Discuss: Forget Shorter Showers

I know I’m coming into this discussion very late and I haven’t read but a fraction of the comments so if this has already been said, my apologies. But I find little encouragement in Mr Jensen’s conclusion: that we can
“follow the examples of brave activists who lived through the difficult times I mentioned—Nazi Germany, Tsarist Russia, antebellum United States.” Nazi Germany was not brought down by those doubtlessly brave activists. They were all murdered by the regime they opposed. The Nazis were defeated by a superior war machine, fuelled by massive industry. As for Tsarist Russia, its brave activists were buried by the Bolsheviks. And antebellum USA? Well, it was another war that ended slavery as such.

I agree with Murray Reiss’ comment that it took much more than protest to bring down Nazi Germany. 

However, it is a disservice to history and to the service of French and Polish and other resistance movements to ignore their crucial contribution.  Even if you can’t point to any one battle, their contribution sped up Allied victory.  It made invasion of Normandy all the easier.  Also, a diverse movement of underground newspapers, active and indirect action was in place as the Allies landed in France.  Within a short span of a few months, the resistance was able to form actual military units that played a key role in a swift end to the Third Reich.  The outcome of WWII was much more than the rote calculation of who made more wigits and tanks and bombs.

Sure, “massive industry” of US played key role.  But millions of small acts (including those that led to the unlocking of the Enigma code) deserve some consideration.

So, were these acts of resistance a “sufficient” condition, of and by themselves?  Probably not.  But were they a “necessary” condition of victory?  I believe so.  Cracking Enigma and making Nazi high command believe Allied invasion was taking place elsewhere was a crucial deception.

Reiss says all of these brave activists were “all murdered by the regime they opposed.”  Not entirely true.  Many survived to tell their tales of resistance.  We should focus on their courage instead of seeing the history of the world as who can build a better bomb, and more of them.  I believe that history has shown quite the opposite.  Despite all of Rome’s technological prowess…...

If you make one return to correct, it would be good to retain what was written.The image I evidently didn’t copy correctly was ambiguous regarding the space between the word and the numeral.

Please recall the wonderful quotation by Joseph Campbell,

“When we talk about settling the world’s problems, we’re barking up the wrong tree. The world is perfect. It’s a mess. It has always been a mess. We are not going to change it. Our job is to straighten out our own lives.”

Let us imagine (in full agreement with Joseph Campbell) that “our job is to straighten out our own lives” and that it is precisely the unsustainable ways we are living out our lives in this wondrous planetary home we inhabit which is inducing the formidable global challenges now looming so ominously before all of us on the horizon. Consider that human beings are the primary cause of certain converging ecological threats the children could confront in the future.

In all the discussions I can recall about “the human predicament” never have I heard the idea presented that human beings cannot resolve problems which we are responsible for creating. We are not asked to change a world which is perfect, but to make changes in unsustainable patterns of behavior that are within our control. The mastery that gave rise to the global challenges to human wellbeing and environmental health is the same mastery that can be deployed in responding ably to those challenges. If conspicuous per-capita overconsumption and extravagant hoarding of limited resources; rampant overproduction of virtual mountains of unnecessary stuff; and unbridled overpopulation activities by the human species, when taken together, are “producing” threats to humanity, Earth and its environs, then sensibly changing these ways of behaving will mitigate and eventually resolve our plight. Is there any reason to doubt that human beings can alleviate any plight human beings can produce? Our task is to adequately deploy gifts God has given humankind to acknowledge, accept, address and overcome the human-induced challenges before us.

By choosing necessary changes in our behavioral repertoire (in the sense of willing the inevitable), the family of humanity will find its way through the human-driven mess we have made in this world (not of this world) which is the perfect creation of God, I suppose.

There are many statements in this article that I can affirm: systemic solutions in our gloablized world are essential; but I cannot agree that efforts to live more simply, in the sense of doing what we can individually to help provide clean water for those who lack it and for future generations is not also important.

Turn off the corporate tv with the imbeded consumer messages and learn to think for yourself. I am an activist who refuses to participate in Hallmark holidays, I don’t buy anything new I can get used and do not eat corporate food.

A clean healthy body goes a long way in seeing through the BS. Americans are poisoned everyday and ask for more. They don’t see the obvious connection between shows like HOARDERS and the reality of our consumer existance. Madison Avenue told us we need it and we are entitled so many believe they are Master of the Universe when in fact they are pawns in the ultimate power game.

I believe we can take down the corporate giants with personal choices and a clear strong voice. Persistance!

to # 334
“Turn off the corporate tv with the imbeded consumer messages and learn to think for yourself.”
    I AGREE
American TV comedy had been telling audiences when to laugh “by injecting variable degrees of laughter sound” when you actually had not found it funny, or so funny!

They left nothing for mind to EXTRAPOLATE.. or to find the ANECDOTE “Even while resting at home”

Just wanted to discuss a couple thoughts from the Derrick article, “Forget Shorter Showers”.  It’s quite obvious that taking shorter showers or putting in a garden is about as effective as tightening your hand drum in the face of the so called military industrial complex.  Surely they’re shaking in their boots.  The double bind of which he speaks is clear.  Seen from a sane and logical perspective, all arrows point toward a treacherous precipice at this point.  Participation in the industrial economy, i.e., driving a car, shopping at Wal Mart, even perhaps hosting a mail order craft business or solar install group, given their respective embodied energy budgets, is not ultimately a win for our planet or it’s people because of the destruction and exploitation latent in these systems.  So choose the simpler life.  We relax, egoistically satisfied that our short showers(or no showers), organic home grown food, and lack of indulgent electricity usage is turning the planet towards a golden sunrise.  Well, we lose still because human beings and the being that is Earth is still being rapaciously consumed by industrial civilization.  The third option, that of actively opposing the industrial machine is scary because it likely involves death either indirectly through biting the hand that feeds or directly through simply being killed.  Derrek says that, though scary, “any option is better than a dead planet.”
    “The good news is that there are other options.  We can follow the examples of brave activists who lived through…Nazi Germany, Tsarist Russia, antebellum United States- who did far more than manifest a form of moral purity; they actively opposed the injustice that surrounded them.”  Perhaps I may be misunderstanding something here, but it seems to me that the third option, that of actively opposing industrial civilization, belongs squarely next to “gardening to save the world” inside of the double bind.  Let me attempt to draw a parallel here.  Someone decides to plant a garden to eat good food, consume less fossil fuel, and feel a little bit more at home.  That’s all fine and good.  Suppose they plant a garden as a political statement against industrial civilization.  Obviously this is vain and ineffective.  Now, say I am an aid on Harriet Tubman’s Underground Railroad because it makes me feel personally soothed inside at the astonishing injustice of an amoral institution.  Fine and good.  Say I participate in the railroad as a political statement against the institution of slavery.  It’s about as effective as gardening. In both Nazi Germany and the antebellum South, we have to wait not for individuals, but for massive armed conflicts(fought for their own reasons, I know) to upset the status quo. To me it seems that if you live through a protest or an act of rebellion, it means you weren’t being effective enough.  Following, it seems that being gunned down by the man or left to rot in a dungeon to die is about as effective as gardening.  Unless you get famous- really famous, albeit perhaps posthumously.  Let’s also not forget while invoking the great resisters of recent history that none of them ever made so much as a scratch or a dent in the onslaught of industrial civilization.  Some even purport that they were allowed to perform a lead role in a sort of socially engineered event.  In fact, most of the changes these people are credited with participating in, such as the fall of the “Third Reich”, only served to further consolidate and strengthen the great machine that is industrial civilization.
    Another point here is that of mass participation.  What if Gandhi was the only one who made salt, spun fabric at home, or practiced non violence?  It was not until mass participation that these acts had any real significance.  Derrick notes that government and commercial sectors do far more damage to the ecosystems of the Earth than the residential sector, but who does this commercial sector serve?  What if everyone started growing their own food, keeping their own seeds, meeting their economic needs locally?  How serious would the Powers that Be take these movements if they actually became significant enough to cut into profits and threaten control over food supply, medicine, and fuel?  How quickly would these “small acts” be challenged and because they are so innocent, how would they be challenged?  Not enough people catch rainwater, especially where it is disallowed.  Not enough people make their own fuel. Not enough live from their gardens or support local businesses.  If enough did finally, and government opposed it, this might in fact incite open rebellion.  We may never know.  Anyhow,  this is getting a bit long.  The long and short of it is that it is a very difficult situation.  All I know is that if the industrial machine falls apart in my lifetime, I hope it’s either a quick death or that I"ve got a lot more books by the Rodale Press or Chelsea Green than I do by Derrick Jensen.
    If the point is simply that one should not be overly prideful or self satisfied at the political statement that is their own personal 50 Things You Can Do to Save the Planet, then that is indeed agreed.  Nuff said.  Pride goeth before a fall.  Personally, I like alternative energy projects because I like tinkering and learning things I did not know.  I am also a gardener.  And while I do believe that gardening and tinkering can be parts of regional economic and social movements that could indeed become extremely subversive to industrial civilization, this is not the key motivating points.  I like to garden because I like to feel and smell soil, I like the sun and the moon, I like good food, and it makes me feel kind of… randy.