This essay continues addressing U.S. system failure by examining power of the individual that can be combined in community. After unveiling The Unknown Consumer, this essay's analysis contains the quetion, "Is it possible to salvage the U.S. experiment, given its advance into decline and chaos?" (After you finish this Culture Change Letter, click on our Forum section to post a comment.) I feel much sorrow for the Unknown Consumer, the poor schlump (blue collar or affluent) whom I see making any kind of purchase – what else is anybody doing in public, besides driving?
Odds are overwhelmingly that the average U.S. citizen - rightly called a consumer, if the shoe fits – is doing nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or the use of that deadly, strategic, dwindling commodity: oil.
Nevertheless, there is a sleeping force of change biding its time among today's unconscious and oppressed folk.
I see working people as well as disabled or unemployed people trying to manage as low-income consumers. They constantly do things such as drink from plastic soda bottles and thus poison themselves, thereby cheating their bodies out of clean water and honest food. I'm sorry for these folk, but I'm getting more angry at their plight and the greedy few who keep them in their condition and class. It is no consolation that the greedy rich are poisoning themselves too and weakening the gene pool.
Also sad is the fact that an oppressed member of society is likely to desire the usual "opportunities" that lead nowhere.
There are better approaches to dealing with "The System," even when leaders don't lead.
It used to make me almost visibly frustrated to see anyone buying junk for the landfill. But
now I just feel sadness and compassion – especially because people have no
idea of what petrochemicals are about. The people mainly trust their
government and the retail establishments selling brand names that are like
friends in many people's minds. It is left to small organizations such as Algalita Marine Research Foundation and Culture Change to enlighten the public regarding the true threat of the plastic plague.
The average U.S. citizen is a wage slave with no hope of gaining
widespread respect or amazing, exotic experience to enrich his or her life. So, in
anonymity – with corporations and the government knowing about any particular citizen
all too intrusively – the Unknown Consumer lowers his or her head and even
manages to smile.
The main thing that characterizes consumers, especially the unknown variety, is that they don't do anything but obey. One reason they eat up action movies or any kind of story is that in make-believe and in all literature and myth, characters are doing something.
The Unknown Consumer is for the most part an ignorant victim who has been
brainwashed to believe that personal car ownership is essential to modern
life. The average speed of the U.S. motorist is at most five (5) miles per
hour, when accounting for so much time required to earn money to buy
the car, pay for repairs, fuel, insurance, etc. Does this mean we are talking about
a nation of fools? For three decades the 5 MPH statistic has
been known to anyone who cares to learn beyond society's required knowledge.
In three decades the Earth’s climate has apparently been irretrievably
altered for the worst. That is a moderate statement regarding a condition
of runaway global warming. Not only has the car contributed greatly to
destroying the climate, it has helped drive countless species extinct. In
the U.S. alone there are one million animals slaughtered each day on the
roads, and this translates to many billions of animal lives in three decades. Three
million people during the same period of time were killed in the U.S. in car crashes and by diseases from exhaust fumes. The best farmland
was paved over for car-based urbanism. None of this has stopped, partly because the funded environmental movement is largely a sell-out. Instead of embracing a moratorium on new road building, it embraces "clean cars" and other weak reforms of The System.
The hopeless attitude of the Unknown Consumer is paradoxical when so much
empowerment is within his or her reach. But the empowerment in question is not the limited or bogus variety served up by The System. People don't see their own power, due to their unsuspected training for regimentation and
believing in a U.S. democracy that is not quite what's sold or represented. This contributes to an illusion of static
stability and longevity of a "growing nation."
This column has focused many times on what steps an individual or
household or movement can attempt and accomplish. For decades, possibly millions of people in the U.S. have pursued elements of self-reliance. Yet, the mainstream
news media and public schools do too thorough a job of misleading and
deceiving. A vast illusion has been erected that consists of artificial, toxic stuff
and false values.
One main principle kept from the public is that growth clearly cannot be infinite.
So, no thought is given to how growth may stop (e.g., from petrocollapse)
or why growth should be stopped now. What happens when growth stops?
This is not even a subject of serious widespread discussion, except among
the small portion of the intelligentsia familiar with ecology and the
peaking of global oil extraction.
The populace does not know about entropy. The Second Law of
Thermodynamics says that any transfer of energy results in some disorder
and waste. The Law is known to physicists, but how many trained
physicists try to decrease the entropy they cause (pollution)? A big reason entropy is not taught to the public must be that it's bad for business.
The U.S. has become known worldwide as a killing machine. This is entropy at its worst. Gone is the innocence of decades ago when there were different directions for a truly growing nation to take.
System replacement
It is reasonable to ask: is it possible to salvage the U.S. experiment, given its advance into
decline and chaos? Inherent contradictions and hypocrisies have been sure to
exact a price too high to bear. It appears equally questionable whether it is possible to salvage the
course of our civilization, based -- as the U.S. is -- on endless resource
extraction and ruthless exploitation of nature and of humanity.
Whereas this nation and other industrial societies are headed for certain
collapse and possible rebirth, despite today’s maximum entropy, we may find
success in making adjustments to survive. Without the abundant petroleum
for modern living on which we have come to depend, and because we have
isolated ourselves from nature, we will be forced to utilize our local
resources sustainably. It will be somewhat easier than it would be, due
to a huge population’s substantial die-off upon petrocollapse.
But it is within our power to correct the course of our culture. We can
do so in one of two ways:
Whereas the majority of the mostly clueless population – guzzling gasoline
and wasting money on consumer junk – seems programmed to embark on the
first option (the hard way), which will result in many more casualties, a
growing minority desires to live closer to nature and already tries to
recycle, reuse, refuse and restore. Moreover, a subset of that minority knows from experience that solidarity gets the goods.
The aware minority would be much more effective and active if minimal economic
considerations did not dictate many practices that mean playing along and selling out. It is hard when actual choices regarding any lifestyle without
material ownership are scant. It is at our peril within the dominant paradigm whenever we don’t strive to
be part of the Haves elite. With the reduction of the middle class, the
Have-Nots are rising in number and have less and less ability to meet
their own basic, human needs.
However, with a little more participation from the do-nothing segment of
the population blindly acquiescing to consumerism and following
questionable rules/laws/conventions, we can visualize a cultural
revolution to hasten the end of destructive social behavior. It will be
difficult because ecological awareness in the U.S. is in its infancy.
A case in point is the tiny area of urban land devoted to nature. Near a
creek in a park in overdeveloped Fairfax County, Virginia, is a patch of
land off limits to mowing. A sign announces that the plants, if allowed
to grow, will improve the health of the creek and drainage. This should
not have to be explained. Perhaps 99% percent of the county's land is paved or
built upon, fragmented by deadly roads of pollution and by fences bad for
animals and their movements. Fairfax County has the fastest "growth" in the nation, in part due to ballooning federal government-related employment.
It will be interesting to see the fate of the ignorant citizenry when fuel
is no longer available for driving -- including fuel for food trucks
bringing petroleum-grown produce from afar. Sudden, desperate attempts will be made
to procure food and even depave parking lots for crop production. Such
attempts could start happening any day now. Another example is with
electrical energy use: the vaunted California conservation of 11% in 2001 that was voluntary was soon given up, and it's nothing compared to what's ahead. Everyone by now knows of global warming and that
it is not a good thing. Yet, hundreds of millions of energy-sucking
gadgets and appliances are being used wastefully, instead of sharing them
or replacing them with non-polluting substitutes.
Substitutes for video games or watching DVDs include reading books or
playing acoustic musical instruments. With a movement to educate and
involve people in energy-saving and convivial practices, enough masses of
people could begin immediately to take their future into their own hands.
With high gasoline prices, people can start to share cars or use a
bicycle, buses, trains, and actually walk. In expensive full-page ads,
the American petroleum Institute has issued several conservation points
for public consideration. These suggestions make hardly any difference, but the
appearance of promoting responsibility and passing the buck are clear.
The real story is that when enough people do not buy new cars, the economy
will come tumbling down. This can only be good if it's as a result of people
switching to more sustainable practices.
People could wake up to the idiocy of mass car ownership: the waste of money, the illnesses from sitting while driving,
polluting the planet, risking one’s life in crashes, and the urban sprawl
that results from car dependence. Yet, people are brainwashed to
participate in consumerism instead of demanding walkable, clean communities.
There is nothing more pleasurable and social than a promenade whereby a
town’s population walks along its harbor every pleasant evening. An example is what's done in the
Azores principle city, Ponta Delgado. (I hold the smiling faces of the healthy, friendly townspeople in my memory.) It is not possible to meet people if driving in separate cars,
but it is possible to thus deprive non-drivers of space, safety and clean
air.
Transform the existing groups
The anti-war movement is really not a peace movement, when it agitates
only for a cessation of war and imperialism. What A.N.S.W.E.R., a
prominent group, does not allow is the element of sustainable living to be
presented as a viable alternative to petroleum dependence/war for oil.
A.N.S.W.E.R can put on a big demonstration, but the organization refuses
to include in its message the idea of discouraging citizens from driving
cars. The reason the so-called coalition’s hierarchy refuses to do this
is that “a potential protester might want to drive to a protest rally,” as
they made clear to Culture Change in 2004.
When the anti-war movement becomes a peace movement by embracing radical
energy conservation such as discouraging both car use and the purchasing of new cars,
it will become the social justice movement it wants to be as well as an
environmental movement. Without a comprehensive approach, we are
consigned to empty reforms and a political system of expediency and
continued war on the planet for consumerism, even if somehow the voracious and rapacious corporations and their government held off from more wars and "police actions.".
If today’s funded environmental movement and the anti-war movement would
abandon car dependence and also push for local economics by boycotting
corporate products, there could soon be an overall movement in opposition to
business-as-usual headed by the cabal in the White House. But it is vital to
understand that the problem is not the White House or Tony Blair or the
avaricious Chinese or our home-grown inner cities' lazy/violent students, or any other convenient
object of blame. Deserving of real blame is the cynical compromiser that
does not lift a finger to reduce consumption. Deserving of real blame is
the parent or educator that does not encourage a child to curtail energy
use, minimize packaging, use local products, etc.
The average householder who is not composting – instead tossing table
scraps and spoiled food into the plastic garbage bag to end up in the
landfill – can be called an enemy of the planet. Granted, in dense urban
areas there is not much place for compost to end up, nor are collection
programs going door to door in many cities. Granted, the educational
system and the lack of government leadership on such issues do create much
of the problem and keep people from solving problems. However, what
of those of us who know better and just keep doing nothing? Recycling one’s
drink bottles does not do much good if the better option would be to just
drink water or make one’s own tea and juice.
Nonprofit groups wishing to reform the system – never solving problems
while being paid comfortable salaries – normally have a constituency
they care about. However, redistributing the crumbs of wealth on the banquet tables
of the Titanic does not address the flaws of mainstream culture, so
reformers and wannabe leaders are often worse than useless. This is
because valuable time is being wasted when people could be coming together
to save seeds, plant urban gardens, learn bicycle repair, revive sewing,
and constructing grey water systems and construct composting toilets. Additionally,
people need to actively oppose poor practices such as more road
construction and more paving, instead of just reading by chance about a
rare protest in the back pages of a newspaper.
Trash the system
The above approach trashes the dominant system of waste, and brings about
citizen action tending toward solidarity and opposition to today’s powers
that be. However, the goal of any active, aware citizen concerned about
the health of the ecosphere and our common economic future should be
system replacement. The new system must be nature itself. If we do not
actively reject the present artificial, wasteful system now, it will go
out the door with a disastrous explosion (collapse) and suddenly deprive
most people of food, water and heat. We are getting the warnings now,
such as with hurricanes and their consequences, and the warnings are
ignored by the incompetent political leaders as well as the Unknown Consumer.
If instead we prepare for petrocollapse and begin to get to know our
neighbors, and start taking responsibility for our own lives, we will
rapidly gain a measure of control in our own ecosystems. We will help one
another and start to save the Earth from complete depletion of resources and maximum entropy.
The answers have never been found in the major newspapers, the evening TV
news, or even in the liberal bastions of propaganda such as NPR or Sierra
Club magazine. (The car ads should be all the tip-off we need.). Some
answers are out there on the internet, but there is no substitute for
action in the streets and in the living rooms.
There is no freedom gained from playing the game by the rules of the
dominators. Elections do nothing to fundamentally change things, even if
they are honest elections. Rather, it is the act of getting arrested or risking it, in
great numbers, that has really changed societies in the past.
We have to know where we want to get to. Switching the President or
passing some better laws will not change how we live. To really change
our energy habits and start to run our own lives in actual communities,
such as in tribes, is to see the passing of the most destructive
civilization ever known. A fraudulent “democracy” has failed to provide
for the common good and to protect the land, air and water.
It is time to use the power within us to choose sustainable living and
create our real homes: in the bosom of our village, sharing the land and
protecting nature from greedballs so rife in today’s “advanced” societies.
In so doing, we will eventually spare the world from imperialist ventures
tearing up whole populations such as in Iraq today and Vietnam, Iran,
Korea and other lands in the past. A new world is ours for the making and
sharing with all life.
[editor's note: the companion piece to the above essay is Culture Change Letter #112, "System failure requires visionary opposition movement" by Jan Lundberg at
*****
Links and further reading:
The Pledge for Climate Protection just happens to be applicable to peak
oil and petrocollapse: Energy and Equity, a small book by Ivan Illich published in the mid-1970s
(1) we are forced to suddenly depart from today’s common practices of
industrial society and authoritarian government, or
(2) we walk away from a failed experiment to join in a better model. (Thank you, Daniel Quinn for publishing the excellent idea.)
http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=27&Itemid=2]
http://www.culturechange.org/global_warming_pledge.html
Support Culture Change online by making a donation. Help us do
more to raise awareness, such as following up our NYC Petrocollapse Conference:
http://www.culturechange.org/funding.htm
