The
last two days in Ithaca at the (extraordinarily well organized --
thanks Sarah & Emily!) Net
Impact seminar were an
eye-opener for me. On the one hand, I really got the sense that the
largely-young crowd of 2400 attendees was pretty naive about how much
of an impact their actions will and can have on the social and
environmental behaviours and actions of the corporations they work for
(or hope to work for -- most are still students and few of them have
entrepreneurial aspirations). The sponsors of the event, after all,
included ExxonMobil, Dow
Chemical, GE, WalMart, Coca-Cola, P&G -- a rogues gallery
of corporate malfeasance and greenwashing if there ever was
one. The best hope, I think, is that they will flood into the
government and public sector jobs that the stimulus programs have (we
hope) opened up, and that those jobs will last long enough and be
effective enough to produce some real change -- not in regulations as
much as in government-funded NPO programs -- social service, health,
information and education programs. Making life a little better in
their communities for a few people, for now.
On the other hand, I felt embarrassed that I was so jaundiced about
what they were doing, yet at the same time I could not really be
bothered to debate with them, to explain why this "try to change these
organizations from within" effort was at best futile and at worst a
dangerous distraction from the work we need to do to prepare now for
economic, energy, environmental and, finally, civilizational collapse.
Everything I know and have learned suggests we're long past the point
of solving these problems or even significantly mitigating them, and
that it's time to focus on transition and adaptation. But these young
idealists, with few exceptions, are technophiles (believers that
technology, ingenuity and innovation can address the coming crises),
unwavering believers in the political and economic system (they mostly
think that Obama has a plan for all this, and he just needs more time),
and most seem unaware of even what the Long Emergency, peak oil, the
growing debt crisis, the transition movement and permaculture are all
about.
So to some extent it was like spending two days speaking a foreign
language. These energetic believers' whole worldview is so different
from mine that what I say to them, without the benefit of the context
that, for example, my Save
the World Reading List provides,
makes absolutely no sense to them. It sounds crazy
to them. And I've been so immersed in conversations with people who
really have come to understand what is happening to our world, and what
needs to be done, now, that when I encounter this sea of incredulity I
am startled, exasperated, and dismayed.
Daniel Quinn has said (in Beyond Civilization):
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.
Well, these young people are
open to something new, but not to the message I
have for them. They do
want to argue with me, and they are
willing to listen. The problem is me.
I have neither the patience nor the energy to provide them with an
ocean of information, reading and rhetoric to get them to understand
what, at this point, they find unfathomable, and would probably find
unbearable even if they did appreciate it.
So what's the point? Invest hundreds of hours in order to show a few
people how they've been misinformed and propagandized and deceived and
unexposed to the terrible truth of our civilization's cost, its
unsustainability and inevitable and ghastly demise? So they can be
depressed and paralyzed, as I was when I first began to come to grip
with this knowledge? What will that gain us?
I don't think it's possble to provide a seminar or short conference
that would allow the audience to learn everything they would need to
overcome their acceptance of the prevailing orthodoxy of thought. I'm
not sure even a whole course or university program would suffice. In
addition to being exposed to a lot of new and challenging information, people need time to
digest it, and, more importantly, to discuss it with others.
Joanna Macy runs a program
that focuses instead on reconnecting with Gaia, with one's emotions and
instincts, and letting one's heart be broken and opening oneself up,
with others, to an awareness of the grief for all-life-on-Earth that we
all feel, must feel, if we do begin to reconnect. This is the basis for
the 9-step "What
You Can Do" program that I have
been writing about, which is illustrated above.
Likewise, Derrick Jensen suggests (in A Language Older Than
Words) that we listen to the
land, and in time it will tell us just what we need to do.
I am trying to believe this, but I'm not sure I do. As Quinn says, you
need to be ready
to listen, to reconnect. Although I don't much like the analogy, it's a
lot like being ready for a religious conversion. I understand that most
people are indoctrinated into their religious beliefs from a very early
age, but many still need some event to trigger a true
realization of that belief. And others who come to religion later in
their lives do so because they're ready -- some combination of events
and support from other believers is sufficient to take them past a
tipping point, and bring about a major worldview change. A heavy dose
of propaganda needs to be applied at just the right time, by more than
one person, in the context of the convert's own community and
situation. This is not easy stuff.
Organized religions do this very effectively. They provide the tools
for evangelism, and the infrastructure to keep the flock in the fold.
Whereas some of them are con-men and criminals, others are generous and
sincere. Gladwell has described
the "cellular" organization that enables many evangelical churches to
convert and retain members, using a bottom-up outreach and support
process coordinated by a top-down hierarchy that supplies the tools of
conversion and retention.
Perhaps the Transition
movement and the Permaculture
movement, both community-based networks, are the analogue of the local
cells of religious groups. Perhaps these are the networks that we can
use, instead of debates, conferences and books, to do the same thing to
organize those who are, as Quinn and Jensen say, ready to listen, to
reconnect, and to start to do the much more radical work that will be
needed to:
- learn a better way to
live and make a living,
- disrupt and bring down
our industrial growth economy and the civilization that depends on it,
and
- create new models to
replace them that are healthy and sustainable.
Yet I'm troubled by this. If we create cellular networks to organize
the work of reconnection, learning, action and creation needed to
enable a better world, could these not easily become, as so many
religious networks are, vehicles for indoctrination and exploitation?
Will we end up with sects who think that better world can and should be
built now, in the shadow of our teetering civilization, and others who
think we should focus on undermining existing civilization and that
nothing very useful can be accomplished until that work is done? I can
see myself agreeing with both viewpoints.
I am at heart not a political person. I don't like to debate (so
Quinn's words naturally appeal to me). When I speak with climate
scientists they tell me that they don't dare say what they really think
is happening to our world, and that they don't dare share their extreme
pessimism about whether it can be "fixed", for fear that politicians
and others will just stop listening to them ("we don't want to know,
then"). So we've reached the stage where the people who really know are
now afraid to say what they know. And so many of us who see evidence
all around us that something is very wrong keep quiet, keep doing what
they're doing, and conclude, uncomfortably, it must be "just them" that
feels this way.
I kind of expect that, faced with evidence, most people will come
around (eventually, and almost assuredly too late) to believe what I
believe, and that they will then be ready to listen and to "get with
the program" that my graphic above illustrates, or some program like
it. In that I am, I think, an optimist -- I believe that in our hearts
we all want to do the right thing, for everyone.
But I don't know. We are who we are and, learning and programs and
propaganda notwithstanding, we will do what we will do. As Pollard's
Law states, we do what we must, then we do what's easy, and then we do
what's fun. We will "get with the program" only reluctantly, because we
don't like change, and this program will never be easy, or fun. Most of
us will only begin when there is absolutely no doubt left
that our existing civilization is doomed.
No wonder most people don't want to know, and are so willing to believe
that the system doesn't need to change, that we can continue to grow
forever, that we can change the system from within, or that technology
or ingenuity or the Rapture will save us, in time.
I'm not one to argue with them.
Although I know they are mistaken.
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