Simple Living for the Environment Is for Suckers

[BridgeTheGap]

Just stirring the pot a little today. The comments on the article on worth a look too.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Hey, all you guilt-stricken liberals. Let the water run. Throw those recyclable milk jugs in the trash. And drive that 15-year-old gas-guzzling truck all over town. Heck, flip off a bicyclist while you’re at it.

Not interested? Fine. Go ahead and eschew these eco-heretical lifestyle choices; just don’t go feeling high and mighty about it.

That’s the takeaway from a biting essay in Orion (July-Aug. 2009), written by the always provocative Derrick Jensen. Railing against “simple living as a political act,” the radical environmentalist argues that focusing on our personal choices as a salve for eco-destruction is not only misguided, but also ineffective.

“Would any sane person think Dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday . . . or that dancing naked around a fire would have helped put in place the voting rights act of 1957 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal ‘solutions’?”

http://www.utne.com/Environment/Simple-Living-for-the-Environment-Is-for-Suckers.aspx?utm_content=11.17.09+Spirituality&utm_campaign=Spirituality&utm_source=iPost&utm_medium=email

[Better Today]

1. Although I see the point to personal responsibility, the guy is 100% right.

It's always been really tough doing things like conserve water with 2 minute showers, not flushing, barely keeping all the expensive to replace plants, bushes, and trees in the yard watered. . . then to recognize that less than 30 miles away there are food production plants that use outrageous amounts water to skin potatoes, make sugar, and so on. OR worse yet, drive around the town at night to see how many public sprinkler systems running for parks and medians and the like, but they are running so long that quite literally the medians are overflowing into the street and the parks are so soggy that even on a 90+ degree day, you can't hardly use them.

He's right, it isn't us little guys, its the corporations (again). We are being asked to squeeze ourselves of comforts so they can maintain their wasteful ways a few years longer, not so that we will save planet.

[IrateCitizen]

7. Your focus is misguided, IMHO

The point isn't to simply sacrifice comfort for the greater good. The point is to gradually get used to doing with less -- so that when circumstances change to the point that we have to make do with considerably less, we're in for much less of a shock.

Furthermore, I never notice much about the concept of community in Jensen's writings, nor the importance of rebuilding it in conjunction with "lifestyle changes." And community will be CENTRAL to dealing with coming changes and the sense of shock that will accompany them.

[Better Today]

8. That may be your point, doing with less, but most I know do it for sake

of community and environmental savings, resource retention as it were. Unfortunately the huge corps are using more in an hour than a whole community can legitimately save in entire day or even week. So we get to feel like we're so good and making such a difference, but then we come to find out that the 100s of gallons of water (for example) that we as individuals are saving, the non-individual entities (like food corps and municipalities) just increase their usages (read wastefulness).

I'm not suggesting that as individuals we shouldn't be trying, but without the much larger, more organized utilizers of resources curbing their usage, it won't in the end make much difference to anything but our own sense of do-good-er-ness.

[wtmusic]

10. It's not my responsibility either! With "the corporations" it's all so pointless...

I'm gonna go take a 40-minute shower now. Why should I sacrifice MY comforts, why should I let them inconvenience ME when I deserve MY rightful share of the world's resources!

We are doomed.

[Better Today]

11. Unfortunately, you're correct. I'll still do my part, but we need more pressure on industrial

overuse, waste, etc. . . . .or else all of our personal considerations will be for naught.

[rucky]

2. Seems like a false dichotomy to me. n/t

[msongs]

3. exactly. personal conservation is the right thing to do for its own sake. nt

[Festivito]

14. It's just RW claptrap. The writer retreats to his own "personal solution."

His solution is to create a strawman environmentalist, broadbrush all as that one, then use overgeneralization here in the form of "personal solution" to seemingly lock the argument in a way that requires a bunch of words describing the writer's jump to inaccurate generalization while still acknowledging that he was giving cogently visually stimulating examples applicable only at the beginning of the argumentation hoping it would fool readers to accept the last lines with what then becomes errantly confirmatory imagery.

RW claptrap.

[rucky]

18. Why can't he just feel guilty about not sorting the garbage like everyone else?

He seems to be turning somersaults to justify himself.

[joshcryer]

24. Smug, pretentious, "I know it all" attitude.

In the meantime he takes fossil fueled vehicles to his tens of thousands of dollars speeches.

[kestrel91316]

4. Does this guy think we who arrange our personal lives to decrease out environmental impact

don't ALSO work to change policy so corporations and other nations change policies to decrease theirs???

You must BE the change you wish to see in the world. If you rant about the environment and how OTHERS need to change, but do nothing in your own life to change, you are the WORST sort of hypocrite.

I look at it as blazing a trail in the wilderness and setting a good example.

[IrateCitizen]

6. Jensen thinks that unless you're throwing Molotov cocktails

and covering your face with a black bandana, you're part of the problem.

[IrateCitizen]

5. Jensen's solutions are usually more along the lines of the ELF

The Environmental Liberation Front, that is.

Trying to engage in overt violent acts against a government that monopolizes the legitimate use of force is usually a senseless act that only ends up hurting you and people not directly involved in the decision-making process. Furthermore, it does little to rally others to your cause, and usually does the exact opposite.

In fact, I find a lot about Jensen's line of thought that echoes more selfish ends. It's basically along the lines of, "If it won't achieve the change I want right now, then I'm not willing to wait and work for it." At least one of the examples he cites -- Civil Rights -- came from a combination of direct action AND a change in "lifestyle" choices toward non-cooperation.

[joshcryer]

20. That's my biggest gripe, he says his "activism" is writing, and everyone else should blow up dams...

...set off emp devices (that won't work because he doesn't understand inverse square law), hack power stations (OK, slightly possible with a social engineering hack, but hardly useful on a wide scale).

And since ecoactivists are the only, only activists to be arrested and get long jail times, it is really disturbing. People can and do listen to him.

[wtmusic]

9. Using that rationale, no one should vote

z-z-z-z

[Triana]

12. False premise: eco-sensibility isn not intended to end slavery or social injustice..

...it is intended to halt and/or reverse environmental damage and to save the planet we all live on. Entirely different motive.

Beware the false premise when a knuckle-dragger is trying to drag you into an argument. Don't take that bait. Call out the false premise and be done with it.

[GliderGuider]

13. Acting on one level doesn't shut other doors. We need action at every level.

On the personal level, doing something as simple as changing a light bulb contributes to the grass-roots consciousness shift without which no other change is possible. "As you change the light bulb, the light bulb changes you."

By taking action at the small-group and community level, we build the bonds we need to survive change together. It also spreads the message of involvement, caring, passion and compassion in the most virally effective way possible. Read "Blessed Unrest" by Paul Hawken.

Working at the national and international level, whether in science or politics, opens the possibility for large changes. Those changes descending from the top work towards and with the changes rising from the grass roots and spreading out from small communities of people. All these changes are mutually catalytic.

A person doesn't need to confine their efforts to one level -- most community, national and international activists are dedicated to personal change, for example. There are plenty of shoulders to put to the wheel, and we all contribute what we can. No effort is wasted, so I deeply disagree with Jensen on that premise.

However, I am prepared to say that we do need a small number of people who are willing to step over the line. We need people who feel enough passion for the cause that they are prepared to move outside the safety of the herd and challenge the lion to a personal fight. At the very least their efforts serve to remind the rest of us, sitting here in the herd-safety of our everyday lives, that the cause is serious enough that people are willing to put themselves at risk. It reminds me that even in this age of cynical risk-benefit analysis and sober second thought there are some causes that may in fact be worth dying for.

[gorfle]

15. Because in their heart of hearts...

Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal ‘solutions’?”

Because in their heart of hearts, they realize that they have no power to control anything but their own personal situations.

[GliderGuider]

16. +1

[IrateCitizen]

17. Spot on.

:thumbsup:

+1.

[joshcryer]

19. Indicating that they care, unlike those who pretend they do.

[XemaSab]

23. Beautifully put

:D

[Nihil]

26. Sad but true.

:-(

[joshcryer]

21. I gave this a rec because of the discussion it has garnered, not because I agree.

I'm liking what I'm seeing from E&E.

[Bigmack]

22. I'm reading Jensen's book,

The Culture of Make Believe, and while I don't accept - agree with - everything he says, I'm convinced that he's WAY more correct than not, and that history's gonna show that these were critical times demanding radical change. Time will sure as hell tell now, won't it? Ms Bigmack

[IrateCitizen]

25. I read that one a while ago, and while I think Jensen is an astute observer...

... he repeatedly claims the need for direct action -- especially violence against private property -- while never engaging in such action himself.

I remember one passage quite well, in which he described being in a car of sorts (I can't remember if it was an automobile or a train car, not that it matters much) in which several people around him were discussing the ways in which "environmental protection" was at the heart of many of our economic difficulties. Then, he went on to describe what he WANTED to say to them, but admittedly did not have the gumption to say at the moment.

Basically, here's a guy who doesn't have the balls to directly confront those with whom he disagrees to their face, who is advocating direct action as the panacea for our problems. Where I come from, there are some words that are used to describe people who do that sort of thing, and none of them have a positive connotation.

[joshcryer]

27. You should attend his speeches. You won't be allowed to ask actual questions.

They tend to be slanted toward him like a Bush-esque town-hall meeting.