responsibility

With ecological consciousness came the famous (but not well-understood) social change “paradigm shift.”

Anything new takes time to be fully appreciated.

Some of the founders of the Green politics movement during the 1970s and 1980s were “new paradigm” people. Among them, the original rendition of the Four Pillars went like this:
. Ecological Wisdom
. Social Responsibility
. Nonviolence
. Grassroots Democracy

It was pretty Gandhian. But this orientation to social change was too new to be widely embraced. Once the movement started gaining momentum it attracted many old-style leftist activists. They soon changed that second Pillar to “Social Justice” and that third one to “Peace.”

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“Responsibility” is a deeper concept. And a better one. It implies one of the other new-paradigm key values: Decentralization.

(Consider how distinctive that is: The guru of the old-style leftists is Karl Marx. He advocated centralization and concentration for the sake of industrial efficiency … for development and “progress”).

Responsibility requires decentralization; re-localization. Because responsibility requires visibility and acquaintance; direct perception within a context of familiarity and regard. Regard for and intimate familiarity with a place, a territory. Regard for and perception of the behaviors and needs of familiar other people.

Social justice is a concept most suited to the context of mass society. Of course our movement should stand for and strive for social justice. But we could benefit from a deep understanding of how irresponsible mass organizations tend to be (whether owned privately or owned socially). Re: the mega-nation-states, the mega-corporations … good luck trying to foster either justice or responsibility at that scale.

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[Below is an exemplary new-paradigm expression from 1970. It’s an abridged and paraphrased version of Gary Snyder’s essay, “Four Changes.” Notice how it prioritizes the concept of responsibility.]

I. POPULATION

Humanity is but a part of the fabric of life — dependent on the whole fabric for our very existence. As the most highly developed tool-using animal, we must recognize that the unknown evolutionary destinies of other life forms are to be respected, and act as gentle steward of the earth’s community of being. Human over-population is potentially disastrous, not only for us and our progeny, but for most other life forms.

ACTION: First, a massive effort to convince the governments and leaders of the world that the problem is severe; and that all talk about raising food-production, well intentioned as it is, simply puts off the only real solution: reduce population.

Try to correct traditional cultural attitudes that tend to force women into childbearing. Remove income tax deductions for more than two children above a specified income level, and scale it so that lower income families are forced to be careful, too. Oppose and correct simple-minded boosterism that equates population growth with continuing prosperity. Share the pleasure of raising children widely, so that all need not directly reproduce to enter into this basic human experience. Adopt children.

Let reverence for life mean also a reverence for other species, and future human lives, most of which are threatened.

II. POLLUTION

The human race in the last century has allowed its production and scattering of wastes, by-products, and various chemicals to become excessive. Pollution is directly harming life on the planet: which is to say, ruining the environment for humanity itself. We are fouling our air and water and living in noise and filth that no “animal” would tolerate — while advertising and politicians try to tell us “we’ve never had it so good.”

ACTION: Strong penalties for water and air pollution by industries. Phase out the internal combustion engine and fossil fuel use in general. Turn fully to non-polluting energy sources. Stop all germ and chemical warfare research and experimentation; work toward a safe disposal of the present staggering and stupid stockpiles of atomic weapons.

Recycling should be the basic principle behind all waste-disposal thinking. Stronger controls and research on chemicals in foods. A shift toward a more varied, organic, and sensitive type of agriculture.

Use fewer cars. Share rides. Also — a step toward the new world — walk more. Boycott bulky wasteful Sunday newspapers which use up trees. It’s mostly just advertising anyway, which is artificially inducing more mindless consumption. Don’t work in any way for or with an industry which pollutes — and don’t be drafted into the military.

III. CONSUMPTION

Everything that lives eats food, and is food in turn. This complicated animal, homo sapiens, rests on a vast and delicate pyramid of energy-transformations. To grossly use more than you need is biologically irresponsible. Most of the production and consumption of modern societies is not necessary or conducive to spiritual or cultural growth, let alone survival — and is behind much greed and envy, age-old causes of social and international discord.

Humanity’s careless use of “resources” and our dependence on certain substances, such as fossil fuels, are having harmful effects on all the other members of the life-network. The complexity of modern technology renders whole populations vulnerable to the consequences of the loss of key resources. Instead of independence we have over-dependence on mega-technologies and hypertrophied institutions.

The soil is being used up. In fact, humankind has become a locust-like blight on the planet that will leave a bare cupboard for its own children — all the while in a kind of Addict’s Dream of affluence, comfort, eternal progress — using the great achievements of science to produce software and swill.

Goals: Balance, harmony, humility. Growth which is a mutual growth with Redwood and Quail (would you want your child to grow up without ever hearing a wild bird?). To be a good member of the great community of living creatures.

ACTION: It must be demonstrated ceaselessly that a continually “growing economy” is no longer healthy, but a Cancer. Economics must be seen as a small sub-branch of Ecology. Production should be handled by enterprises, unions, or communities with the same elegance and spareness one sees in nature.

Plan consumer boycotts in response to unnecessary products. Politically, blast both “Communist” and “Capitalist” myths of progress, and all crude notions of conquering or controlling nature.

The inherent aptness of communal life: where large tools are owned jointly and used efficiently. Recycle clothes and equipment. Support handicrafts — gardening, home skills, midwifery, herbs — all the things that can make us independent, beautiful and whole. Learn to break the habit of unnecessary possessions — a monkey on everybody’s back. (But avoid a self-abnegating, anti-joyous self-righteousness; simplicity is light, carefree, neat, and loving — not a self-punishing ascetic trip.)

It is hard to even begin to gauge how much a complication of possessions stands between us and a true, clear, liberated way of seeing the world. To live lightly on the earth, to be aware and alive, to be in contact with flora and fauna, starts with simple concrete acts. Simplicity and mindfulness in diet is a starting point for many people.

IV. TRANSFORMATION

We have it within our deepest powers not only to change ourselves but to change our culture. If we are to survive on earth we must transform the five-millennia-long urbanizing civilization tradition into a new ecologically-sensitive, harmony-oriented, wild-minded scientific/spiritual culture.

Goal: Nothing short of total transformation, a radical change of direction, will be adequate. What must be envisioned is a planet on which the human population lives harmoniously and dynamically by employing a sophisticated and unobtrusive technology.

Specific points in this vision:
. A healthy and spare population of all races, much less in number than today.
. Cultural and individual diversity, unified by a type of world tribal council. Division by natural and cultural boundaries rather than arbitrary political boundaries (bioregionalism).
. A technology of communication, education, and quiet transportation, land-use being sensitive to the properties of each region.
. A basic cultural outlook and social organization that inhibits power and property-seeking. Women totally free and equal. Rejuvenation of community life. A new kind of extended family — responsible, but more festive and relaxed — is implicit.

ACTION: Since it doesn’t seem practical or even desirable to think that bloody force will achieve much, it would be best to consider this a continuing “revolution of consciousness” which will be won not by guns but by seizing the key images, myths, archetypes, eschatologies, and ecstasies so that life won’t seem worth living unless one is on the transforming energy’s side. Create an awareness of “Self” which includes the social and natural environment. Consider what specific language forms, symbolic systems, and social institutions constitute obstacles to ecological awareness. Investigate new lifestyles. Work with politically-minded people where it helps, hoping to enlarge their vision, and with people of all varieties of politics or ideology at whatever point they become aware of environmental urgencies.

Master the archaic and the primitive as models of basic nature-related cultures — as well as the most imaginative extensions of science — and create new lifeways where these two vectors cross.

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We are the first people in history to have all of humanity’s culture and previous experience available to our study — the first members of a civilized society since the early Neolithic to wish to look clearly into the eyes of the wild and see our selfhood, our family, there. We have these advantages to set off the obvious disadvantages of being as screwed up as we are — which gives us a fair chance to penetrate into some of the riddles of ourselves and the universe.