sure you know about Einstein's saying that basically states that we can't solve problems with the same mindset and capacities that have created those very problems. How much and what do we need to know before we have all of our problems solved? We continue to feel that by just gathering more data, by investing just a few hundred million dollars in some technology, we will see breakthroughs that will allow us to continue our lifestyles, and will encourage others to change how they live so they can be more like us. Unfortunately, we cannot "solve" all of our problems through research.

Most problems are created because, given our limited capacities to envision and know what effects and side-effects, we just have no way of knowing how something that is being implemented or introduced into our world (consumer products, for example) will necessarily change and affect it. The scales of complexity explode when we start to factor in how a certain chemical will not only affect humans, but also how that might affect the fish and algae downstream, or the bear that eats the fish.

There was a wonderful episode of Radiolab (actually, they are all wonderful. Listen to them all.) on limits - limits of the body, mind and science. One segment of the show talks about a computer program developed by a couple of people from Cornell (Dr. Hod Lipson and Michael Schmidt) that can deduce mathematical relationships in nature, through simple observation. But the answers to the problems we tell it to evaluate are to questions that we haven't even asked yet, or don't have the mental capacity to understand.

I contend that we know all we need to know to address the issues facing us. What are needed, more importantly, are the humility and responsibility to accept that we are wrong, and that we are letting precious time slip by in trying to find "solutions," which will introduce their own problems. We must reduce our dependence on data and live with an understanding that the data don't help, that what is needed is more compassion for everything around us (for example, we've known all we needed to know about issues like climate change many years ago; but we can wave goodbye to Mauritius.), that we live with an understanding that whatever we do given our current ways of living has a negative impact on our air, water, relationships, land, sentient beings and non-sentient beings.