Slowing down fast lives

Until recently, I used to like to always be on the move. I would try to do as many things as possible in a day...coffee with a friend at eight am...work from nine am to six pm...play football from six to eight..shower and dinner until nine-thirty...beer at ABC until eleven...Fleetwood after that...

I would like to think, though, that what I was indulging in was innocent and not materialistic, but rather just because I wanted (and I still do) to spend my time with as many people as possible. But viewed differently, maybe I just wasn't spending enough time with those that really mattered to me. Things have changed over the past couple of years. I feel as if this experiment-turned-way-of-being has made me more aware of everything around me, made me more present, made me happier.

Then again, I see the same sort of attention deficit all around in this culture. But this deficit, this lack of appreciation, is one that has significant negative ramifications on those around us now, and those far away from us, in space and in time. We are leading fast lives, now, as Professor Rob Nixon calls them, fast lives that are "outsourcing the costs" to the "never-will-haves" and future generations.

Over the past couple of days, I was fortunate to talk to, and listen to, Rob Nixon, the Rachel Carson Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin. (Now that's an honorific title if there ever was one.) He presented the Lora Heberle Lecture of the year (with Amrita winning the Heberle Award for Outstanding Achievement in Critical Writing!), and titled his talk, "Slow Violence and The Environmentalism of the Poor"...

In an age that venerates the instant and the spectacular, how can writers turn slow-moving environmental calamities into stories dramatic enough to rouse public sentiment? What are the imaginative and strategic challenges of exposing the forces of slow violence that inflict incremental environmental damage? This talk connects an analysis of slow violence to a vision of sustainable security with a focus on activism in the global South.

I will write more about what Professor Nixon talked about over the next few days, but a particular paradox of time struck me. Our ever quickening lives, filled with minutiae, upward mobility, tweets, and instant Youtube videos on our iPhones are causing large-scale, but slow violence. This is violence and injustice that manifests itself in chemically-caused cancers, climate change, hypoxic dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, the leaching of toxic material into groundwater and land from landfills. I instantly think of the incinerator at the Detroit Wastewater Treatment Plant when I hear the word slow. Click on the image below and just look at the eerily slow effluent being emitted from the smokestacks.

Much of my thinking for the past two years has been about time and its dimensions--about legacy, about appreciation of the present, about concern for the future. But, as Professor Nixon pointed out, the atrocities that are being committed suffer from the "drama deficit" of being incremental and slowly evolving. This is in contrast to other events such as bomb blasts and exploding oil rigs, violent and dramatic acts that are bounded in time.

It is time to slow down.

Guest blog #24: Claire Whitlinger on amnesty and ecological justice

(Here are some perspectives on forgiveness from Claire, a doctoral student in sociology here at the university, continuing a recent thread of thought.)

What truth commissions can teach us about the possibilities of ecological justice: some thoughts on amnesties

In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt makes a provocative and troubling assertion: “that men are unable to forgive what they cannot punish and they are unable to punish what has turned out to be unforgivable.”

This quotation came to mind when thinking about the steps needed to promote a peaceful and ecologically holistic world.

My interest in transitional justice stems from the time I lived in South Africa. I was fascinated by how a country having suffered decades of racial oppression could transition to democracy with relatively little violence. I began to wonder how any society could overcome such systematic oppression and violence. What could (or must) societies do to confront a past ridden with atrocities so deep and vast that no court of justice could possibly adjudicate every claim? Over the past twenty-five years, this question has been central to the emergence and professionalization of the transitional justice field – a field that has institutionalized a number of mechanisms (truth commissions and amnesties, included) to facilitate national transitions from totalitarianism and authoritarianism to democracy.

Having studied transitional justice, in general, and the global proliferation of truth commissions, in particular, my initial response to the possibility of using amnesties to address ecological injustice was one of skepticism.

So what are amnesties? Put simply, amnesties are a form of legal forgiveness. They are generally legislative or executive acts that restore a guilty person to the status of innocent.

Within the transitional justice field, amnesties are most notable for having been utilized by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In this instance, amnesty was the result of a political compromise between then-President F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela. Rather than a blanket amnesty in which all perpetrators would be excused, the Amnesty Committee (one of three institutional bodies making up the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission) granted amnesties on an individual basis. In exchange for confessing their crimes, individual perpetrators could receive amnesty. Setting aside the little known fact that out of over 7,000 applications, only 849 received amnesty (roughly 12%), in the wake of the South African TRC, scholars began to debate the social utility of exchanging “truth” for “justice.” By and large, scholars and human rights practitioners came to the conclusion that amnesties were neither eliciting truth nor justice. They feared that amnesties were at the best, ineffective, and the worst, harmful for a nascent democracy.

In 2009, I attended a workshop at Stanford Law School sponsored by the International Center for Transitional Justice. The majority of participants were human rights practitioners and came from all corners of the world. Many attended to learn how to implement transitional justice mechanisms in their own country. When the issue of amnesties came up, I was surprised by how vehemently anti-amnesty the participants were. Amnesties were associated with amnesia, not truth-telling, as I had been led to believe. In fact, some deemed to be absolutely unacceptable, a threat to rule of law. They argued that democracy could not flourish without holding perpetrators legally accountable.

Given that these mechanisms, and consequently, these critiques emerged in a particular political and historical context, how then might amnesties function when pursuing ecological justice within a (largely) functioning democracy? Furthermore, what can truth commissions teach us about the possibility of granting amnesty for ecological injustice?

More thoughts tomorrow...

Some thoughts on fear and forgiveness

What is needed is a sort of catharsis. We must wash ourselves of all the ecologically and humanistically debasing things that pervade our culture. What we must seek instead is, as Tim DeChristopher has said,

...a humane world...[a] world that values humanity...a world where we meet our emotional needs not through the consumption of material goods, but through human relationships...[a] world where we measure our progress not through how much stuff we produce, but through our quality of life—whether or not we’re actually promoting a higher quality of life for human beings.

And such a world can only come from a deeply changed ethic that values (not monetarily) Earth and everything that resides in and on it. But how do we overcome the fear that can be paralysing when taking new, bold steps? I don't claim to know about this in any great depth or detail, but it is apparent to me that any meaningful, positive steps that will lead to a more holistic future must be hopeful, be courageous, and come with an acceptance of newness and the unchartered.

Fear is a powerful controlling force. (But hope and courage are liberating.) Fear is primal, and is the fear that is tapped into to convince us that the "enemies" are "planning to attack our way of life," allowing those with power to use our "consent" to act violently. At the same time, fear prevents us from presenting ourselves as whole before the world because it prevents us from admitting defeat or apologising for our mistakes; we are fearful of vengeance and retaliation. I wonder, do those that engage in ecologically degrading activities, and know that they are, not come clean because they are scared of the consequences of doing so? Possibly, for many companies and people try to hide their mistakes and disasters by not confessing or owning up to them. How has the way we've structured adjudication and law made people scared? If we are able to forgive, will we live in a less fearful world? I think so. How might fear look in an ecologically holistic world? For now, I'll leave you with these words from Conversations on Forgiveness)

Forgiveness is an opportunity for transformation, both individually and collectively. It not only helps relieve mental and emotional anguish, but it offers the possibility for change, for redemption, for restoration—for hope and even love to blossom from pain and suffering. It can stop a cycle of hurt and create opportunity where there seemed to be none. Most of all, it has the potential to heal and open our hearts to love again and more fully, strengthening and building our capacity for compassion and understanding.

Moving towards idealism

NYPD (New York Pizza Depot) always brings out the best in conversation. Get a pizza, get some buds, eat and talk. I did that yesterday with Mohammad and Scott, two of my labmates and close friends, and we ended up talking for four hours. Scott is a fan of Bill Maher, and in a recent discussion, Maher asked his guests whether or not the US Constitution should be torn up and rewritten. One of the panelists, a conservative, said that he would have reservations with doing so, especially because of the prized Second Amendment, which, for those of you who aren't from the US, gives citizens the right to bear arms. The Second Amendment is still hotly debated, and rightly so. Times have changed since the 1770s and 1780s.

Talk of the Second Amendment brought up the possibilities of uprising against the government, and how and if changes in regime can be peaceful, or if peace is just a dying ideal. The issues of peaceful protests and movements are particularly apt right now, given the very peaceful Occupy movement, as well as the peaceful uprising in Yemen. (I am so fortunate to have been in the presence of Tawakkul Karman, Nobel Peace Prize winner of 2011, just this past Monday.)

I have written about the issues of peace and violence several times, although I have not written about them in contexts of environmental action. Indeed, there are many that do advocate for using violent means, such as the Earth Liberation Front, not against people, but against infrastructure that confines us to this ecologically degrading and oppressive culture. Derrick Jensen, the philosopher, writer, and activist is well known for voicing his belief that things like dams must be taken out through forceful means. He says, "Every morning when I awake I ask myself whether I should write or blow up a dam. I tell myself I should keep writing, though I'm not sure that's right."

When I saw Jensen, an amazing speaker, last winter, I asked him about such sentiments, particularly since violent force is something oppressors use, and this makes me nervous. I can see his point, but it is impossible to deny that once a culture of violence is overthrown with violence, you still have violent means present as an option in the end--an option in debate, an option in action. Violence breeds violence, and arming breeds arming. Just take the example of the most horrific Cold War. Violence is a deep manifestation of our insecurities. Because violence is overtly forceful, it gives us a sense of domination, and of power. We can bulldoze lands, blow the tops off of mountains, frack rocks for natural gas, or electrocute someone for a crime with no remorse. All of these actions in no way preserve the sanctity of life (which many death-penalty-loving, gun-toting people love to talk about), or speak highly of us as ethical and moral agents. Violence for peace makes no sense. Peace, on the other hand, is decidedly peaceful. There can be no violence in peace. Peace may be forceful, steadfast, determined, resolute, and intentional, but in no way can it be violent.

To my mind right now, violent force as a means to a sustainable world sounds eerily similar to the US military's perpetual war for perpetual peace. If we want to live in a world in which something does not exist, do we accept its existence now?

Leaving negative cycles and entering positive ones

A cycle is something that perpetuates itself, when one action or thought leads to the next, which leads one back to their original thoughts and actions, making one act on them again, differently or otherwise. David Trombley, who I met a few days ago at Occupy Ann Arbor while traveling at home, said that there are two such cycles--positive and negative. David described a positive cycle in his life, poetry, like so:

My advocation, however, is poetry. I have been writing for five or six years now and also teach with the Ann Arbor Free Skool. I write about my experiences, my worldview. You can do what you want with poetry. It helps me stay centred in the here and now. It is about creative ways of approaching life. It is a positive cycle, an inspiration cycle, an exercise in mindfulness. If you are mindful, you open yourself to inspiration. Once inspiration comes, you can get poetry out of it. Poetry leads to more inspiration, making you stay more mindful.

Mindfulness, inspiration, an appreciation of the here and now are powerful things we should all be thinking about and acting on to tread more lightly on this planet. Negative cycles, though, are those that not only harbor ill-will and ruthlessness and violence in our daily lives, but also when scaled up can cause us to be burdens on other people and the world. David talked about how greed, the violence perpetrated because of greed, and the personal gains because of greed lead to more greed, in a never-ending spiral towards inequality, injustice, and unsustainability. The negative cycles of the world result in some people making a lot of money, resulting in them wielding enormous power and influence, and then setting the system up such that it continues to benefit them at the expense of human dignity and the environment.

At the same time, whether we like it or not, many of us as individuals are stuck in negative cycles that now are social norms. We are compelled to spend our lives working on things that do not interest us, just so that we can pay for a car and a home that will provide us a roof over our heads just so that we can get back into the car, be stuck in traffic, to earn money so that we can pay for gas when we have to next. We are stuck in a mindless drudgery, in an economy that does not care about our feelings, emotions and effort, bur rather about how much time you can spend trying to prop it up, so that it can perpetuate itself, get ever larger, and ever more unstable. We are stuck in negative cycles of inadequacy, in which what we have is never "good enough," compelling us to trash what we have just so that for a while, we can have something that will in a few months be "not good enough" again. The pressures to stay within such a negative cycle is enormous, for everyone we are surrounded by, everyone we see on TV is participating in it.

Positive cycles are those (which on the surface may not seem related to sustainability and the environment, but in all actuality are deeply related to them) that lead to contentment, appreciation, introspection, and then an outward manifestation of those thoughts into actions that will allow us to tread lightly on this planet. Once we start down a line of thinking and doing, like David talks about, we inspire ourselves, pushing ourselves to do more to try to break the negative cycles of existence and replace them with positive ones. We inspire others around us to think for themselves, to rid themselves of the shackles of this mindless drudgery of "the economy," to do something more meaningful for ourselves, our communities, our neighbourhoods, for our world. Positive cycles are exemplified by features that do not need laws or regulations to keep them in check. Rather, they can be let lose in the world without restraint. Who could ever say that inspiration and appreciation and mindfulness should be tamed and regulated? On the other hand, violence, a negative cycle, must be tamed, curbed, enforced.

A prayer against violence

I will break my sabbatical because there is much on my mind, and hopefully much on yours, too.

A likely innocent man may be killed by the state today, or tomorrow, or the day after. How does that make you feel?

It is very easy for us to resort to violence to act against violence. It is easy because we do not have to think. If we somehow claim that we are being "just" in our violence, all that remains then is to find the best way, the most effective way to be violent. The violence itself is never questioned. And so we end up with guns dotting our streets, bombs demolishing other parts of the world, and the arrogance to think that we are the supreme gift of the world. The mindlessness with which people cheer violence, as evinced by a recent Tea Party debate, and the calmness with which we accept violence as a form of entertainment on movie and television screens says much about this perverted culture. We can condone the killing of the innocent, by basically saying, "Whatever." All of this in the name of a system of benefits to some, at the expense of others. I cannot get away from this, or stress enough how this mindset pervades every choice we make.

This violence does not stop there. It doesn't end with the physical killing of someone, or some place. It diffuses into our being and our psyche, to surface when we are exasperated, or when we feel that revenge is needed. And so we see it fit to act violently against people and nature; we degrade and debase people's environments, and we degrade and debase the lives of the people dependent on those environments.

It is clear that here, violence isn't the erratic behaviour of a few; it is deeply ingrained in everything we as a collective do, from the way we war, from the way we make money off of war, from the way we divide people, from the way we oppress them and silence them. Violence that is this culturally ingrained isn't stopped by denying previous criminals firearm licenses, or by locking them up in jail. Violence is dealt with by freeing ourselves from the culture that creates and condones it. It should not be acceptable to show someone being blown up on television. If the skin of humans cannot be shown without offending some people, which is understandable, how can we condone the depiction of acts that denigrate and debase our humanity? Or is that what humanity is?

I saw a National Rifle Association bumper sticker a few years ago on North Campus that read:

Guns don't kill people. People kill people. 

I can see their point to an extent. But it is impossible to deny that a culture of guns is necessarily one of violence. Nothing about guns, a technology influenced by social norms and construction, is peaceful, nothing from where the metal came from to the processing of the metals to the intention of a gun. A gun serves as a deterrent by instilling fear in someone, and we all know what fear leads to. When we look at and make objects themselves with capacity to harm, we are compelled to pull a trigger or push a button that will blow someone or some place up. As long as these objects and thoughts and intentions exist, they present themselves as options in debate, they present themselves as options in action.

Violence is a deep manifestation of our insecurities. Because violence is overtly forceful, it gives us a sense of domination, and of power. We can bulldoze lands, blow the tops off of mountains, frack rocks for natural gas, or electrocute someone for a crime with no remorse. All of these actions in no way preserve the sanctity of life (which many death penalty loving people love to talk about), or speak highly of us as ethical and moral agents. Violence for peace makes no sense. Peace, on the other hand, is decidedly peaceful. There can be no violence in peace. Peace may be forceful, steadfast, determined, resolute, and intentional, but in no way can it be violent.

What does peace mean to you?

While both require planning, perseverance, and a steadfastness, peace stands in stark contrast to war. Peace preserves, accepts, and cherishes differences. War obliterates them.

I cannot say whether or not we are closer to living a life of peace or not, particularly when it comes down to the different cultures that make up this human world. Peace is likely not going to come from a compromise of our differences. Indeed, if even Americans cannot resolve their differences through compromise, then how can we expect the Western world to compromise on their differences with people in the East? Peace will come only when we accept the differences that exist. But acceptance is only a first step. We must cherish the differences, while at the same time making an intense effort at truly understanding why people would resort to flying planes into buildings. And so today, a decade on, how has peace influenced the debate on conflict resolution?

It amazes me that we think humans are the greatest thing in the world, but when it comes down to our differences, we will resort to violence to make sure that power stays concentrated with certain people. There is a clear discrepancy, it seems then, between doing all that we can to keep humanity alive, and then resorting to violence to kill humans when we don't agree. Of course, someone that has power might say then that it is in the interest of the broader humanity that their power is being used as violence against others, but that is unjustifiable.

Just as with many of the most complicated issues of our time, words have jumbled meanings. War can happen in the name of peace, and people convince themselves that this must be true. But what about this statement?

Since the Second World War, more than four fifths of the people killed in war have been civilians.

And despite the grief that comes with the loss of human life, there are many more dimensions that we don't think about when we think of war, and the environment is one of those things. How is the Earth's capacity for life changed when we war? Asked another way, what do our differences mean for the environment? Well, differences themselves are borne of the environment. Cultures are outcomes of environmental conditions, different ones, all over the world. This cannot be denied. And so when we resort to violence, we not only kill people, but we disturb and disrupt the ecosystems that build a culture.

There are many historical cases in which the ecological degradation has been used as a weapon to wipe people out, to oppress. In a prescient piece The environmental damage of war in Iraq from The Guardian, written eight years ago before the war, the potential ecologically degrading outcomes of war in Iraq were explored in the context of previous wars, both in the Balkans and in the Middle East:

During the 1991 war devastating damage was done to the oil industry in Kuwait. Iraqi forces destroyed more than seven hundred oil wells in Kuwait, spilling sixty million barrels of oil. Over ten million cubic metres of soil was still contaminated as late as 1998. A major groundwater aquifer, two fifths of Kuwait's entire freshwater reserve, remains contaminated to this day. Ten million barrels or oil were released into the Gulf, affecting coastline along 1500 km and costing more than $700 million to clean up. During the nine months that the wells burned, average air temperatures fell by 10 degrees C as a result of reduced light from the sun. The costs of environmental damage were estimated at $40 billion. Estimates of the numbers likely to die as a result of the air pollution effects were put at about a thousand. Since Iraq has the second largest proven oil reserves of any nation on earth, the potential environmental damage caused by destruction of oil facilities during a new war must be enormous.

Other environmental effects of the 1991 Gulf War included destruction of sewage treatment plants in Kuwait, resulting in the discharge of over 50,000 cubic metres of raw sewage every day into Kuwait Bay.

Secondly, specific weapons likely to be used against Iraq will also create environmental damage. Top of the list of concern are depleted uranium (DU) projectiles.

Guess what? Depleted uranium has wreaked havoc in Iraq. Surprised?

When it comes to "just war theory", both jus in bello and jus ad bellum, how do we hold warring factions to these customs that make attempts at doing "minimal damage to the environment"? Is it even possible? The government and corporations we patronise deal with the issues of defense and war on a day-to-day basis. They in fact make a huge profit from war. The tentacles of war have weaved their way into each and every one of our communities, in all fifty states, from manufacturing to financing to politics to constitutional amendments. So how can we think about peace when war pays the bills?

There is a lack of peace within us. In fact, being peaceful and thoughtful is made to seem passive and subservient. When we find it tasteful to use guns against other people, and use guns as a sign of power and control, we will no doubt find it tasteful to use bombs to blow tops off of mountains to reach for coal - indeed this is a sign of power and control, not over people in this case, but the environment. What may be hindering our cause to find harmony and peace with nature is the violence we are able to perpetrate against our own kind. Or maybe our ability and willingness to perpetrate violence against nature, beautiful and delicate, is standing in the way of finding peace with our own kind. In the end, if we cannot find peace within us, we cannot find peace without us. 

I believe that if we find peace within ourselves and where we are, we can radically redefine notions of "progress" and "community." When I say peace, I in no way mean complacency. When I say peace, I mean that we recognise, understand and internalise our place in the world, our place in our communities, our place within our families, and our place in our own minds and bodies. Being at peace doesn't necessarily mean being satisfied with where we are ethically and morally; clearly, given our increasingly complex world, much of the complexity of which is man-made, there are ways in which we need to be redefining what it means to interact with each other, what it means to be a good citizen and a good steward. As a society as a whole, we are far from the ethical, moral and spiritual heights we need to be at to fully understand our impact on other humans, as well as the environment. There is no way we can envision a sustainable future when we find peace in violence. But if we can find peace in where we are materially and in physical place, we will have reached some level of peaceableness with the environment. Peace with the environment allows us the time to think and appreciate about its marvels, of which humans are one. Such a peace will not allow us to use violent force against any aspect of our environment, humans included. 

What does peace mean to you?

Mirror

I believe that our attitudes towards people are mirrored in our attitudes toward nature, and our attitudes towards nature are mirrored in our attitudes towards people.

If we think people are "disposable," that they just constitute numbers, that their "utility" needs to be maximised, that some will lose at the benefit of others, that the worth of a human life is his or her ability to contribute to the economy, well, then we will think that nature is "disposable," that nature is just a bunch of numbers (of trees, of parts per million of our pollutants), that the only use of nature is for our aggregate utility, that our mountains and forests here in the "rich" parts of the world will be preserved at the expense of the nature in "poor" parts of the world, that the worth of nature is its ability to contribute to the economy (see for example this article about biodiversity and tree loss). Similarly, if we are willing to blow up the top of a mountain for coal, if we can sleep at night knowing that our pesticides are causing frogs to become hermaphroditic, if we are willing to dam rivers and block their progress, well, then we won't mind blowing people up in the name of "peace," we will allow people to ingest and work with those pesticides, and we will be willing to block indigenous peoples from fighting for their rights and their land.

What this means is that if we are to stand any chance of a less ecologically destructive future, we must come to a peaceableness with other humans. If we are to stand any chance of living in a world in which we respect other humans, we must respect nature. I hope to have conveyed over the past months that there is actually no difference between environmental issues and social issues. They are one and the same. Committing violence against people is the same as committing violence against the land, air, and water. Violence towards land, air and water is the same as violence towards people; it does not take a logical leap to make the connections.

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.

Some thoughts on violence

I get nervous when I see a gun. I get nervous because of what it represents in our and of our society, and the power it gives to the one that owns it, and the fear it instills in the ones that don't. I see a gun as a manifestation of our deep insecurities, and a manifestation of an understanding that what we do is not in the best interest of people and nature. A gun is a symbol of a life being forced upon us rather than a life lived in peace with what is environmentally, and consequently socially, acceptable. I don't want to get into a debate over what is acceptable; indeed, all of this blog has been dedicated to drawing these boundaries and extending our imaginations. Yet, as Jay Griffiths has written about beautifully and sadly in the current issue of Orion, guns and violence have been used against people and nature in West Papua for decades now. These unarmed people have fought to preserve their way of living and their mountains from the onslaught of the violence of mining. This is just one example of countless examples.

These past few days have been interesting. They have been days in which masculinity and dominance has been celebrated, ones in which introspection and asking "Why?" have been superseded by the thoughts of retaliation and revenge. Regardless of your stance on the issues,what I can say is that the events of the past few days have changed absolutely nothing, but rather they have further entrenched us in a continued violence that will to wreak havoc on lives, human, non-human and non-sentient. The environment, the ground and air and water that sustains us, will of course be impacted on negatively, despite the "just war theory," which I have written about previously. I can see that in the flag-waving of recent days, many lives and minds and hearts have fully accepted the manner in which we choose to end the fear that pervades our daily lives.

The world I want to live in is one without guns and violence, toward nature and people. It is of course something that has been written on and acted upon by countless, yet violence still surrounds us and pervades our minds. When we look at and make objects themselves with capacity to harm, we are compelled to pull a trigger or push a button that will blow someone or some place up.

I hope to have conveyed over the past months that there is actually no difference between environmental issues and social issues. They are one and the same. Committing violence against people is the same as committing violence against the land, air and water. Violence towards land, air and water is the same as violence towards people; it does not take a logical leap to make the connections. The world I want to live in is one without the fear of consuming toxins in my drinking water.

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.

On peace, spirit and the environment

After having written a little bit about war and its relationship with the environment last week, I want to write a little bit about peace, spirit and the environment. I was particularly prompted into thinking about this after having read Hendrik Hertzberg's comment in this week's The New Yorker, "Words and Deeds," which talked about the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords. In it, I found out that one of the fundraisers for the opponent running against her, Jesse Kelly, was gun-themed, and one of his posters actually shows him holding a gun.

In all that has happened with this shooting, which of course, is sad but not at all surprising, I find clear parallels between how we view and treat ourselves and how we interact with other people with how we view ourselves within the environment, and how we treat the environment. We seem to find it tasteful and necessary to portray ourselves as manly, fully capable and willing to use violent force to make sure that our point gets across. Brushed aside are our abilities to show care, concern and kindness, and brought in are justifications to resort to war as a "last resort."

It seems to me that there is a lack of peace within us. In fact, being peaceful and thoughtful is made to seem passive and subservient. When we find it tasteful to use guns against other people, and use guns as a sign of power and control, we will no doubt find it tasteful to use bombs to blow tops off of mountains to reach for coal - indeed this is a sign of power and control, not over people in this case, but the environment. What may be hindering our cause to find harmony and peace with nature is the violence we are able to perpetrate against our own kind. Or maybe our ability and willingness to perpetrate violence against nature, beautiful and delicate, is standing in the way of finding peace with our own kind. In the end, if we cannot find peace within us, we cannot find peace without us. 

I believe that if we find peace within ourselves and where we are, we can radically redefine notions of "progress" and "community." When I say peace, I in no way mean complacency. When I say peace, I mean that we recognise, understand and internalise our place in the world, our place in our communities, our place within our families, and our place in our own minds and bodies. Being at peace doesn't necessarily mean being satisfied with where we are ethically and morally; clearly, given our increasingly complex world, much of the complexity of which is man-made, there are ways in which we need to be redefining what it means to interact with each other, what it means to be a good citizen and a good steward. As a society as a whole, we are far from the ethical, moral and spiritual heights we need to be at to fully understand our impact on other humans, as well as the environment. There is no way we can envision a sustainable future when we find peace in violence. But if we can find peace in where we are materially and in physical place, we will have reached some level of peaceableness with the environment. Peace with the environment allows us the time to think and appreciate about its marvels, of which humans are one. Such a peace will not allow us to use violent force against any aspect of our environment, humans included.

War and the Environment - Depleted uranium, a radioactive waste

While talking to Matt the other night, the topic of depleted uranium came up. Depleted uranium is a byproduct, in essence a waste, of uranium enrichment processes for nuclear fuel and nuclear arms. I am sure you would not be terribly surprised to hear that the US and other nations produce vast amounts of depleted uranium, given that nuclear reactors are now commonplace. What I am sure you will find shocking, just as I did last week, is that depleted uranium, a radioactive waste substance with a physical half-life of 4+ billion years, and a biological half life of 15 days, has been used as ammunition in Iraq, as well as in Serbia (please click here, here, here and here). Depleted uranium is denser than lead, and therefore can more readily penetrate armour, making it particularly useful to violence. While making it much easier to blow the "enemy" up, it can also be aerosolised into sub-micron size dust that is easily inhalable. The US has used several thousand tonnes of depleted uranium in Iraq. I do like to think that I believe in the precautionary principle - if I don't know whether or not something is harmful, especially considering my judgement and gut instinct, I won't do it. (Of course, the world has thrown the precautionary principle out of the window with most environmental and public health harms.) Any level-minded person would think that any sort of radioactive substance, which is a byproduct of human activity, is likely to be environmentally damaging and toxic to both humans as well as plants and animals. (Of course, there is natural radioactivity.) It is therefore not surprising to me that investigative reports by the BBC (do not click there if you are queasy) have shown that depleted uranium has caused increased levels of cancer in new born babies in Iraq. Efforts to make toxicity information public were, of course, stamped down upon.

I think it is particularly telling of the morality and ethics of a government and state to use obviously toxic materials in war. What is more toxic than these materials is the fact that war itself is accepted and condonable. These last few posts have been dealing as much with peace as they have been with the environment, and these two issues are not mutually independent. A society and culture that condones violence to the environment, to the land, air and water that sustains it, is likely to use violence as a means to an end in dealing with other creations of our environment, namely humans. Peace with humans will only come out of a sustained and thoughtful peace with our environment - an environment that is thought of as a life-sustaining force, greater in emotional and spiritual value than any priceless monetary value we may be able to comprehend.