What has brought us here will not take us there

I have been thinking a lot recently about the messiness of listening to elders. Having come from India, from a culture that is founded on respecting elders and listening and following their views, I am constantly battling the tensions between the wisdom that comes from old age and experience, and the ways in which that experience limits the possibilities of change and renewal.

As I wrote previously, I realise more and more each day that much of the advice that my parents gave me when I was young was spot on. I just wasn't mature enough to understand what they were saying. At the same time, the ways in which their experiences have shaped their outlook on the world makes elders bound to the past, a past that has created the present. Last week during the Union of Concerned Scientists and Erb Institute conference on communicating climate change, it was difficult not to notice generational gaps in discussions, and the frankly limited actions that many of the elders in the room thought would be sufficient in changing how the general public viewed climate change and acted on it.

It is clearly the youth that will be living in a drastically changed world, not the sixty and seventy year-olds deciding policy. It was not encouraging to hear from Ana Unruh Cohen, assistant to Congressman Ed Markey (D-WA), that even though the youth were instrumental in garnering public support for the Waxman-Markey bill that would have changed the face of this country, the youth were not present at the table when the policy was being debated and finalised. In the end, of course, the bill did not pass. But the choices we make today, the policies that are passed, the lessons that are taught, are those that we will be struggling with and dealing with in the future. We are where we are today because of what has been presented to us by the past.

It is clear though, that what has brought us here, what the elders have put in place, will not get us to where we need to be. Nothing less than the way in which we fundamentally conduct ourselves in the world will allow us and future generations the resiliency of coping with a changing climate. Climate change presented as an energy problem will only cause future conflict over scarce lithium and rare earth metal reserves. Addressing the problem so builds no resiliency. Following that thread of thought, an ecologically sustainable world is possible only if everything is up for debate.

All is not lost, though. There are some things we can learn from some very inspiring elders. There are ways to create communities of people that are dynamic and resilient, all with a deep respect for other people and most fundamentally this Earth. I am excited to write about these things over the next few days.

Words of wisdom from Grace Lee Boggs

It is just a couple of days ago that I wrote about how special interest and vested interest blurs the wisdom of old age. One thing I hope for all of us is the courage to recognise, accept, understand, be introspective, and consequently outwardly changed when we are at fault. I know of several elders, professors included, who were more radical in their youth than in their old days, and one man who has receded so much in his idealism that the status quo seems more reasonable. I hope that we can continue to be as enthusiastic about our visions for a changed world as we grow in age, and not throw up our hands and say of the problems we've created, "Well, it is just human nature...things will never change." I hope we can all strive to be like Grace Lee Boggs, a ninety-six year-old activist and philosopher from the most fascinating of places, Detroit. Take five minutes and listen to her words of wisdom, and although they were directed towards the Occupy movement, they transcend the movement.

Grace Lee Boggs' message to Occupy Wall Street - 10/9/11 from American Revolutionary on Vimeo.

Grace Lee Boggs' Message to Occupy Wall Street Part 2 from American Revolutionary on Vimeo.

When special interest supersedes wisdom

I grew up in a culture that respects elders--their wisdom, their advice, their experience. I believe that certain ways of thinking and discerning only emerge with age, whether it is being able to see through people's arguments, being able to read between the lines of what people say and do. I realise more and more each day that much of the advice that my parents gave me when I was young was spot on. I just wasn't mature enough to understand what they were saying.

On the other hand, we have a world run by elder people that are stuck in their ways, whether it is neoliberal economics, cost-benefit analysis, American domination, and global competitiveness. We are also bound to national and international institutions and regimes that were founded in times when people had drastically different mentalities, institutions such as the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and even the United Nations. Even in most all journalism that I read, in such media outlets like the BBC and the New York Times, the way in which situations here and abroad are analysed is one that treats the world as some sort of infinite reserve of material, a world in which a material and industrial economy can supposedly grow forever.

What has brought us to this point, ecologically, and consequently socially, and consequently economically, is a truly old way of thinking, further influenced by special interests. There seems to be a contradiction then between the wisdom that comes with old age, and the way in which special interests seem to supersede that wisdom. No old person in his or her right mind would say that the way we are treating the environment and ourselves is in the best interest of longevity of the ecosystems that comprise the biophysical world. But this seems to keep happening. We are constantly protesting decisions to go to war, decisions to let financial institutions off the hook, decisions to build a pipeline carrying tar sands across a continent. And that is probably why Abigail Borah, a student from Middlebury College, felt it necessary to take a stand in Durban a couple of weeks ago.



We can see clearly a generational gap, possibly one that existed in times of great change, like, for example, during the Civil Rights movement. This isn't to say that there aren't any elders who are thinking radically differently. But it seems that the world's environment and climate are changing faster than ever before, and that we cannot wait until 2020 for some "meaningful" climate commitment from nations. While the elders won't be alive in twenty or thirty or forty years, the youth will be, and they are the ones that will be faced with the difficult tasks of changing infrastructure, of adapting to a changing climate, of likely dealing with mass migration.

It is very difficult to sit back and hope that the elders running this country will change the way they think and behave. While working in the lab a couple of weeks ago, Scott said to me that it will truly take another twenty or thirty years for a generation of thinkers and actors to get into positions of influence to make meaningful changes in policy and culture. How do the youth navigate this? What might the youth be able to do to counter special interests? And how might the youth remain "youthful" in the future, open to changing ourselves in response to a changing world?

Furthering what's best and forestalling what's worst

How wonderful that quote from Mark Slouka is! It is the quote that I ended my last post with. I was just thinking about how it encapsulates fully the dilemmas we face as we move forward with addressing issues of the environment, culture, society, and justice. He said that we need "...men and women capable of furthering what's best about us and forestalling what's worst."

Slouka comes to the table from the position of an educator and a strong proponent of humanities education. He makes some fascinating points in a recent Harper's Magazine article titled Dehumanized: When math and science rule the school. But regardless of what position he comes from, and what he is advocating for in particular in the article (which is actually incredibly expansive and provocative), his statement is almost axiomatic. It speaks to me at a level that is very deep, touching on ethics, touching on greed, touching on power, touching on the good work that people are doing, touching on the forces at play that keeps that good work from being recognised. What I believe it says, partly, is the following--that there is something in most all of us that can be tapped into to cause introspection and reflection about the choices we are making as individuals and as a collective, and that the culture and society we live in have definitely not lived up, even partly, to the ideals they pay lip service to.

I have not written much about education explicitly on this blog (maybe once), although I have alluded to education by writing about dialogue and conversation, features necessary in a critical education. Education comes in many forms, and the idealist in me hopes that education never ends for anyone, anywhere. Of course, this isn't the case, with many public examples of people being uninterested in open dialogue, standing resolute in their beliefs in the face of well-founded facts. Regardless, the wisdom of what's best about us, and the knowledge of what's worst about us, a continuing education, that is, comes only from an openness of mind, the ability to accept that some things just aren't working, and the fortitude to expose the deficiencies in social norms, as I wrote in my last post.

Collin said to me today her vegetarianism can seem like a judgement on non-vegetarianism. To me, it is a judgement, because really, every decision we make is a judgement, and any critical thought stems from a judgement we make about norms and values. It takes fortitude to stick to these judgements, and it takes mettle to continually have the discussions provoked because of them. Only then will we able to expose what is best about us, and what is worst about us.

What came first and the wisdom from the world

I hope to tie together a few threads of thought with this post today. I mentioned in a couple of posts (here and here) the fallacies and deficiencies of the current framework of "sustainability" thinking. What the dominant framework does is the following - it puts "economic" sustainability on the same footing as "social" sustainability and "environmental" sustainability. The global North, i.e. the agenda-setter and dominant rhetorical force, has successfully morphed the concept of "sustainability" to mean "sustainable development," the foundation of which are these deeply ingrained notions of what "economy" means (and you can read about that in those posts I've linked). At the very heart of this "economy" is the notion of technology, and the new. The new has come thick and fast in our world, and not a month goes by without us being bombarded with advertisements and images of what other people think is "good" for us. New knowledge is being successfully marketed and turned into products so that people can make money. In fact, it is this notion of new knowledge that the global North, and increasingly the large nations in the global South, thinks will get us out of this "sustainability" bind. But, with this new knowledge has come constantly increasing environmental degradation and biodiversity loss.


This world existed long before humans arrived on it. Epochs and eons have passed, species have gone extinct, and new forms of life have constantly evolved and appeared. A tree is the outcome of millions of years of slow and steady and constant evolution. A tree is a beautiful example of the outcome of a dynamic equilibrium; the tree has responded to changes happening so slowly that you cannot see them in happening now. These responses are delicately balanced, guaranteeing the survival of the tree. Such is the wisdom of from world. This wisdom stems from the dynamism of population and the unforgiving forces of air, land and water, driven by the sun. This is the wisdom that has led to the adaptation and evolution of rivers, lemurs, bats and snow leopards. With this wisdom, we realise that how these creatures have behaved and evolved has allowed them to fill a role and fill a place, just perfectly. This has inspired the greatest human thinking. Countless people have wondered about nature, and I hope we all have. The wisdom from the world has imprinted on Onwas and the Hadza, who have survived successfully for thousands of years, and are in tune with place and time. Yet with our definition of "economy," we have moved away from this natural wisdom, and are now desperately hoping we can get it back. But this wisdom exists, and is lying dormant. Our "economy" we feel is the best driver of human action, and is the only raison d'etre for human life. Some hope that the "economy," based on new knowledge, can lead to "sustainability." In effect, we have tried to, in a couple thousand years, tried to accomplish what it has taken everything else on Earth much longer to come to - a dynamic equilibrium, constantly evolving, yet inherently sustainable.

Generating "knowledge," but gaining little wisdom

I had an absolutely wonderful time at Earthfest yesterday, where I talked with residents of Ann Arbor, students, administrators and staff about how trash speaks to larger environmental and social concerns. People were extremely curious about how to reduce trash generation, and were surprised to see how little trash I've created in the past six months. I am looking forward to more conversations and questions tomorrow on North Campus. Here is a picture of my table...


I met a truly fascinating man yesterday, Jason Bishop (picture below). He had absolutely fascinating stories of trash collection and recycling at the University Northern Texas, which is in Denton, TX. That's exactly where he's from. He was paid $75 per week, by a man who was interested in the plastics people threw away, to go through all the trash there and collect these plastics. He was allowed to keep the metals and cans, which added to his weekly wage. He also spent two years working on a garbage truck. Once when he was picking garbage up, he ran into a lady that was getting rid of a stereo, in mint condition, a brand new Sony system. She said that her daughter wanted a better brand, and so she was throwing this system away. Of course, Jason took the system...

Probably the most insightful comment of the day came from Graham, the outgoing (tears) head of the Student Sustainability Initiative. We were talking about whether our present state of environmental affairs was inevitable. We were also trying to think of decisive moments in our recent history that has led us to where we are. We both agreed that the development of the modern car and assembly line was one of these moments. Speaking to industrialisation more broadly, he said, "We've generated a lot of "knowledge" in the past two hundred years, but we've gained very little wisdom." This comment blew me away with its weight. We would hope our experiences, failures and accomplishments would define paths of greater wisdom. As time moves forward, so should our thoughtfulness, care and respect toward our world and its diversity grow. When we listen to the elders, we expect words filled with meaning defined through experience. Yet for all of the experiences of mankind in the past centuries, we behave as if every new problem we face has come from out of nowhere, and has no bearing on our future decisions. The Cuyahoga River catching fire, methyl isocyanate being released in Bhopal, petrochemicals being dumped in Cote d'Ivoire, birds being drowned alive in crude in the Gulf of Mexico, World War II...these are experiences we should have learned from, and should learn from. Where is wisdom? Does it only reside in the teachings of Confucius, Gautam Buddha and Mohammad, from centuries ago?

A day worth of trash from the Angell Hall complex being sorted.