Posted
by Tim Hjersted
July 13, 2009 at 5:01 a.m.
Taking Shorter Showers Doesn't Cut It: Why Personal Change Does Not Equal Political Change
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One of the most important articles you may read this year. This is why fighting to stop new Wal-Marts from getting built is more important than not shopping at Wal-Mart; why it's more important to fight for a public transportation option than to ride the bus our selves; why it's more important to take direct action and lobby for progressive and radical local and national legislation efforts than to recycle and shop less. I've been hearing the 'personal change is the most important change' shtick for too many years. It's time to get over it.
As Alex Steffen has said, "Don't just be the change. Mass-produce it."
Below is the article. - Tim
Taking Shorter Showers Doesn't Cut It: Why Personal Change Does Not Equal Political Change. By Derrick Jensen.
http://www.filmsforaction.org/blogdetails/?num=293
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 chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons, 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”?
Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance. An Inconvenient Truth helped raise consciousness about global warming. But did you notice that all of the solutions presented had to do with personal consumption—changing light bulbs, inflating tires, driving half as much—and had nothing to do with shifting power away from corporations, or stopping the growth economy that is destroying the planet? Even if every person in the United States did everything the movie suggested, U.S. carbon emissions would fall by only 22 percent. Scientific consensus is that emissions must be reduced by at least 75 percent worldwide.
Or let’s talk water. We so often hear that the world is running out of water. People are dying from lack of water. Rivers are dewatered from lack of water. Because of this we need to take shorter showers. See the disconnect? Because I take showers, I’m responsible for drawing down aquifers? Well, no. More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual living breathing individual humans. Collectively, municipal golf courses use as much water as municipal human beings. People (both human people and fish people) aren’t dying because the world is running out of water. They’re dying because the water is being stolen.
Read the rest here: http://www.filmsforaction.org/blogdetails/?num=293
Greensumption! The Answer to our Prayers
Comments
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DOTDOT (anonymous) says…
I guess I don't understand the definition of "dead planet." The planet will survive us. Our activities here will be another step in it's evolution, just like the oil we burn represents the former presence of the dinosaurs.
Organized political resistance to what? The bad people? The "corporations"? Since WWII, much of the population in developed countries has worked their asses off to create, directly or indirectly, the scope of these very corporations. The "corporations" are not antithetical to human civilization, they represent the fruits of human civilization.
I'm not done. The Earth is of nature. Humanity is of the Earth. Technology (the corporations) are of Humanity. Pollution is of Technology. Therefore, Pollution is of Nature, and Nature will respond appropriately to our insults. We cannot stop this process, and the planet will survive us, and, believe it or not, will quickly forget us.
mtoplikar (Matt Toplikar) says…
dotdot--
Are you just trying to be cleverly semantical, or are you actually saying we shouldn't try to curb pollution? While I don't agree with everything said here (Derrick Jensen really rubs me the wrong way), I think we can all agree that there are things about the earth we should try to keep around. Things like clean air and clean water are pretty nice to have, and are worth the effort to try to maintain.
I realize there's something logically pleasing (on a philosophical level) about saying "Everything is natural". But on a practical level, some of these "natural" processes are uniquely human, and are choices that we make as opposed to say the laws of physics. At the very least, we should argue the pros and cons of continuing choices that are unwise or unhealthy, and not just assume that it's natural for us to destroy ourselves.
DOTDOT (anonymous) says…
Cleverly Semantical? Thanks.
This Derrick Jensen absolutely rubs me the wrong way. The suggestion that personal responsibility is not enough, and therefore pointless, is diametrically opposed to my own view which says that personal responsibility is the only tool that matters.
My philosophical impulses only run so deep, so take them for what they are worth. I am cursed to embrace connections that obviate most of what Derrick Jensen says. For instance, corporations don't outsource jobs, consumers do. The evil corporations wouldn't exist were they not the manifestations of the choices of millions of individuals. Where controlling those choices would control the effects we would have on "the planet," such control would be anathematic to the human spirit. I don't see the inevitable outcome of this (natural) conflict as a source of apathy. Rather, I consider it fundamental to the satisfaction of doing one's part. Know what I'm saying?
What aggravates me, and fuels my snark, is the pointless deception in pro-planet rhetoric. While "saving the planet" sounds cool on twitter and sells books and shit, I find it ridiculously arrogant to postulate that the planet is threatened by our floundering stupidity (as a species).
"...and not just assume that it's natural for us to destroy ourselves." Saving ourselves is different than saving the planet. Preserving the planet as a habitat for humans is not necessarily a parallel pursuit to saving it. Where the question of nature vs. human activity rears its ugly head, I only say that modern medicine is no more or less natural than complex fluorocarbons.
tribalzendancer (Tim Hjersted) says…
DODDOT, when you say that much of the population in developed countries has worked their asses off to create, directly or indirectly, the scope of these very corporations, you seem to be putting the janitors, lower and middle working people of corporations who do not own capital and must sell their labor to earn enough food to survive with the same very few people at the top of these corporations who own access to capital, set the rules, pay themselves vast sums of money, and enjoy a standard of living that dwarfs that of 90% of the other people who work at that corporation.
"Much of the population" is different from the owners of capital, ie - capitalists. These are not the 'people's institutions'. They are institutions which support a very small minority of the population, at the expense of everyone else.
In your last paragraph it seems your conclusion is that the planet would be better off if we were dead. Nor do you make any moral distinction between a future planet where millions of species have gone extinct and ecosystems have been degraded beyond a point of long, long, long term repair - and a future planet where humans have averted this possibility.
Whether billions of species suffer (including humans) over the next hundred years is irrelevant. The planet will survive in some form. So whatever. Well, that's a nihilism (and suicidal) perspective, to be sure.
I can't imagine what kind of psychological state one would experience to see life like that.
Yes, life is transitory. Yes, in the span of trillions of years, our activity may be no more damaging than an astroid hitting the planet. But the present doesn't exist for the future or the past. It exists for its own sake. And working to avoid the needless suffering of millions of species and other humans seems to be worth it in this moment.
Honestly, I can't even comprehend the sort of nihilistic perspective you have. I just know that I would have to be pretty disconnected from the beauty and meaning of the present moment (our transient, present life) to see the world with such triviality. I think people in our culture put up a lot of walls, and modern nihilists have built up a pretty think skin. They can hardly feel empathy. When faced with the suffering of brown people in other countries or the entertainment spectacle of Transformers 2, their motto is "whatever." Shrugging and moving on to the next distraction to ironically critique. But this is just a facade, the philosophy of meaninglessness is just a wall to protect them from the smarting wounds of this psychotic, unhealthy culture we call western civilization.
Everybody deals with it in their own way.
tribalzendancer (Tim Hjersted) says…
"I don't see the inevitable outcome of this (natural) conflict as a source of apathy. Rather, I consider it fundamental to the satisfaction of doing one's part. Know what I'm saying?"
It would be great if you could clarify. It seems I may have misread your stance on "what to do about it" - which from your first post seemed to be nothing. (I hadn't read your second post before I posted the above)
mtoplikar (Matt Toplikar) says…
dotdot
i'm totally with you on the personal responsibility thing. That's the main problem I have with this article. Still, I think our thoughts on corporations are different, so please hear me out on this.
While you're right to say that the public is a major contributing factor to the outsourcing of jobs, it's also an indirect factor in a complex system.
There are a few things that get us uber-lefties all hot and bothered about corporations, but a big one is the legal way in which they MUST be run. The main difference between a corporation and a privately owned business is that privately owned businesses-- while run by people with the same vices and greed that all of us have-- can still make business decisions outside the laws of pure profit. In other words, they're also greatly affected by their owners personalities and sensibilities, and empathies. A corporation on the other hand, is legally bound to maximize profits for it's investors and is set up so that it's illegal to run it with any moral conscience.
Getting back to the example of outsourcing jobs-- again, it's true that the public's craving for cheaper products would inform any company's decision on whether or not it should outsource jobs. However, a corporation is much more likely to do this because greed is not just the major factor in its decision making process-- it's the only factor. Outsourcing jobs and general reduction of wages creates a cycle where more Americans need cheaper products to survive, and don't always have a choice to shop their conscience.
Now, you could argue that corporations give to charities, schools, and other just causes, but you definitely seem smart enough to know that these P.R. schemes are mostly a way to get free advertising and are generally tax deductible. When you take into account all the ways that the average person gets raped by these organizations (reduction of wages, health problems, unfair lending practices, etc.), it's hard to argue that the good outweighs the bad. For instance if a man approached you on the street and offered you a dollar with his left hand, while stealthily pickpocketing your wallet with his right, you wouldn't say he did you a favor.
I generally try to not support companies that are screwing over me, fellow human beings, or the ecosystem we live in, but I'm far from perfect. I really wish there were more paths that lead away from the dark side, but that gets into corporations' monopolistic practices, which is a different topic altogether.
I have to admit that you lost me a bit when you talk about control over the human spirit and the inevitable outcome. Willing to give it another try for this thick headed liberal dullard?
DOTDOT (anonymous) says…
Personal change not only equals political change, but is the ONLY basis for true political change.
" ...corporation on the other hand, is legally bound to maximize profits for it's investors and is set up so that it's illegal to run it with any moral conscience." Even though I find the last part of this sentence a bit much, you make my point with the first two clauses. Corporations exist to make profits, especially if they are publicly traded. No profits are possible without consumer support, which represents a collective of individual personal choices. Among those individuals are the very janitors and lower middle to middle class people you mentioned earlier.
I keeping with that thought, I personally find no shame in selling one's labor to survive. I've been doing it all my life, and will continue to do so and will raise my children to do so. Resentement toward the wealthy is a distraction from the honor and nobility found in a hard day's work. I want my corporate over-lords fat and happy so they continue to provide me with opportunity.
Anyway, following my line of reason, all the darkness within the sum of corporate behavior world-wide is the manifestation of millions of individuall personal choices. You can't stifle corporate greed without dictating to your neighbor that they can't buy cheap shit made by Chinese slave laborers.
Legitimate personal action should be grounded in truth. Otherwise it's just another fad. Why should every individual need to take credit for personally saving the planet by living responsibly? Recycling (for instance) based on the quality of smoke most recently blown up one's ass will get old quickly. Personifying the planet as a little brother that needs saving is the best example of such a proganda tool. It takes a more cynical view of our species than even I have to write off people as idiots that will only respond to these childish initiatives. I take heart in the fact that most of the public effort in create the "save the planet" meme has been put forth by people who don't really care about the planet as much as they care about PR, selling books, movies, or concert tickets.