Tags
Vital Signs: Psychological Responses to Ecological Crisis turned out to be a great companion read to Braiding Sweetgrass. Both talk about climate change and our relationship with nature and ways we might go about repairing it but they do it in two very different ways. Braiding Sweetgrass took a personal, Indigenous American approach, offering a vision of what it might mean to recognize how humans are part of nature (as we always have been) and what we might do to repair and heal our relationship with the other-than-human world.
Vital Signs takes a distinctly industrial western approach through the lens of psychology, but it too comes down to discussing how we might create a reciprocal and sustainable relationship with nature and the other-than-human world. Since it approaches the topic through the frame of psychology and science, it might be more palatable for people who don’t go in for touchy-feely things like talking to plants and trees.
When we see headlines like ones from yesterday’s Scientists Sound Alarm on Climate or hear about the press conference during which President Obama announced the launch of a new government website of climate change data, it is so easy to get depressed, to feel like there is nothing we as individuals can do so why bother? Or it is easy to get angry – I’m already doing everything I can, I recycle, buy summer vegetables at the farmer’s market and drive a hybrid car why can’t someone make all those people driving trucks and SUVs change their ways? The thing is, if we are going to get ourselves out of this climate change mess, we are all going to have to do quite a lot more than recycle and drive hybrid cars. And, we are going to have quite a bit of grieving to do, not for the planet, but for ourselves and the way of life we have come to feel entitled to in the industrialized west.
The things that drive climate change are many but at the root of it all is how humans have chosen to see themselves as separate from nature. While industrialized societies certainly have created a sense of safety, believing we are not part of nature is a mistake. We are and always have been part of nature. We evolved like every other creature on this planet and to say that we have somehow gone beyond and escaped Nature is hubris of epic proportion and has brought us to where we are today.
Believing we are separate from nature leads us to see everything around us as a resource to be exploited and commoditized. It also makes us think that we can somehow fix the problem of climate change with technology and ingenuity — someone just needs to invent something and then we can keep on keeping on as usual. But why would we want to?
Cutting ourselves off from nature has caused all sorts of mental health problems. We have forgotten who we are and what our place in the local and global environment is. We have lost a sense of identity and meaningfulness that a relationship with nature provides and to fill the hole we buy things and make the problem even worse. As one of the essayists in the book says,
We live in a world where identity is contingent and unstable, supported through relationships with material goods…And if lifestyle purchases are being used to support a very fragile sense of self, then demand for change may threaten personal breakdown and will be defended against. (Randall, ‘Fragile Identities and Consumption.’)
In other words, who we are is very much tied up with what we own, and when that is threatened we are likely to get really defensive when we are told we aren’t doing enough.
The way we talk about climate change puts us in danger of making it worse. We talk about reducing our carbon footprint as though it were a new kind of diet. This is not the right approach insists Mary-Jayne Rust in “Ecological Intimacy” because anyone who has tried to diet knows it ultimately does not work:
This is a top down approach which is all about being “good.” The inevitable then follows: breaking the rules to binge on “naughty” food, a sensual orgy not unlike the sexual excitement of having an affair. The carbon diet urges people to love the good green life, while rampant consumerism and life in the fast lane can easily become part of the naughty, exciting sensual orgy of modernity.
Stopping climate change from getting worse is going to take nothing short of a complete lifestyle makeover. We have to figure out what it means to have enough and live with that. Of course, figuring that out isn’t going to be easy. Rust suggests we have to ask:
what is it we are really hungry for? Spending time in the garden, listening to the birds in the local park, lying on the beach and feeling the rhythm of the waves, are all experiences which nourish our sensual selves in a more satisfying way than consumer goods. Such experiences open portals into the timelessness of simply being — as opposed to the frantic doing, compartmentalized into hours, so prized by our cultural norms.
One or two of the essays in Vital Signs mentions the changes we need to make as sacrifices. I found this a bit bothersome because I don’t see it as a sacrifice at all because we will be gaining so much more. Rather than a sacrifice it is a transformation and a renewal. It makes a difference how we talk about these things. Back when Bookman and I first became vegan I used to talk about what I had give up and as a result I would sometimes feel like I was missing something while at the same time I’d get ego strokes from people saying how disciplined I must be to give up cheese and ice cream. But as the years have gone by and I have eliminated other things from my diet like trans-fats and high fructose corn syrup, I have stopped seeing them as something I have given up since it is no true sacrifice. Instead when I talk to people I say I choose to eat other things and those other things are so much healthier and taste so much better that I do not feel any loss at all.
I know making lifestyle changes is not easy, I have struggled with them and I still do. But searching for what is enough is not a sacrifice, it is an opportunity to grow and discover and create something else even more meaningful than what existed before. And I think that is what the many people who contributed essays to Vitals Signs are trying to bring to their therapeutic practices as well as to the book. I won’t lie and say the whole book was really interesting and exciting but overall this collection of essays is worth the time and effort if for no other reason than feeling like you aren’t alone or powerless.
You are right about this. I liked your comment that any worthwhile action will involve sacrifice and grief. That love affair with stuff we have (got to include books in that)….those TV programmes about hoarders illustrate our strange affluence in such a ludicrous and pathetic light.
LikeLike
Ian, yes, as much as it hurts we do have to include books in the love of stuff, don’t we? That does cut. Over the last few years I have gotten much better about not going on book binges. Instead of once a month they now happen only once every few months. Progress! 🙂 You are right about those hoarder shows. At the same time I think they do a disservice because people I know who watch them say things like, “I know I have clutter but at least I’m not that bad” without digging any deeper into it.
LikeLike
Love your discussion of sacrifice Stefanie. (Reminds me of blog challenges. I say I don’t do challenges but I do do the Australian Women Writers’ Challenge. The only reason I do it is because it’s not a challenge, it’s what I read anyhow. That is, I don’t only read Aussie women, but Aussie women have been one of my ongoing priorities for 203 decades now. So, I feel a bit guilty saying I’m doing a challenge, because it’s no challenge!).
Back to sacrifices though. I think it’s difficult to say that the changes one makes – even though they are good/better for us – don’t involve sacrifice. I’ve sacrificed 30 mins of my favourite radio time to do yoga. I love the yoga, and it’s really good for me, but I really do miss that radio! Such a sacrifice, but slowly I’m forgetting what I’m missing!
LikeLike
whisperinggums, thanks! You may be right about sacrifice. Perhaps at the beginning the changes are a sacrifice but as time goes on and one gets used to the new way of things it no longer feels that way? Or maybe it has to do with choice and what one is actually changing? If you are letting go of something you really liked and valued as opposed to something you weren’t really attached to in the first place? A matter of degree? I do think it matters how we talk about it even if we consider something a sacrifice. We have to figure out a way for people to feel good about making changes even while they might be grieving for a lifestyle they can no longer have.
LikeLike
You’re doing so well with nature/science reading–It’s funny how you can give things up and think you will miss them and you end up just getting used to going without. I am trying to make little changes myself which in the long run will add up and not feel too overwhelming–or feel like sacrifices. It makes you see, too, how unnecessary a whole lot of things in life are–I try and keep that in mind–reading the Little House books also brings it all into focus–as silly as that may sound–a children’s book–but I sometimes think now that there is just too much–I hesitate to say too much choice (because choice is good, right?), but sometimes there is just too much…. Have you ever read Barbara Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible? She talks about the same thing–all the choice we have here (like a million brands of toothpaste….. ). Sorry–bit of a digression there.,..
LikeLike
Danielle, I’ve been very much enjoying my nature/science reading though I think I need to choose something a little lighter for my next outing. I don’t think it is silly at all how the Little House books are bringing into focus how much less we need than we think. We are so conditioned to believe that we need stuff to make us happy and have a good life and we aren’t encouraged to think about what that means. I completely agree with you about making little changes consistently over time, they do add up! I read Poisonwood Bible pre-blogging days, excellent book! The thing I remember most from it is their attempt to impose their western ideas of how to garden onto a very different landscape and how disastrous that was when the heavy rains came.
LikeLike
Pingback: Taking Recommendations | So Many Books
Pingback: Monday musings on Australian literature: Nature writing in Australia | Whispering Gums