Discuss: Altar Call for True Believers

I enjoyed Janisse Ray’s thoughtful “Alter Call for True Believers” in the September / October 2007 issue.  She lays out her frustrations about the impossibility of ever doing enough.  I would share her anxiety except for some recent discussions with my son, a Vermont schoolteacher who rides his bike 28 miles round trip to work and back home two days a week, and really works at cutting down consumption and keeping things balanced and within his local economy. 

After reading Bill McKibben’s “Deep Economy” and Paul Hawken’s “Blessed Unrest” he had concluded that we can’t just stop living but need to decide how we want to live our lives . . . and then do as much as we can to be the part of the solution instead of the problem.  I read both books and was moved by the thinking and the report of positive activity going on around the country and the world.

It is impossible to just stop living but we can live more thoughtfully . . . buying things we need but buying less, buying our food from local supply sources, keeping our homes tuned and using less energy, keeping our cars and yard tools tuned and using them more thoughtfully, walking or riding our bikes instead of driving, dining out at local restaurants and supporting local merchants, buying products with less packaging, cutting down on plastics, using fewer paper paper products, using paint and cleaning supplies that don’t do harm, recycling, working with our phones and computers more rather than traveling to more meetings, and encouraging family, friends, neighbors, companies and political leaders to do the same.

My son and I were having this discussion at our family cottage in northern Michigan.  We noted that this was the third summer that we had been using a 20’ pontoon boat with an efficient, cleaner burning 50 hp 4 stroke gas outboard vs a 16’ ski boat with a 90 hp 2 stroke gas / oil mix outboard.  The pontoon boat carries up to 10 people and two dogs just sipping gas while the ski boat carried 5 people and two dogs really sucking gas.  (The pontoon boat uses the same amount of fuel in 5 months that the ski boat did in 2 - 3 days pulling skiers.)  We have not ended our boat use, our carbon fuel use is not perfect, but a lot better. 

I been part of a “Taking Grace Green” stewardship effort at our local Episcopal church to begin working more thoughtfully with the environment.  There is a lot of enthusiasm and energy among people wanting to change and be doing things better.  It isn’t going to be perfect . . . but is a start to making things better.  And, if we get up to speed like some of Paul Hawken’s examples of new grassroots action in “Blessed Unrest”, we will help to widen the movement and be a part of the change that needs to happen.  And we will start living better, more responsible lives on a healthier planet.

Bill Mendenhall
Holland, MI

I begin with a salute to Janisse Ray. And a deep, deep sigh….

How ironic that the FIRST step to ‘walking’ must be to move to a city. Yup. Too bad, but of the many folk I know who have realized the American ideal of the remote-small-town-rural life, all are inevitably stuck in a lifestyle that of necessity will continue to be wasteful.

Unless one does sell the car and tear up the speaking-tour invites.

The village is fine. It developed around the nexus of resources, security, and focus of human activity. When one’s activity requires extended travel, the being in other places, then it can only be concluded that the right ‘village’ is one that concentrates, and makes less impactful, the resource requirements one’s work invoke.

Bob Tyson
Turin, Italy

A VERY nice city for its culture, its people, and for the bicycle. I ‘measure’ my success by how infrequently I buy a packet of bus tickets. I’m presently working on one I’d picked up in May….and by looking down into the courtyard to admire the space reserved for my car. Empty.

I think it’s important to distinguish between what we as a society must to do to avert the worst possibilities of carbon dioxide pollution, and the personal steps we take to demonstrate our concern about the problem, and to point towards a sustainable future.  As individuals, we only need to solve part of the problem- to make our best effort, and show that the changes we’ll all need to make in the future, are, in part, manageable today.  As a society, we have a few decades to stop emitting CO2.  This is a manageable technological challenge, provided we committ ourselve to doing it. The political task of getting our society to make this committment it will be much easier if we keep our language and focus positive.  We need to emphasize that the changes we need to make to stop emitting CO2 are compatible with a life style that has advantages compared with our present way of life. 
The kind of struggles Ms. Ray had with her turkey farmer are just the kind of thing that can help along the changes we need if they are carried out in a positive spirit:  by taking steps to change her own life, she’s realized that there are aspects of her economy that are incompatible with a less energy-intensive life style.  When she communicates this to her turkey farmer, she may not solve the problem immediately, but she creates an awareness in him that may blossom into action when a few more people make similar requests.  The key is to see these frustrating exchanges as one of the main goals of our personal choices:  to educate others about how society needs to change in a carbon-constrained world.  For this to work well, though, I think an optimisitic and confident attitude is crucial.

Instead of travel, what about videoconferencing?  It’s not that great yet, but it may be less energy intensive than flying. 

And yes, take the train.  I was waiting for the train to be mentioned.  The Vermonter just resumed service after stopping for tunnel revamping (a tunnel the train goes through had its lower surface dropped 3 feet so that more freight CAN TRAVEL BY TRAIN, i.e., ie, double decker cars).  The Downeaster (goes through ME) just added a 5th trip and ridership has increased.  Something people can do is push for more passenger rail (Bush has tried to kill Amtrak every year of his Administration), push for more efficient rail & high speed rail and push for accessible stations that also have plenty of space for bicycles as well as space for bicycles on the train.  The Talgo trains that travel the OR/WA route do so (although currently the Talgo cars are being fixed and the temporary substitutes cannot handle bicycles). 

And as the other poster said, keep asking for a less energy consumptive way of doing things.  Push for rail, push for more bikepaths, safe/dry places to lock bikes at shops/malls, etc.  Push for “edible schoolyards” and local buying of food by residential colleges in your area (if Yale did it, so can other schools).  It’s worth noting that there have been a number of essays/opinion articles attacking the validity of “eating locally”—it proves that the MSM, industrial ag is concerned enough to be paying pundits to attack the idea, even though the % of people eating “locally” is so small.

I would just like to thank Janisse Ray for her excellent piece. It touched me and I know and have felt that great discomfort and have been tagged with the “judgement” label.

I especially appreciate ending the article with talking about being radical, a word I use more and more often. I am proud to be a radical, though I still have contradictions that I ferret out day by day.

Hello!

Many thanks to Janisse Ray for a wonderful meditation on the question which engages many of us every day - “What must we do to ‘walk the talk’ in our own lives?”

It seems to me that there are a few implicit assumptions in Ms. Ray’s essay and I thought it might be useful (or at least interesting to me) to tease them out.

First, there is an assumption that true believers should behave in a way that actually restores ecological and community damage instead of simply reducing the level of new damage done.  Under such an assumption, it wouldn’t be enough to demonstrate that one’s actions were less destructive than the most egregious excesses of others. One’s behavior must produce an active good, not just avoid adding to the burden of bad.

Yes from me.

Second, there is an assumption that personal resource use and pollution/waste generation, and contribution of greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere are acceptable ways to assess how well we are “walking the talk”.

Yep.

Third, I gather an assumption that true believers can reasonably come to agreement on “how much is enough” and “how much is too much”.  That is, even true believers don’t simply say that the answer is always to just use less - or reduce one’s footprint more - regardless of how well one is already doing.  To use a religious analogy, one might have serious admiration for those who have chosen the monk’s life of radical simplicity, but one doesn’t require that level of drastic action from everyone in the community of faith.  At the same time, one doesn’t let people off the hook just because they have good intentions and feel guilty when they fall short.  Actions count.  Results count.

Yes a third time.

Fourth, there is an assumption that an acceptable level of resource use can actually be measured, such that individuals can make choices and tradeoffs with some sense of how their own behavior evens out in the end against the acceptable standard.

You bet.  I agree.

Fifth, I sense an assumption that certain kinds of behavior are recognized by the community at large as being generally “good” or “bad” if one is seeking to achieve the agreed upon standard.  So, even though we can’t always be sure what trade-offs individuals are making, we all know it will be harder to achieve the standard over time if we engage in certain behaviors at all.  We come to agree that some specific behaviors are generally to be avoided by the community of faith, including airplane trips, homes over a certain size, power boats, using nondisposables, cars with poor gas mileage, excessive car travel in general, diets full of nonlocal, traditionally grown foods, and so forth.

Hmmmmm….maybe.

By extension, certain other behaviors are generally looked on as good, with an agreed upon understanding that they reliably lead to achieving the standards we implicitly all want to reach.  So, we applaud those who walk or bike, those who live in smaller quarters, those who eschew air travel, use the canvas bag at the store, eat local, organic food, install energy and water efficient appliances, etc.

Finally - in my world at least - there is also the assumption that active participation in the social and political life of the community is one of the standards that we aim for, and that there is (as with resource consumption and pollution generation) an acceptable standard of participation below which true believers cannot fall if they claim to be serious.  The community of faith is a *community* and not just a group of people striving for personal achievement against a personal standard.  The community also understands that there are many actions which can only be taken successfully from larger groups of people collectively.  Walking the talk requires you to show up and pitch a certain amount of time or be judged accordingly.

I’m on board with that one.

So - other than providing me with lots to think about on an morning off from work - where does this leave us?

It seem to me that our current moment requires us to get serious *with* each other about our community standards *for* each other.  It may have once been good enough for all of us to simply ask each other to “do better”, or to routinely show the flag through symbolic actions that demonstrated our place in the community of believers.  We could let each other off the hook under the assumption that we are “trying*, or we are “doing the best we can”.

What is interesting about environmentally sound living, however, is just how amenable it is to actual measurement, with appropriate adjustments to different places.  (For example, decreasing water use by certain amounts would be a critical measure in some places, and not in others).

If we could come to agreement on a reasonable standard of personal contribution to greenhouse gasses, for example, would we really care which combination of actions our friends and neighbors take to stay below the standard?  Conversely, if there was such an agreement, would we congratulate ourselves for the occasional visible symbolic action (driving a Prius) if we knew that our cumulative score was over the limit?

The idea here is to focus less on daily behaviors, taken daily, and more on achieving final results against agreed upon standards over time - including those standards which require our participation in collective action.

In this kind of community, we could regularly check in with our fellows with questions about how well they are doing against an agreed upon standard of results.  Precisely because it was agreed upon, we would feel more comfortable calling each other to account when they (or we) don’t measure up.

For myself, I’m on the lookout for people and organizations who are proposing measurable standards that I can use to measure my own level of ecological and community restoration, even if I fly on a few jet planes every year as part of my work.

The underlying issue here is that the structure of our society is founded on methods of exchange “business” which fragment our relationship to ecology and community.  Most businesses are structured like pyramids. People and resources are used to benefit those at the top who set policy to achieve maximum profit. This narrow focus, mandated in publicly held companies by the law of our land, has turned our basic human need for exchange into a destructive pattern.  This will change because it is not sustainable, but this type of change and what might emerge can only be imagined in a mythic context.  We are part of that story though we cannot see the larger picture.

We have to find ways in each of our worlds to create cohesive circles of interdependency based on fair and equitable exchange with each other and the eco system.  We need to create circle based modes of economy.  I call this approach the circle manifesto. (http://www.circlemanifesto.com)

To consider whether to take a positive or negative approach is too superficial for me.  And to be too results oriented can be pointless.  No one is wise enough to know whether our species will survive this transition or not.  The point is that we have to do the work in our own world as a requirement to live ethically and responsibly.  We do the work for ourselves and for the great and beautiful web of life. 

Living in the ethical gray areas of turkeys is an authentic place to be. Even if it is terribly uncomfortable, it is still an opportunity to deepen our own spiritual path.  Perfection should not be the enemy of the good.

This article is fantastic! 
Mirrors some of my own meditative thinking. 
Many of the ‘environmentalists’ in my community have come to be known as earth nazi’s for berating those who throw away recycleables, bashing those with larger homes than they need, etc.  Some of these same ones have large SUV’s that run on biofuels. 
I find that I want to distance myself from them, even though I am considered one of them! 
Each of us should have the opportunity to make our own choices, but should be held at least responsible for those choices. 
Negative reinforcement doesn’t necessarily encourage us to be more responsible, it encourages us to act from fear.  Using resources better does not mean that we get to use more. 
I have my own guilt associated with the way that I live, however, uping my standard, often means spending more money.  (Buying a home to live in a walkable neighborhood, organic/local foods, prius’, etc.) Spending more money means that I have to work more hours at my non-profit environmental jobs.  Working more means more travel and a greater chance of burn-out.  It is a dizzying array of choices.  It is easy to become overwhelmed. 
I think the answer lies in what John Seed is calling Despair and Empowerment.  We have to have the moments of despair, which are true understandings of the state of the world.  We also have to have empowerment which mostly occurs from a feeling of community with others on the same path.  If we alienate each other by being nazi’s we will get nowhere.  However, inviting community to join together (virtually or in person) to discuss these issues, repairs the guilt glitch in all of us. 
Thank you for this communication from Janisse Ray and my ability to rant on my own personal guilts!