My Transformation.

First, a (very) quick update. I’ve continued working with Green Apple Bikes and I even sat at a table in Bosco plaza on Wednesday to spread the word about GAB and recruit volunteers. Since the food coop idea is such a long-term thing, there is relatively little to report on in terms of updates. However, we’re in touch with the entrepeneurship program about working with them (and getting funding) to launch our idea. But this blog post is supposed to be about something else — my transformation.

So, here’s a quick summary of the semester in regards to significant events which comprise my transformation. First off, I’ve never been active in class discussion, and this class changed that. In fact, with the exception of a methods class last fall semester, this was the first class in which I had ever made ANY single piece of contribution to class discussion (yeah, I realize how crazy that is). The not-so-open-to-discussion format of many classes can partially account for this, but my lack of contributing was mainly due to the introverted nature that I spoke about in my first blog post. I’ve found that it makes all the difference. It’s the difference between watching knowledge being disbursed and playing a part in creating that knowledge. For me, there’s no going back.

Then, I made myself uncomfortable in other ways. I spoke to gas-station cashiers about climate change (lolz). I cried about climate change and used it as a way to deepen my understanding, and I was proud of it. I became vegetarian (which I’m still doing by the way) and I pushed myself by daring others to do the same (which I hope they’re still doing). Then, I reevaluated my own relationship to my assignments and tried to find something that I found more intrinsically fulfilling, something that I wouldn’t have to dress up with dazzling language. Something that I could continue with beyond this class. I reached out to Green Apple Bikes, and, more importantly, started pursing the idea of bringing organic and well-grown food to campus in the form of a food tent and an eventual food coop. It brought me to conquer my introverted nature with public speaking, and it forced me to change certain habits of thinking. For example, it forced me to reconsider this idea that I couldn’t do anything because of a lack of expertise. I thought that the people who DID THINGS, whether it be starting a club or starting a protest etc., somehow knew what they were doing or possessed a level of expertise that I simply did not have. I’ve found that something as simple as TRYING to do something beyond the level of the individual, when done with the spirit of confident wayfaring, is enough to start to gain this “expertise” and help construct the world you live in rather than be complacent as a passive bystander. I found that the community involvement which comes with trying to collectively change/construct our world can connect you to some cool people — people that share your passions and people that can have fun while also making a difference. These insights are simple but powerful; because of them, I plan on being involved in local environmental initiatives for the rest of my life; not for self-validation and not for an idealistic notion of saving the world, but for the simple reason that it is fun, it is social, it makes a difference, and it exercises a social imagination that is seldom used and always needed.

Aside from the “lived” dimension of my journey through this class, I found that its lessons in thinking helped me conceive of the anthropocene and myself in new ways. My understanding of creating change has trascended the level of the individual and is redirected towards technologies and assemblages. And I found that, in many ways, the problems facing the anthropocene are the problems I face within myself. “Loving your monsters” as a critique of modernism is something that I found intellectually and personally enlightening, as the patterns of thinking endemic to modernism — that of assuming that the reasons for past problems are knowable and fixable and if you try hard enough then some indefinite future will be free of consequences and risk — are firmly established within my own thought patterns. The concept of “wayfaring”, and the idea that one can think and act at the same time, is one of the most profound and personally-applicable concepts I have ever learned. In short, I found that the way to approach the anthropocene is also the way to approach the world and my own life.

Beer, Shells, and Matches

1. Runoff Red IPA Beer Bottle

The first object that I found was a Runoff Red IPA beer bottle from ODell Brewing Co. As the photo shows, the label of the beer shows streams flowing down from a horizon of snow-topped mountains, the description of the beer alludes to the weather of the Rockie’s, and Odell’s logo is printed on the image of a leaf. Obviously, the picture on the label of the beer alludes to the kind of “nature” that Cronon was talking about — one that is pristine and somehow devoid of human activity. The placement of this image on the label also shows how “nature” has been commoditized in more ways than one. Not only are places like the Rocky Mountains sold as a tourist destination, the romanticism of “nature” runs so deep that it is used to market other products. Cronon also talked about wilderness being seen as “masculine”, and beer’s masculine connotation makes it a good marketing decision on Odell’s part. Of course, analyzing this beer is a bit unsettling after learning about everything going on in Colorado (Odell is brewed in Fort Collins), and I can only think about the sick irony of the pristine “nature” being used to promote the beer whilst the less picturesque parts of the land and groundwater are being damaged by fracking.

2. Decorative Sea Shells

While I was at my parent’s house, I started noticing their decorations. In the bathroom, they have various sea shells and a few sand dollars arranged around the glass of a candle. We didn’t go on many vacations, but whenever we did we made sure to go to the beach and bring back a few sea shells. This made me think back to Cronon’s piece, and how he mentioned that some manifestations of “nature” are more spectacular and romanticized than others. There’s one more thing that’s more personal that’s worth mentioning here: the emotional resonance held within those vacations and the memories they created. Of course, I see now that the “nature” which was the theme of countless family vacations was, in many ways, a problematic invention or illusion. But nonetheless, I think that if everyone who went to the Rocky’s were to understand its historical precedents, and how it is an illusion of the American frontier, it wouldn’t make them any less emotionally connected to their “natural” vacation get-aways. This leads me to another point to that’s tied to the Cronon article: if we’re going to try to end this potentially harmful man/nature distinction, celebrating the nature in our backyards and reconnecting with local place may be more practical than trying to un-idealize “nature” as we know it.

3. Greenlight Matches
The last object that I happened upon was a box of matches on my coffee table. My eyes scanned past it, then went back for a closer look. The side of the box was covered in an image of leaves in the sunlight surrounding the trademarked text “Greenlight” while the subtext reads “Sourced from Responsible Forests”. From a consumer’s point of view I was very pleased, but as someone looking for our society’s views of nature I was very ambivalent. Though this probably fit into the category of “greenwashing”, I still felt better about buying the matches than I would otherwise. . . but should I feel this way, and what does this feeling say about how we think about nature? For one, it shows how nature is so blatantly used as a marketing tool (with a trademarked, graphically-designed “greenlight” logo), which, as Slavoj Zizek would say, functions to relieve the guilt of the consumer. I also found it a bit ironic that leaves from trees were the image the box showed, when the matches were made by cutting down trees. Apparently, the leaves weren’t supposed to reference leaves but rather the environmentally-friendly practice of using wood from responsibly managed forests. Leaves seem to function as nature’s stamp of approval here — invoking what we think of as nature to show that it’s an environmentally-friendly practice. After a moment of consideration, I realized that a similar logic is the root of the “green” movement in general. Environmentalism appeals to “nature” as we think about it through the “green” trend. Green marketing is used in contexts which post-environmentalists might consider more sustainable, but many times this sustainability has nothing to “nature” (e.g. the “green” that they appeal to) as we know it. This might seem obvious, but I think it’s important to realize how the green movement is not just a marketing gimmick, it’s also exploiting the idealized, false view of nature which Cronon talks about. The question is, is this good? If environmentalists can’t appeal to “nature”, in all of its fiction and beauty, then what should they appeal to? Though there are plenty of problems with greenwashing, I find it interesting because there is the potential for helping the world (that is, in the non-”nature” post-environmentalist way of going about it that Latour discusses) but by appealing to a very diluted form of “nature” as environmentalists know it.

Using Food Waste

First, an update on my progress. I have continued working with Green Apple Bikes, and while I wouldn’t consider this my primary project, it’s still relevant in that it was this class that motivated me to reach out to them. The community bike-sharing program is in the process of moving onto campus, and over the last week and a half I’ve been helping them assemble the new shipment of bikes. Also, K-State’s Open House is this Saturday and I’m going to be working at the Green Apple Bikes table to reach out to the community and hopefully recruit more volunteers! Aside from that, I’ve continued to work on my ideas related to ECM and the potential for a food coop on campus. Earlier this week, I met with the president of the Food Recovery Network, which recovers food waste on campus. I was hoping to get an idea of the organization’s current operations, help in any way I can, and look at the feasibility of using food waste at ECM right now and potentially the coop in the future.

As it is now, the Food Recovery Network has a very strong relationship with the Athletic Dining Hall and recovers food every Tuesday and Thursday. Even with this one source of food waste and only two days a week, they’ve been able to recover over 1500 pounds of food and provide food for weekly free meals at churches around town. To expand, the president of the organization told me that they’d like to add Mondays and Wednesdays before anything else; one of the major problems, however, is that they don’t have enough volunteers. On Wednesday, for example, most (if not almost all) people in the organization are busy with Greek Life chapter meetings. The volunteers work in rotation so most of the time it means committing 1 hour every 3 weeks. If anyone is even mildly interested in volunteering, I highly recommend it — it sounds like a great team of people and they’re doing good both in food recovery and beyond. I provided a link to their orgsync chapter below for anyone who is interested!

Though there wasn’t much to talk about in regards to the food coop because it’s in the future, he expressed a definite interest and we agreed to be in contact as the idea moves along. However, since ECM and Real Food Lunch is something that is already happening, talking about that proved to be very productive. Apparently there is a surplus of food waste after delivering recovered food to First United Methodist Church on Thursday nights, and since Real Food Lunch takes place on Friday it is a perfect way of using the excess food. I’m very proud to say that the partnership between the two organizations — Food Recovery and ECM — began this week and will continue indefinitely. Moreover, greater synergy between organizations on campus was one of the main things we talked about. The president of Food Recovery is hoping to put together something he called “Common Table”, a meeting place for representatives from respective organizations around campus (e.g. ECM, Food Recovery Network, Bakery Science Club, the food coop etc.) to work and brainstorm together while an advisory board would help institutional memory and act as a liaison between the group and the university. I’m very excited about this and hope to help in any way that I can (possibly as a representative) in the future.

After my experiences this week, I’m convinced that meeting people is an essential part of wayfaring. It’s made me look again at the triangle model of the blog project — that this project must include personal interest, the Anthropocene, and community outreach. To me, community outreach is what forces ideas and strategies to change. You might have an idea, then bounce it off other people and structures in the “real world” and then you modify it. At a certain point, it might not be your idea anymore, it could be “our” idea, or maybe you become an agent in helping someone else’s idea. Nonetheless, this enacts a change that, by definition, you couldn’t fully account for before it happens; and the idea, as it develops in this dialectic between one’s own journey and community engagement, becomes more suited to the complex contours/restrictions of the real world than ever before.

 

Link:

Food Recovery Network — KSU Chapter Orgsync Page

The Fruits of Wayfaring

As you may remember from my previous blog post, I’ve started to look into starting a food coop on campus. On Monday, I presented this idea with a partner at the Food Security Symposium in the Alumni Center. Needless to say, most if not all of the initiatives/organizations helping food security were very helpful to the environment as well. We told the story of ECM’s Real Food Lunch and our vision for expanding it onto campus by setting up a food stand in Bosco plaza next semester before hopefully transitioning to something bigger. Aside from presenting and getting the word out, the symposium was also very useful for hearing all of the great food security initiatives going on in Riley County. There were speakers from Manhattan’s Community Gardens, The Common Table, and Harvesters (a community food network that is a supplier for many food banks in Kansas and Missouri) to name a few, and it was an ideal setting for making connections. Scott Jones, a K-State staff member in charge of bringing a food pantry to campus, met with us, applauded our idea, and was interested in working together if possible. The idea of synergy was very evident amongst all of our group discussions. So many disparate groups/organizations presented about what they were doing to alleviate the issue of hunger and few were working together to do so, despite seemingly endless opportunities. Though it may be difficult in ways that I can’t imagine, synergy between groups is something I will aim for as I move forward with my ideas.

After speaking with others about the idea, I received not only interest but also more connections. For example, though I didn’t know this before, Kansas State has a local chapter of the Food Recovery Network and with the help of the Athletic Dining Hall the program has recovered/donated over 1500 pounds of food. Though I have never talked about the significance of recovering food waste in the past, it is obviously important and something that I’d like to incorporate into my planning if possible. The statistics on food waste in America are staggering; up to 40% of the food in the US never makes it to the table, and if food waste were a country it would rank third in the world by amount of greenhouse gas emissions. I’m in contact with the chapter now about both helping out in their current program as well as working with them in the future to put more recovered food to use with Real Food Lunch and the food stand next semester. We’ll see how this develops.

Though I never would’ve predicted my initial project to end up where it is now, I am very satisfied with my current track. I sought out looking to help the environment while conquering my introverted nature. Though many of the events weren’t planned as such, I have definitely made progress on the latter; my project has led me to presenting in front of a large audience and connecting with large communities of passionate and amazing people. Such is the power of wayfaring. This brings me to another point of surprise regarding the unfolding of this project — it involved much less thinking than I expected. I am someone who can be easily lost in unproductive thinking, and I justify this to myself by believing that it is a necessary precedent to action. In this case, nothing could be further from the truth. The ideas and engagement that comprise my project at this point are 100% due to the action of reaching out to communities (like ECM). Referring back to the lesson taught to us by Laura Nader, this shows the truth of wayfaring — that acting and thinking can, and in many cases, should be done at the same time. As a person who spends far too much time thinking and not enough time acting, this lesson has been well received.

Reflections on Community

Since joining the ECM community I have made a few observations which relate to some of the readings we’ve done in the class. First, let me say that I have never seen such an natural and bustling environmental community. Specifically, Mary Pipher’s value of a fun community came to life before me in a vivid way. As the people of ECM line up one-by-one for some Vegan food and sit down at the tables together, the place is bustling with conversation. After talking to some of the weekly attendees, I found that some knew each other outside of the weekly lunch while others only saw the others once per week. Nonetheless, the fun is palpable and seems to be the reason behind why ECM is so effective.

Though ECM itself is centered around following/discovering religious faith in general, I’ve observed that its community is knit together less based on its christian status and more on the grounds of being socially and politically aware. Again, this relates back to Rayner’s use of technology to use for people’s existing value systems rather than attempting to change the values of people themselves. “Christian values” as vague as that can be, in this case have been leveraged to creating a center of social awareness — from raising funds for solar panels on the center’s roof to the “Real Food Lunches” that use food from the center’s backdoor organic garden — that is in effect a very environmental community. This makes sense. There is no reason for “environmental community” and “Christian center” to be mutually exclusive, and yet I feel that, many times, this is what happens. There’s the fact that many conservative Christians deny the existence of climate change, of course, but what I’m talking about is more than that. I’m talking about how a group has a tendency to define itself by its values and stop there, rather than technology (in Rayner’s sense) being introduced to leverage those values, making the community more than its self-identified values. In this case, introducing technology (e.g. solar panel, weekly lunch, etc.) is a structuralchange, which doesn’t have to change any of the individuals. With this in mind, what other technologies can be added to ECM and other communities around campus?

Last week, I mentioned my interest in creating a food coop on campus, an idea given to me by a KSU student whom I met at ECM. On Monday, I’ll be presenting at K-State’s Food Security Symposium. It will be a large symposium featuring mostly professors and a few students (I think my co-presenter and I may be the only ones) and it will serve as a platform to launch the coop idea and introduce it to administration. Of course, this must be done with expertise; in fact, we wouldn’t even have to pitch it as a coop. For now, we’re content with extending Real Food Lunch to a more on campus location. According to the Berkeley student’s thesis that I shared last week, almost no university food coops started out as such. Due to the slow build-up of credibility, funding, and reputation, there is a slow transition period which, in many instances, starts with something similar to a food stand. In our case, we will attempt to use a food stand near the union/ the food trucks as an extension of the Real Food Lunch program at ECM. The future of the stand/coop is where wayfaring comes in. Simply having a place near the Union (with the University’s permission) with cheap prices and an already existing clientelle population will be enough to provide at least a small amount of initial success. Appealing to different departments on every level of the process is also key. It could act as another sales outlet for the bakery science club and local farmer’s market vendors — supporting local farmers is a priority and a way to promote interest in the ag community.

Assembling Action

When it comes to my own personal history, I have been more extrinsically than intrinsically motivated. This tendency is what keeps me in good academic standing, but it is also what restricts me when it comes to personal endeavors. With most classes, this is not much of a problem. But this class is different. Since the beginning, I felt that it called for something more — something that has less to with what a professor thinks about my work and more about what I think about my work. That is, more intrinsic motivation. Nevertheless, I felt that sometimes I have come to shirk this intrinsic obligation to fulfill myself. With me, this fulfillment must come with action. This is due to two things: 1) my natural inclination to resort to pretty words and intellectualism rather than doing anything in the real world and 2) my gradual realization that action typically does more to produce change than my natural inclinations in (1) ever will. This is not to disparage efforts that are less action and more intellectual — sharpening our sociological and moral imagination is obviously crucial in any effort of change, especially climate change. I only mean to say that, when it comes to my own self-fulfillment — the intrinsic motivation that I feel this class means to channel — I ought to be more action-oriented. Even my initial idea of “Cultivated Conversation” was grounded in specific action-based engagements which would necessitate important conversations. My project thus far has included some instances of action which I’d say I’m proud of — mainly becoming vegetarian and inviting others to join — but I always felt that I could do better. Little by little, I began seeking opportunities in the community to act more.

For one, I reached out to the main coordinator of Green Apple Bikes in Manhattan and asked her if there was anything I could do to get involved. We had lunch, talked about the program as it is, the program’s future, and potential roles I could play. The Friday before spring break I was able to help detail the bikes and I plan to continue volunteering to help the program and learn about bike-sharing programs in general. Next year, I will probably fill the role of student liaison to help get the student’s on campus involved with the program. Speaking of which, anyone reading this is formally invited: Green Apple Bikes is getting new bike parts in and will be needing volunteers to help at their bike build on April 2nd at 11:30 am. There will be other anthropology students there and it is a great way to get involved with something that you (probably) care about! Also, if anyone reads this and wants to get more involved with the bike sharing program, PLEASE let me know — the program is in need of more consistent and dedicated volunteers.

Second, reaching out to the MHK Edible Gardening group on Facebook eventually led me to a campus-based spirituality center known as ECM (located at 904 Sunset Ave) that serves as a meeting place for Students for Environmental Action. The center supports has an organic garden, hosts free Real Food lunches (which is a REALLY cool program by the way; http://www.realfoodchallenge.org/ ) every Friday from 11:30 a.m. – 1 p.m, and supports fair trade and ethical consumerism. If nothing else, consider stopping by for the fantastic food and people. I walked in a couple weeks ago and, despite not knowing anyone, was able to meet the owner of the center as well as many very friendly people who are active members in Students for Environmental Action. As an atheist and someone who has never regularly attended a church or Christian center, the community I found here (and how much their interests were similar to mine) was astounding. Here, I started talking to a student who had the idea of creating a student-run locally-sourced food co-op on campus. I absolutely loved the concept and we exchanged information so we could be in further contact. I meet with her again tomorrow and the idea is still in development, but it will be presented in some form at the Food Security Symposium, which will be on campus all day on April 4th (I provide a link below for more info).

I’m pretty excited about this co-op idea. Today, I did some research and found a study performed by a student who formed a co-op at Berkeley and put together a senior thesis showing the best ways for other university communities to do the same (pdf link provided below if interested). Of course, with the corporatism of universities nowadays, it will be extremely difficult to work with the university to get this done, however, I am very intrigued by the possibility it presents. I read the whole senior thesis and I could geek out about specific details all day, but I’ll refrain from doing so (for now) and relate it back to the class. While thinking about the co-op, I was reminded again and again of Steve Rayner and his method of producing change. He argues that changing people is too tough, and it is more effective to “align technologies to provide the same satisfactions people want within their existing value systems.” I had this in mind as I read a letter about the Food Security Symposium (the link I provided below), which read “The goal is for various K-State departments and units to contribute to the effort through the momentum they’ve already established in this area — whether through research, teaching, engagement, or outreach and extension.” I think this “momentum they’ve already established in this area” concept is at least related to what I’m talking about. That is, building off of the pre-existing structures/values in order to make the most progress. What “momentum” does K-State have that’s pointed towards food security? K-State’s Ag School is a big deal, duh. I know almost nothing about K-State’s Ag department and I still know about its significance, not only in respect to the ratings/production of its academic departments, but from the culture I see walking through town every day — the country music, the cowboy boots, and yes, Dirty Dawgs. This is some of K-State’s “momentum”, and I think harnessing it in some way would be very helpful for any environmental effort on campus. And these thoughts remind me of a very important thing: never does this new project have to be explicitly about climate change. Granted, I need to do a lot of work to understand the values/motives of the ag students at KSU, but I’m sure that real food that supports local farmers can hold some appeal if pitched correctly. If it was pitched as environmentalism, though, wrapped in a “let’s prevent global warming” message, I think the ag culture would be much less receptive. Of course, this isn’t to say that a co-op on campus would purely be for ag students; rather, there may be some interested environmentalists in support of it. And hey, maybe some food sciences students would be interested in the cooking, business majors in the business plan, food systems students in the chain of supply. Steve Reyner referred to Walter Lippman’s idea of democracy as not having everyone think the same thing, but having people who think differently do the same thing. I am very interested in this co-op idea and if all goes well, then it will be a commitment which will probably last much longer than the length of this course. Not only does it offer an opportunity to take action on behalf of myself, but it also provides the chance to assemble a single action from many people who are very different than me.

 

Interesting Links

ECM:

http://www.k-state.edu/ecm/

Food Security Symposium:

-Info:

http://www.k-state.edu/today/announcement.php?id=24996&category=from_the_provost&referredBy=K-State+Today+Home

-Registration:

https://outreach.ksu.edu/etrakWebApp/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fetrakWebApp%2fRegistration.aspx%3fMeetingCode%3d231608&MeetingCode=231608

“Best Practices for Starting Sustainable Food Cooperatives in University Communities” thesis

http://nature.berkeley.edu/classes/es196/projects/2010final/OatfieldC_2010.pdf

Playlist: Feeling in the Anthropocene

When I mentioned this assignment to my two collaborators (a good friend and my dad) their respective responses shared one common element: awkwardness. First I asked one of my best friends — someone who wouldn’t necessarily classify himself as an environmentalist but one who is concerned with human rights issues and activist movements in general. Even while bringing up the playlist homework assignment as “for a class I’m in”, I was left without an immediate response regarding how he feels about the anthropocene — the conversation just seemed out of place. He began to cooperate just after I showed him Mary Pipher’s TED talk. He was intrigued by the disruption caused by her movement against the pipeline as opposed to environmentalism as he traditionally thought of it (e.g. recycling) on an individual level. We talked about Pipher’s “coping mechanism” and pretending as if our actions mattered. Since both of us tend to overanalyze, our conversation would digress into lots of convoluted intellectual discussion before I returned to asking him how it made him feel. Though I sensed some anger in him earlier when we were talking about oil companies and the pipeline, the response I got from him this time was something different. It was a passive feeling of grief and helplessness; he told me that amidst the other problems in the world, this was probably the most impossible to fix and frankly it’s extremely depressing. Next, I went to my dad. He was also taken off guard by the topic of climate change and he began by blaming right-wing legislation and corporations. I again noticed a feeling of powerlessness, but once I showed him the Mary Pipher video he was emblazoned with the power of the people. He suggested some happy songs for me, such as Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good”, but by the end of it all I became a bit skeptical of such optimism.

After piecing together the playlist with the aid of my father and friend, for some reason I started to think about potential dangers of positive thinking. I deliberately placed some feel-good songs at the end to symbolize the liberation from trauma that comes with transcendence, but I’m not sure that optimism is always the correct answer. Let me explain.

When the conversations were taking place, I mentioned the thematic arc I had as a goal for this playlist: that of trauma transitioning into transcendence. As I talked through this transition (and songs they had in mind for each stage) with my helpers, I found that our attitudes/emotions towards climate change tended to follow the stage of the arc that we were discussing. Near the end of my second conversation — the transcendence part, that is — my dad and I were very enthusiastic, as if our conversation alone had allowed us to transcend the anxieties associated with climate change, and as the project was over and I went back to my day I started to question if that was a positive or negative thing. After all, we did absolutely nothing to actually help climate change, isn’t the positive thinking a little out of place? There is a time for the optimism, sure, but there is also a time for dwelling in the emotions which come with the trauma of realism. In fact, I’d argue that the extremely negative emotions are the driving force for doing something in the real world and only after doing something should one honestly allow themselves to be optimistic about the situation.

This may seem pessimistic, but I think it is relevant to me especially — when it comes to my thoughts/feelings regarding climate change (and a lot of other things in my life), I tend to overthink things and, in doing so, effectively separate my mental states from the reality which produces them.

9-5ers Anthem, Aesop Rock.

This song is rebelling against capitalism, as it reduces the proletariat to cogs in the machine while we can’t do anything about it. Industrial music and the lyrcisim is obscure and perplexing, like the problem and the confusion of how to solve the issue. In Aesop’s second verse, his metaphors do a fantastic job in portraying the structural problems and our complicity through our consumerist ideals have relegated many to a state of purposelessness and encouraged self-indulgence. He appeals to the proletariat here.

Blowing in the Wind, Bob Dylan

Being lost when it comes to searching for an answer, with our proclivities for needing a neat answer. The answers aren’t cut and dry, but don’t be discouraged. Folksie vibes shows that this is a popular/common problem.

The Times They Are A-Changing, Bob Dylan

Come gather ’round people, Wherever you roam

And admit that the waters, Around you have grown

And accept it that soon, You’ll be drenched to the bone

If your time to you, Is worth savin’

Then you better start swimmin’, Or you’ll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin’.

This verse is clearly related to climate change, even if Bob Dylan meant it as a metaphor. It also does a good job of portraying change in general as it thematically portrays leaving the past behind and turning with new eyes to the future.

Aloha Ke Akua, Nahko Bear

Nahko Bear, a Native American musician who’s been known for environmental advocacy and his environmentally-minded spirituality, comes in here on the playlist with the goal of showing nature as divine and enlist others to defend it.

Great Spirit, Nahko Bear

And from the confusion, apathy, and anomie comes a deep (and religious, in Nahko’s case, since he follows his native american religion) and almost spiritual connection with nature and our place within it. The song begins with an almost divine portrayal of nature and nurturing environmental empathy (“Some of your people can’t feel it, the way that it hurts”) and Nahko uses this new dimension of feeling/connection with the earth in order to summon the will to defend it from destruction – “While the ship slowly sinks, I’ve been directed to sing . . . You’re gonna be by my side when I stand and demand a change”

List of Demands, Saul Williams

Here, Saul Williams issues  a call for protest. Lyrically, the song mainly regards protesting economic disparity, but the protesting spirit portrayed by the music (one which is more empowering and even angering) is something that is helpful for igniting the revolutionary spirit (and an emotion which I sometimes struggle with).

Big Yellow Taxi, Joni Mitchell

“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot”

“don’t it always seem to go that we don’t know what we’ve got til it’s gone”

Musically, Joni Mitchell keeps a positive/upbeat vibe amidst the “paving over” of nature/paradise.

At the Bottom of Everything, Bright Eyes

Though this isn’t directly about the environment, this song does a magnificent job of portraying important spiritual elements which Roy Scranton related to the anthropocene: life in the face of death, existentialism, and transcendence.

“Into the caverns of tomorrow with only our flashlights and our love/ We must plunge, we must plunge, we must plunge” — portrays wayfaring in the anthropocene

The Day the World Went Away, Nine Inch Nails

Aside from the soft musical period delivering the lyrics, which exude emotions of apathy, grief, and surrender, the music expresses the perplexing mix of fear/anger/anxiety which comes with the concept of death promised by climate change.

Feeling Good, Nina Simone

This song exudes enthusiasm and above all, confidence in the face of newness while leaving the past behind. In fact, she describes her feeling in terms of the natural world around her, reminding us that though it may be personally rewarding, this existential journey isn’t for us — its for the world we’re trying to save.

A Little Commitment

(I know it’s kinda long but read till the end..)

Sometimes I feel like we make this whole environmentalism thing a bit too complicated. We read articles upon articles, figuring out the Anthropocene and trying to find the “answers” of how to deal with it. And there’s not much wrong with that, considering how enlightening I’ve found the first part of this class, but sometimes I feel that a better intellectual understanding of these issues doesn’t always tightly correspond with better environmental choices in the real world.

Let’s use myself as an example. Last week I read in McKenna’s shocking blog post: “In reality, 95% of our water usage is in food production, and not in our home. One pound of beef requires around 2,500 gallons of water. That’s about the same as one bath every day for two years.”

Shortly after that, I read Madi powerfully advocating for grass-fed beef in her blog: “I am simply bringing up the point that we have the power to choose what we eat. We don’t have to eat meat that is full of antibiotics. We choose to though, because it convenient.”

And what did I do after that? I felt rushed, went by a Chinese restaurant and got a beef dish (that was most likely corn-fed) and didn’t think much of it. I had all of the facts in front of me telling me that, if I was being honest with myself, I SHOULD be a vegetarian in the name of sustainability. But somehow I was okay with keeping this “should” in my mind’s ethical understandings and leaving it out of my real life, the life that contains all of the real habits which actually contribute to our environmental crisis. That said, I wanted to show a little commitment; today I decided to become a vegetarian. I will be a vegetarian for at least the rest of the semester, and I might periodically give a few updates on the blog.

So you might ask, how does this relate to your blog idea about “Cultivating Conversation” anyway? Well, first off, I may make life decisions which I find to be good choices but which aren’t directly related to the blog. However, lifestyle changes are often accompanied by conversations, so this actually does tie into my idea. Just today, three people at dinner looked at me side-eyed and asked “You’re a vegetarian now? Why?”

My response mentioned that although I know many people do this for ethical “I shouldn’t be eating another living thing” reasons (and those are compelling), my reasons are something different: environmental sustainability. Their eye-brows raised like there were jetpacks strapped to them (well that might be a bit extreme but, ya know, they raised). I recited the factoid about one pound of beef requiring about the same amount of water as one bath every day for two years. They were surprised, and we had a discussion about climate change. They mentioned the importance of recycling and one resident, who didn’t know where the recycling services were, seemed to commit to recycling like the other two. Whoa, I had no intention of starting a conversation about recycling and all this just happened. That taught me something valuable: the more that one’s beliefs manifest in one’s external lifestyle, the less deliberate conversations need to be (in many cases).

The conversational aspects aside, the main point of this post is not to convince you that you SHOULD become a vegetarian. The point is directed at those people, like me before this decision, who already believe that they SHOULD become a vegetarian and yet have simply not committed to acting on this belief. This logic also applies for all other places where the gap between “shoulds” and reality exists — but don’t let that overwhelm you. For example, I am not necessarily going to ride only my bike around Manhattan or wash myself with a bucket because I know that I should — these admittedly petty issues of “convenience”, when accumulated, do hold some weight when it comes to the realistic side of our day-to-day lives, after all. However, one cannot simply ignore the chasm between the “ought-to’s” and the real world, because sometimes the only difference between the two can be a realistic and perfectly reasonable level of commitment.

So I could string together some academically-informed, intellectual understanding of climate change, but almost all of actual change will come with something much less profound. It will come with commitment, which might sometimes mean a bit of inconvenience, to lessen the gap between the well-reasoned “ought-to’s” and the life you go back to after reading this.

Now I feel like breaking the fourth wall on my ending note, so here goes — many of the people reading this are in an environmentalism class. I know this might be super meta, but I think acknowledging the context of these blog posts is important. And even though the class is designed to include community outreach and all kinds of real-world interactions, a class, by its very nature, has particular limitations. It may hold plenty of valuable intellectual understandings and changes in sociological/moral imagination, but, like I mentioned in the beginning, sometimes the action-based real-world correspondence may be missing. To use my personal example once more, a class could contain reasoning to be a vegetarian, but a class does not tell someone to be a vegetarian — it is not the class’s duty, it is not within its power. In the most extreme case, a class can extrinsically motivate you to do something in the real-world if the real-world interaction is part of a graded assignment, but even then it allows you to engage with reality in the manner and location of your choosing. So, these are inherent limitations of a class. . . Or are they? What if it could be something more? What if the students in the class could close the gap between the “ought-tos” and the real-world together, with each other’s help? What if I issue an invitation (HINT HINT THESE ARE NO LONGER RHETORICAL QUESTIONS I’M LITERALLY ISSUING AN INVITATION) to anyone else in the class — anyone who thinks they SHOULD be a vegetarian but is not due to an understandable lack of commitment — to become vegetarian with me? If people would accept that invitation, then it would do more than promote very environmentally-friendly lifestyles — it might change what a class is capable of doing.

Yeah, you. Think about it.

Crying as Homework

When I was reading Norgaard’s Living in Denial, my mind was blown by what I saw as a very interesting (and ultimately accurate) view of emotion. She argues that emotion is a way of seeing the world and thus an emotional response may be the most rational way to act in some cases, though this may be at odds with our culture’s idea of rationalism typically being emotionless. With this in mind, my thoughts drifted towards climate change. Is it rational to speak of climate change in the way we normally do? Where does emotion fit into this? If emotional responses are supposed to be even slightly proportional to their referents then I realized that a “rational” response to climate change would have to include much more than a logical understanding. I decided that if I wanted to be rational about the issue of climate change, then maybe I needed to cry.

At that thought, the voices in my head started to scoff and shame me. Now that’s a bit dramatic, Matt. After all, what would crying really do about it? Well, probably nothing but it’s about experimenting with a different idea of rationality. And if you’re choosing to be emotional, why not choose an emotion that’s potentially more productive, like anger? Well, good point, but no protests are happening at the moment and it’s not like embracing the emotions of grief and anger has to be mutually exclusive, so italics-Matt you’re kindof a dipshit on this one. I stopped thinking; I have learned to embrace a “what the hell, why not” mentality with this stuff, and so with this I stuck with my original conviction of crying and I set aside 20 minutes of my day. This is climate change, after all — the largest problem of our generation — I figured there was plenty to cry about if I just dwelled in my emotions. I began to imagine the people around the world whose lives have been lost or changed irreversibly due to the lifestyles of the industrialized nations, and due to my own complicity. I imagined my children, my children’s children, and how in time their lives will be affected more and more. The tears began to flow. As they did, I wasn’t sure if they could be ascribed to grief, guilt, or any distinct emotion in particular.

Getting myself to cry over the anthropocene was certainly interesting as it embraced a new approach to an emotion-inclusive idea of rationality; however, it was only after the tears flowed that I realized a deeper, more purposeful part of this experiment — the part that you are reading right now. By blogging about my extremely weird idea to cry about climate change, I am publicly breaking the cultural and emotional norms of 1) what is appropriate to cry about 2) the level of emotion and vulnerability that a man should show to others. Emotional norms (e.g. “being tough”, “acting cool”), Norgaard argues, play a large role in our collective denial of climate change. Of course, these emotional norms are often extremely constraining to men in particular. In fact, I remember reading a feminist article once which claimed that the first destructive act of patriarchy lies in the moment when men stigmatize and remove from themselves everything which they arbitrarily label as “feminine” (emotions, mainly).
So I’ll try to avoid the ostentatious “this is how deep and emotional I am…” paragraph that might typically sum this all up. But I will say this: some of these emotional norms deserve to be broken and communicated — if not for the good of connecting with oneself and the world on a deeper level, then for the good of changing the interactionally-produced norms which cause climate change denial on a larger social level.

The First Encounter

After thinking about my blog idea for a bit, I went by the gas station to pick up a snack. As the employee began to quietly ring me up, I smiled at the silence, thought what the hell, and said — “how do you feel about climate change?” I delivered it in a charismatic, casual tone which hopefully concealed my knowledge of how ridiculous the question would seem to him. He was taken off guard, as I expected. After a brief silence he said, really awkwardly “I mean I don’t know..” I responded very tactlessly with “Do you believe in it?” (I probably should have went with a less politically-charged question), and after more silence he gave the bewildered reply of “I don’t think that — what is it really warm outside or something?” The look in his eyes screamed “What are you doing? Don’t talk to me about this”. At that point, I just brushed it off, walked on, and laughed to myself when I got in my car. I didn’t think the interaction would be “successful”, but I wanted a taste of what a stranger’s reaction would be. Still, the extent of his awkwardness at being asked the question was a little surprising.

Aside from this particular context, why is it so weird to talk about this stuff in the first place? I think it’s largely rooted in a cultural ideal of individualism, a learned kind of passive respect which allows people’s views to be free from conversation and inspection because they’re veiled beneath a call for political correctness. What about a different kind of respect, though? If I have a high amount of respect for someone, then that person deserves to have conversations which hold their views to the highest standards. Clearly, some conversation subjects should be approached with more empathy, communication, and understanding than others, but to say that we shouldn’t talk about those subjects at all is to 1) waste an opportunity of practicing those tremendously important skills and 2) deny an opportunity to talk about what is most important for us to talk about, that is, matters pertaining to social values and the collective good.

Is this random gas station encounter a valid way to engage with people over the issue? Well it’s definitely not the best, since it shrinks the context of an important and deep conversation to the amount of time it takes to buy some Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. However, I think it certainly didn’t harm anyone and I felt it was beneficial in that I got a little outside of my comfort zone. Plus, the amount of talking about climate change is so low, and so much less than the ideal, that I think throwing it into almost any conversation might be something positive. He’s almost definitely going to tell someone how some weird guy asked him about climate change, and maybe they’ll talk about it or maybe they’ll at least be a little less shocked if someone happens to do it again in the future. I am definitely planning on engaging with people in ways which are of a less random context and allow for an extended time period, but I will probably continue to do these random conversations during my regular life, even if for no other reason than to break free from my inhibitions and be entertained by the reaction.

This was a very very short interaction, but I observed a few things about it. For one, I felt that the shock value of the question seemed to undermine my hopes for the employee to actually think about the question’s content. I felt he’d have a similar reaction if, instead of talking about climate change, I’d asked him “are you pro-life or pro-choice?” There are a number of ways which I could’ve handled the situation better, and hopefully I’ll start to understand more as I continue to start the conversation. For one, I definitely could’ve given a more smooth delivery of the question; this could mean getting a bit personal or different in my interactions before jumping headfirst into discussing climate change. As I crumple up my receipt, I could ask if the gas station recycles and then use that as a segway into other conversation. Of course, maybe this Dara’s employee was just a particularly uncomfortable dude. However, I certainly don’t expect starting conversations about climate change to be anything other than uncomfortable, and as these interactions continue in different forms, I’d imagine they will get less and less uncomfortable. Less uncomfortable for me, since I will be acclimatized to the awkwardness, and less uncomfortable for others because I will continuously refine my conversational methods.

Lastly, I’d like to mention that experiments like this may be totally changed or abandoned in the future as I continue to ponder the issue. For example, if climate change beliefs and reactions are so tied to identity then could a very brief and shocking mention of the issue actually strengthen a person’s identity-based response against it? It’s entirely possible. Then again, I think that talking about something is plainly the best way to get used to talking about it, and that’s ultimately the goal here. As I continue with my intellectual exploration of the Anthropocene and the lived experience of trial and error, I might find some better answers to these questions, but until then my approach remains the same — let’s get awkward.