Derrick Jensen: Forget Shorter Showers -- why personal change does not equal political change

[GliderGuider]

As I've said before, I blow hot and cold on Derrick Jensen. However, he is a provocative thinker and every article is intended to make us think as well. Here's a recent one that struck a chord with me.

Forget Shorter Showers -- Why personal change does not equal political change

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.

So how, then, and especially with all the world at stake, have we come to accept these utterly insufficient responses? I think part of it is that we’re in a double bind. A double bind is where you’re given multiple options, but no matter what option you choose, you lose, and withdrawal is not an option. At this point, it should be pretty easy to recognize that every action involving the industrial economy is destructive (and we shouldn’t pretend that solar photovoltaics, for example, exempt us from this: they still require mining and transportation infrastructures at every point in the production processes; the same can be said for every other so-called green technology). So if we choose option one—if we avidly participate in the industrial economy—we may in the short term think we win because we may accumulate wealth, the marker of “success” in this culture. But we lose, because in doing so we give up our empathy, our animal humanity. And we really lose because industrial civilization is killing the planet, which means everyone loses. If we choose the “alternative” option of living more simply, thus causing less harm, but still not stopping the industrial economy from killing the planet, we may in the short term think we win because we get to feel pure, and we didn’t even have to give up all of our empathy (just enough to justify not stopping the horrors), but once again we really lose because industrial civilization is still killing the planet, which means everyone still loses. The third option, acting decisively to stop the industrial economy, is very scary for a number of reasons, including but not restricted to the fact that we’d lose some of the luxuries (like electricity) to which we’ve grown accustomed, and the fact that those in power might try to kill us if we seriously impede their ability to exploit the world—none of which alters the fact that it’s a better option than a dead planet. Any option is a better option than a dead planet.

The second problem—and this is another big one—is that it incorrectly assigns blame to the individual (and most especially to individuals who are particularly powerless) instead of to those who actually wield power in this system and to the system itself. Kirkpatrick Sale again: “The whole individualist what-you-can-do-to-save-the-earth guilt trip is a myth. We, as individuals, are not creating the crises, and we can’t solve them.”

The third problem is that it accepts capitalism’s redefinition of us from citizens to consumers. By accepting this redefinition, we reduce our potential forms of resistance to consuming and not consuming. Citizens have a much wider range of available resistance tactics, including voting, not voting, running for office, pamphleting, boycotting, organizing, lobbying, protesting, and, when a government becomes destructive of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we have the right to alter or abolish it.

Like Jensen, I saw very early on the utter powerlessness of personal consumption reduction as a response to a crisis if the magnitude we are facing. Of course, I still felt the need to empower myself somehow. I tried a bit of activism, but discovered that I'm not good at it. In large measure this is because I don't believe it can be very effective -- I think the playing field is so uneven that most activism is futile. In my darker moments I wonder if the reason that the activism meme is so broadly accepted is that TPTB are deliberately making room for it, as a way to flush out the rebels and make sure they stay where they can be out-maneuvered. The occasional win serves to keep people from noticing that the vast majority of activist initiatives founder on the rocks of the guardian institutions' entrenched power. I'm not saying I think activism is utterly futile, of course. Our side does win the occasional fight, and others are much better at it and more committed to that fight than I, so more power to them.

I chose a different road. I definitely fall into the "personal enlightenment" camp that Jensen dismisses. I've outlined the reason for this in several articles, but the 10 cent version is this: I believe that our civilization is in this mess because for all our cleverness we lack wisdom. Since wisdom is a very personal quality, the shortest route to acquiring it will be personal as well, and IMO that route leads through the classical experience of enlightenment. I harbour a hope that the spread of individual enlightenment will be self-reinforcing, and that the presence of a critical mass of wise people in our civilization will change its course more effectively than all the compact fluorescent lightbulbs in the world.

[tinrobot]

1. It has to be both

We do need to change our habits, but there are those who refuse to change.

For those people and corporations, the government must step in and force change on a large scale.

[MADem]

2. The Journey of a Thousand Miles Starts With One Step.

So what if we "only" reduce our carbon emissions by 22 percent? If we can hit that milestone, we can set a new one.

I don't like this guy's attitude. He may as well title this thesis "Fuck it--Why Even Bother?"

Maybe my cursory reading is too sardonic, but that's the POV I get from this opus. And what do we do once we take down all those evil industrial systems? Freeze our asses off, and live in caves?

Even with his big finish, it sounds like half his thesis is missing--the "what next" bit:

...If every act within an industrial economy is destructive, and if we want to stop this destruction, and if we are unwilling (or unable) to question (much less destroy) the intellectual, moral, economic, and physical infrastructures that cause every act within an industrial economy to be destructive, then we can easily come to believe that we will cause the least destruction possible if we are dead.

The good news is that there are other options. We can follow the examples of brave activists who lived through the difficult times I mentioned—Nazi Germany, Tsarist Russia, antebellum United States—who did far more than manifest a form of moral purity; they actively opposed the injustices that surrounded them. We can follow the example of those who remembered that the role of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much integrity as possible, but rather to confront and take down those systems.

[GliderGuider]

5. The biggest problem I have with anarcho-primitivism

is exactly what you identified -- the "what next" piece is missing. I do suspect that whatever comes next involves a lot less material comfort than we've become used to, but it's important to keep that in perspective. Humanity has survived and prospered perfectly well for hundreds of thousands of years without TV dinners or flat-screen TVs to eat them in front of. I think A-P provides a wonderful critique of how we got here, but suffers from a catastrophic failure of the imagination when it comes to writing prescriptions for the resulting social ills.

[boobooday]

3. I think he makes an excellent point about misdirection

Perfect example: societal condemnation of individual smokers while corporations poison earth, water & air on massive scale.

[elocs]

4. I read about this here last Monday:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x463240

[GliderGuider]

6. You're right, I missed that. Sorry for the dupe.

I hope my commentary adds a different slant to the discussion.

[elocs]

7. No problem. The 2 threads were posted in different forums, so they easy to be missed.

I surf through the threads on the Latest page, so I tend to see threads from all forums.

[pscot]

8. Anyone who thinks compact fluorescents

are going to save us from self-immolation is delusional.

[XemaSab]

9. The problems created by consumerism

cannot be solved with more consumerism.

[GliderGuider]

10. The Rules of Holes

1. If you're in one, stop digging.
2. Switching to a more efficient shovel is unlikely to help.

[OKIsItJustMe]

11. He's absolutely wrong. "Dumpster diving" did stop Hitler (or, at least it helped.)

Is he not familiar with the WW-II era http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_home_front_during_World_War_II#Propaganda_and_culture">recycling drives? Has he never heard of "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden">Victory Gardens?" or of war http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_home_front_during_World_War_II#Rationing">rationing?

These efforts, at first blush, had a relatively minor role in winning the war against Hitler, except for one huge factor, they gave the people "on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_home_front_during_World_War_II">home front" something to do, to unite them with the "war effort."

Hitler was defeated by "dumpster diving" (at least in part.)


The same thing goes for taking shorter showers, or installing CFL's. They are (if you will) consciousness raising. They get people involved, and thinking about the problem.

Someone who is personally involved, is more likely to be politically involved.

[pscot]

12. All true

But not really what's at issue here. Conservation today is on a purely individual, ad hoc basis, as opposed to an all-out national effort to mobilize the people in the face of a clearly defined threat. After 1940, the Roosevelts were on the air telling people to join in. There was a broad, government propaganda effort pushing the message, and there was rationing to reinforce the urgency of the situation. Meat, butter and sugar were rationed. So was gas. Nylon stockings disappeared. New cars were scarce, along with a lot of other things. People weren't dumpster diving , they were carrying their kitchen utensils and cook pots down to be recycled for the war effort.

But to make that happen today the government would first have to admit to itself and to the public that there's a problem. There's no leadership on the issues around climate change. Instead, it's all left to the MARKET to find a solution. Only it's not happening. Public sentiment ranges from cynicism to apathy. Dick Cheney says, in essence, you're a chump if you care. The political parties are like two crazy dogs fighting over a carcass. Obama says he believes there's a problem, but he doesn't act like he believes there's a problem. And the way the Indians and the Chinese see it, it's our problem, not theirs.

So you and I turn the heat down, and buy energy saver bulbs and plant a few radishes and tomatoes, while as a society we continue to pump gigatons of carbon into the air. The scales don't match. It takes a thousand years for the earth to purge 1 ppm atmospheric carbon. In the last 60 years we've added 100 ppm. The math sucks.

[OKIsItJustMe]

14. There's some hope

I was astonished by how quickly this happened:

…

In an unusually fast move by a U.S. government agency, the Interior Department made the images public on Wednesday. The academy's report urging this action was released at 11 a.m. on Wednesday.

…

My reaction? "Hey! Somebody appears to be getting serious about this!"

[GliderGuider]

16. WWII is not a terribly helpful comparison

Here are the essential differences as I see them:

0. Everything the public did to "help the war effort" was in the context of a declared war with a concrete, easily identifiable enemy.

1. As pscot points out, the change in behaviour around recycling and V-gardens happened only with massive government "encouragement".

2. Rationing was a government-instituted program, intended to conserve fuel, food and other materiel for the military. The public was forced to comply and propagandized into accepting it. Food rationing had a lot to do with the popularity of V-gardens.

3. The contribution of recycling drive was patchy at best. The record of Victory Gardens was much better, and that -- like Cuba's experience with urban food gardening -- is very encouraging.

Generally speaking, most of the efforts to involve the public in the war effort had a very strong propaganda/morale component. The government was draining off huge quantities of materiel to fight the war, and getting the public enthusiastic about voluntary participation made a virtue out of the necessity of the inevitable shortages. When it came to "defeating the Axis", the the material contribution such programs made paled in comparison to the legislated redirection of effort and resources.

The same could be said for the public involvement in the War on Climate Change, except in this one we don't even have the dubious benefit of legislated privation, just the active consciences of a small though growing number of individuals. As was the case in WWII however, the real benefit of individual action comes from the change of attitude it promotes. In order to take such action in our current situation, each individual has to make a conscious commitment to the effort, and that involves adopting a set of beliefs and values that are not being enforced by laws or encouraged by government propaganda. While that lack of official sanction slows progress significantly, it also means that the changes those individuals make spring from much deeper personal convictions.

The value shift has an element of "awakening" to it. All of us came out of a culture of endless consumption. Rejecting that behaviour and adopting a non-consumptive attitude requires us to first open our eyes to the damage out consumption is causing. From my perspective, the nice thing about awakening to one issue is that a number of other related (and maybe even more fundamental) issues get pulled into consciousness in the process. And that, IMO, is where the real magic of individual involvement lies. Whether that results in political involvement or stays at the personal level is, as always, up to each individual. But the chances are high that with awareness comes the urge to action.

[OKIsItJustMe]

18. Hitler was his very first comparison, and, therefore my first point of attack upon his thesis

WOULD ANY SANE PERSON think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler …

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_home_front_during_World_War_II#Propaganda_and_culture

…

One of the most noteworthy areas of civilian involvement during the war was in the area of recycling. … Popular phrases promoted by the government at the time were "Get into the scrap!" and "Get some cash for your trash" …

Here's a Canadian poster:

[GliderGuider]

19. Jensen's point was that the material contribution was insignificant.

From the article I linked above:

In 1942, when the first scrap drives were organized, the war was far from won, and frightened civilians at all levels were anxious to do something, anything, to help. So campaigns were organized to collect not just metal and rubber but kitchen fat, newspapers, rags, and so on. These drives were extremely successful--millions of tons of material were collected. It was only afterward, contemplating the assembled mounds of junk, that those in charge of the war effort asked themselves: What are we going to do with all this crap?

Morale and citizen buy-in are crucial, but when it comes to putting boots or bombs on the ground, you need more than granny's pot lids. Likewise, to stop the sea from eventually swallowing Bangladesh we will need to do more than change our light bulbs and drive electric cars.

[OKIsItJustMe]

20. And my point was that personal involvement leads to social involvement

All of those personal efforts, although of questionable value as the source of war materials helped change attitudes about a rather unpopular war.

(Americans were quite reluctant to get involved in another European war.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_non-interventionism#Isolationism_Between_the_Two_World_Wars

…

As 1940 became 1941, the actions of the Roosevelt administration made it more and more clear that the United States was on a course to war. This policy shift, driven by the President, came in two phases. The first came in 1939 with the passage of the Fourth Neutrality Act, which permitted the United States to trade arms with belligerent nations, as long as these nations came to America to retrieve the arms, and pay for them in cash. This policy was quickly dubbed, ‘Cash and Carry.’ The second phase was the Lend-Lease Act of early 1941. This act allowed the President, “…to lend, lease, sell, or barter arms, ammunition, food, or any ‘defense article’ or any ‘defense information’ to ‘the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States.’” He used these two programs to side economically with the British and the French in their fight against the Nazis. In doing so, he made the American economy dependent upon an allied victory. In terms of policy, the United States was on a path to war but the American people still wished to avoid it at all costs, a wish that would come untrue.

…

Changing our light bulbs, and driving electric cars gets us involved. If we're involved, then our governments (our elected representatives) will be.

[GliderGuider]

21. OK, we're pretty much in violent agreement then! nt

[wtmusic]

13. Blame those nasty boogieman corporations again

but keep away from my right to take long showers.

Sheesh. Anything to avoid responsibility.

[GliderGuider]

17. Who consumes most primary resources and fossil fuels in America, individuals or corporations?

Corporations have a lot of political clout and are rather resistant to change, so consumer behaviour is proving to be a much softer target. Since it's virtually the only arena in which change is happening at this point, so it's being sold as "the" approach. It's important that we realize how far off level the corporate/individual playing field is in this fight.

[wtmusic]

22. Good question

Corporations typically avoid consuming anything they can't profit from, and profit is derived ultimately from sales to individuals.

Without reduction in demand corporations will continue to "consume" as they always have.

[GliderGuider]

23. According to the EIA, commercial and industrial use of energy is 3 to 4 times that of residential

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec2_6.pdf

Though I guess we shouldn't worry in any event, because demand is going down even as we speak.

[wtmusic]

24. Isn't the ultimate user the consumer anyway?

I don't get the distinction.

[GliderGuider]

25. Only in an economic sense.

When it comes to electricity or fossil fuels, while the cost may be passed on to the end consumer, the energy itself is used by the producer. In the case of fossil fuels, that means that the producer is responsible for the CO2 production.

Legislation could force some combination of greater production efficiency and lower demand due to higher prices, but in the end you're right -- unless we all stop wanting stuff, we won't quit making stuff. Given the stranglehold that corporations have on the programming of our desires, that darkens the ecological outlook considerably.

The only way through this impasse that I can see is the combination of a grass-roots revolution in values coupled with a disintegration of the power structures of society. I think the latter is essential, since without it TPTB will defend their continued programming of our desires at all costs (their power comes largely from our continued consumption). Fortunately, I also think the dynamics of complex systems make such a disintegration inevitable - our civilization is already showing many, many signs of strain and brittleness. There is yet hope.

[wtmusic]

26. Maybe the first step

is resisting the idea that corporations have a stranglehold on our desires. They certainly don't have one on mine or yours, and individuals can have a bigger influence - Al Gore and Chris Paine are examples.

[excess_3]

15. tax on jet fuel for international flight is zero

not a penny.
...........................................
let me know when
jet-set Obama fixes this

[joshcryer]

27. Derrick Jensen happily proves the point that geoagriculture is responsible for our waste.

And not human technology. In fact, it is a failure to use human technology that is the problem, because geoagriculture is one of the last places where the basics haven't changed very much (since the advent of industrial fertalizer 100 years ago).

Jensen writes, " dying because the water is being stolen."

No, they're dying because the water is being allowed to evaporate away into the atmosphere.

[XemaSab]

28. This thread needs more hatrack

:sigh: