Swans photo by Kevin Cameron
"You're
very quiet these days, Dave." Three times I've heard this
recently, from three different friends. It got me thinking about
Flemming Funch's recent comment:
The more in balance we ourselves are, the less we
feel a need for
correcting everybody else's worldviews. The more enlightened you
yourself are, the less you are obsessed with making everybody else be
like [and think like] you.
As I pondered this, I wondered at
first whether the
silence of those of us who've made peace with our own
radical, grim worldviews was a bit selfish, or lazy:
If we know
something important the rest of the world should know, and act upon,
isn't it our duty to stand up and shout it from the rooftops?
But then I thought how difficult it
is to explain,
within the attention span of the average listener, how one arrived at
these conclusions. It's taken me years, and a ton of reading and
thinking that the average person has neither the time nor inclination
for, to come to my current assessment about how the world works, what
the real problems are, and what we should be doing. I'm delighted at
the number of people, readers of my work and composers of their own,
who seem to be on the same wavelength that I am on, but
they've reached
that point by their own arduous and tortuous
journey, and we wouldn't be nodding
at each other's ideas and comments based on a few articles, no matter
how well written or reasoned. We are, all of us who concede that our
civilization's time is probably running out and the best approach now
is local, community-based, model-creating actions, not a new political,
economic or social movement or revolution, too
far ahead
to be able to explain to others, easily or simply, how we have arrived
at the philosophical space we currently occupy. And we are, as well,
too far ahead to go back, or to wait for the rest of the world to catch
up.
So we shut up and, in the company of
those not yet ready
for what we believe and what we have to say, we say nothing. We have
given up arguing with the deniers, the apologists, the technophiles and
rhapsodists who still think our manifest destiny is to be 'saved', by
our own ingenuity or some higher power. I talk to my children, now in
their thirties, about the fact that their suburban lifestyle is utterly
unsustainable and headed for a wall, and that our economy is so
stretched out and fragile that it's inevitably going to come flying
apart. But while they are attentive and respectful, their hope that I'm
dead wrong far outweighs their fear that I'm right. I love them dearly,
but they are not yet ready to listen. And my granddaughters, who will
bear the brunt of our generations' irresponsibility, are too
busy
acquiring the competencies they will need to be distracted by the awful
truth of the world they will soon inherit. They know me,
already, by reputation, and they will come to me with
their questions,
when they're ready.
So in the meantime, I'm very quiet
these days. I've
become the person I said those 'too far ahead' must become: accepting,
responsible (without laying guilt or blame), joyful (alive in the
moment) and purposeful (towards a full, natural life). And quiet,
reflective, thoughtful, attentive, even patient.
As a result, I don't engage in enough
oral conversations
on matters that are important, because those to whom I could talk about
these things are either (a) not ready or (b) already know. Daniel
Quinn's advice rings truer all the time:
People
will listen when they're ready to listen and not before.
Probably, once upon a time, you
weren't ready to listen to an idea than now seems to you obvious, even
urgent. Let people come to it in their own time. Nagging or bullying
will only alienate them. Don't preach. Don't waste time with people who
want to argue. They'll keep you immobilized forever. Look for people
who are already open to something new.
When presenting a new idea, you don't have to have all the
answers. It's better to say 'I don't know' than to fake it. Make people
formulate their own questions. Don't take on the responsibility of
figuring out what their difficulty is. We each internalize information
differently. If you don't understand a question, keep insisting they
explain it until it's clear. Nine times out of ten they'll supply the
answer themselves.
Above all, listen.
Your close attention is sometimes more important than your
articulateness in winning converts. And learning is always a good thing.
So while I've become a better
listener, my
conversational skills (never my strong suit) are not getting much
exercise, and without practice they're not going to improve. Perhaps I
should practice talking about things that aren't important,
but my
heart's not in it.
Or perhaps I should practice
conveying some small,
important, easier messages. Jim Kunstler is a master at this, and he's
developed a knack for hammering on some very basic, vital lessons,
repeatedly and eloquently, in ways that are memorable. Recently, Sharon
Astyk (thanks to Michael Yarmolinsky for the link)
picked up on
this Kunstler riff:
"It only made me more nervous,
because this longing for
'solutions' strikes me as a free-floating wish for magical rescue
remedies, for techno-fixes that will allow us to make a hassle-free
switch from fossil hydrocarbon power to something less likely to
destroy the Earth's ecosystems (and human civilization with it). And I
think such a wish is, in itself, at the root of our problem --
certainly at the bottom of our incapacity to think clearly about these
things. I said so, of course, which seemed to piss off a substantial
number of my fellow festival attendees."
I, like Kunstler, think that the [approach of
seeking]
"solutions" as "ways to keep things mostly the way they are" is
completely mistaken.
This idea is an explosive, innocuous,
dangerous little
meme that somehow worms its way into your worldview, even if you're not
ready for its implications. Read the rest of Sharon's article
to hear
her thinking out loud about these implications (such as the
need to
pursue a lifestyle of radical
simplicity), and then read the offended response
from some of her readers who are clearly unnerved by these implications.
So I've decided to build a collection
of explosive,
innocuous, dangerous little memes and, whenever I can, drop them gently
into conversations about 'unimportant' things. Beyond that, I'll
continue to be mostly quiet, and see what happens. Contributions to
this deliciously subversive experiment are welcome.
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
