Environment as Home, as Whole

As part of defining environmentalism and radical environmental politics for my unwieldy Prosem/potential thesis project, I wanted to start with a discussion of environment and what it is about environment that people can get riled up about, what incites people to political action with intense feeling. After our most recent Prosem session, I had a discussion with one of my friends in the class about conceiving of the utter devastation caused to our planet over time, but especially since the incipience of industrialization, and about ways of understanding this depletion of resources, this havoc, so completely, in its grand scale, so much so that particular behaviors result and certain actions are taken to change that regrettable reality slowly, starting at an acutely personal level. She was worried that she couldn't picture water scarcity and water wars, especially affecting her, because water flows so freely, amongst regions, and so resource shortages of water are only evident in large scale, at least at present. But she admitted she already turns off the shower to lather, that she thinks about these things, that she's very aware of the issues. So it seemed that the real issue was conceiving of all environmental problems as a whole, viewing the environment holistically, seeing the connections, and therefore finding behaviors that can address these issues through multi-pronged approaches, covering several issues through one action, simplifying the intricate map of environmental havoc into a plan of action that is realistic, understandable, not quite so overwhelming as the problems themselves, in order that by not being overwhelming itself it won't go the way of the apathy that only contributes to the problem itself. I didn't know how to summarize such a simplification, where to start, so I'm picking up with the writing I did a month and a half ago, that I might eventually extract the main points, find the embarking point I can use when talking with others, without going speechless because I don't even know where to begin. With a note of caution that this is composed mostly of convoluted half-notes, here, then, is that earlier writing...

On Environmental Concerns. Due to the nature of human environment, that confluence of factors pertaining to the quality and safety of the air, water, soil, plant (matter) and animal species we encounter, weather patterns and geologic forces and formations that act upon and restrict us, as well as the quality and pattern of these factors when recombined by humans into our built environments, the politics, activism, ethics, and concerns issuing thereof/”therefrom" must address the totality of these factors, must take into account not isolated aspects but the whole of the unique sphere where they converge and form this very fascinating confluence, this wholeness, entirety, this entity, a swirling biosphere, that gives us life, nurtures and nourishes us.

The holistic approach I propose must be meticulously detailed, no doubt. In the process of outlining/elucidating/describing the necessary changes to our outlook, our mindsets (who is our?), changes we must make in order to strive toward this holistic approach, and introducing it into the mainstream environmental discourse on concerns and their accompanying policy suggestions, so as to influence/redirect the future dialogue about, and current flow of, environmental discourse, I hope to address the up-til-now, as-of-now silent issues and unnoticed-or-unknown philosophies of human (and) environment, to change the flow of discourse on this thoroughly weighty subject. I hope, also, to bridge the canon of Western philosophy and the young, seedling cannon of primitivist writing/ideology/thought, and especially to patch current intellectuals’ potholes/shortcomings/gaps on the topic of (radical) environmental politics.

What is radical environmental politics or what should it be, should it include, should it mean? Technically, taking into account the essence of the etymological anatomy of the word, it has to do with roots, which by definition then places the purview of radical environmental politics with the nutrient-channels that nourish living organisms/systems, which is a delightful allegory for contextualizing our discussion. Either it is a politics from the ground up, from the grass roots, or even better, it is a politics concerned with the very nourishment that categorizes/ epitomizes/encapsulates/ bases/roots/positions/situates the human environment totality/wholeness in its live-giving, nutrient solution; in its own definition, its most appropriate context, it essentializes our initial term, reduces it down to its essentials, the nourishment that is the core of human environment, of its meaning.

Often, due to the fairly recent phenomenon of greenwashing, we hear sound bytes from politicians and interviewable activists, those acceptable by the commercial media, who discuss singular focuses that cannot, in fact, be separated from the totality of human environment and the concerns that it generates on the whole. For instance, you might hear Barack Obama (or T. Boone Pickens, for that matter-- take your pick) discussing alternative energy in the form of wind power; Al Gore supra-publicizing global warming (Is it for his own gain? But how? Think harder if you don’t see it!); PETA protesting animal rights abuses; elementary school classrooms creating naïve posters about saving water or not polluting the air; protesters trespassing on military bases in attempts to protest nuclear armament and space warfare strategy conferences; mainstream supermarkets, including the not-really-a-supermarket infamous chain, Walmart, introducing organic/green living sections into their layouts; Apple Computers boasting the remedied/lowered/mediated/reduced/mitigated toxicity of their re-released iPhone product; or any famous office supply chain raving about their 10% post-consumer waste recycled paper products. None of these are actual accomplishments or that pressing of concerns (since the real priorities are more systemic, more likely to address multiple issues at once).

What are the implications of this view? Well, for one thing, guilt-laden middle class, moderately educated consumers, corralled by this guilt-weight into precisely programmed product/consumption decisions, can drop that weight, free themselves of the guilt, and no longer face the seeming necessity of their anxiety/worry/fear of impending environmental doom, as the supposedly logical next step in the unfolding/progression of culminating and ever-worsening environmental catastrophes and disasters appears to be. But, if this is the end result for the nascent “worrying class,” the renunciation of their ever-upward-spiraling anxiety, how should we feel? And what should we be prioritizing? How can we adapt our thinking to both the immensity/immediacy/gravity and the truth of the situation to best suit/facilitate the development/brainstorming of solutions? What are the real issues, the meatiest solutions, the most relevant concepts/thought processes/thought patterns/communication frameworks/mindsets we must elucidate, study, analyze, focus on, employ, utilize? How do we best respond, think, and act on the contemporary environmental situation, especially if it doesn’t hold any weight aside from that which we (however naïvely or unnecessarily) assign to it?

Since my concern doesn't entirely pivot around the accuracy or urgency of the issues that the prominent voices of the greenwashing movement bring up, I am still interested in discussing the role and force of global warming, recycling, alternative energy, toxicity of electronics, organic food, frugal lifestyle, etc.. But because I have been corrupted by philosophers from an early age, I see immense value in revealing the assumptions implicit in these alarm-causing issues (Cradle-to-Cradle design points out that recycling is just pointless downcycling; global warming alarmism relies on excluding scientific findings that look at geologic time, at the cyclical nature of Ice Ages, and that aren't compelled by a fear of any change to contemporary lifestyles to show that life on earth will end if, say, we don't buy carbon offsets--life on earth as we know it in our culture might end, but that really isn't such a big deal, in fact is perhaps a blessing; raw food advocates deny that cooked food was ever beneficial to peoples inside or outside of destructive civilization, etc.). If we start there, we actually have a stabler foundation from which to work because we aren't basing our actions on bogus notions.

As I just described my interest in still addressing the disparate issues that alarmists of environmental doomsday will highlight to the exclusion of any other issues in the whole of the environmental system, including human actions resulting from resource shortages (such as initiatives for feeding the starving children across the globe or turning to violence in Haiti because of extreme deforestation), etc., I want to share the elements of environmental politics and policy I wish to address in my future analysis of what a holistic environmental approach to world problems will look like. These elements include any (and, I hope, all) of the following, and most likely others that will crop up as I go:

Guerilla gardening, environmental terrorism- as separate from; ecovillages, communes; landscaping – misguided efforts; going off grid; beekeeping- colony collapse disorder/die offs/g.e. crops/ Monsanto/ research university politics; tree sitting; women's cooperatives; over-population? assumptions, resources, exponential growth, etc.; reservations, national parks, wildlife preserves, adverse effects; local currency/timeshares; child care- child rearing; radical environmental education as resistance?; biking/commuting/etc., walking; plant medicine versus pharmaceutical giants/mega-corporations – patenting, resistance; water wars; deforestation; conflicts over resources; environmental racism; toxicity – e.p.a. – prioritizing – superfund sites – remediation or lack thereof, activism, politics associated with those touchy subjects; gentrification or white flight keep good housing from being affordable housing; lack of parks, good parks, safe parks, ecological parks, green spaces, in many places; suburbs; community gardens; community building-organizing; natural building versus building codes – what is safe; nuclear armament, proliferation, Nevada test site, protesting; government and Our Stolen Future- hormone disrupters; carcinogens, toxins all around us; shade grown versus not; fair trade, free trade, resources, social justice, economic justice, well-being, disparities, safety, etc.; religious intolerance and links to resource availability, conflict, first world/third world widening gap; trash – artistic responses – recycling – cradle to cradle – waste – design – cycle – interconnections – upcycling, etc., good design; nature deficit disorder versus attention deficit disorder, education, education facilities, education methods; over-harvesting of fish, wildlife; air quality, indoor air quality – circulation – “death chamber” office buildings; fast food; good, healthy food unaffordable (if unaffordable for anyone, something must be horribly wrong, no?--I have some ideas what that horribly wrong is...); mental health, psychiatric facilities, pharmaceutical companies; symptomatic versus allopathic medicine; peak oil; solar cookers versus wood stoves; biodiesel, ethanol- politics of, economics of, lack of sustainability but impulse actions because assumed benefit of sustainability?; e-waste; feminine hygiene product waste; drug trafficking and monoculture, economy, health, delusion; needless waste; nuclear power, "clean" coal, etc.; plastic-paper-glass packaging etc.; animal rights -- popular and unknown (hermit crabs killed for medicine, etc.); birth control; healthy, drug-free, safe, "human" birth; orphanages around the world, what forces create orphans, adoption and well-being, home, resources, family and opportunities; conservation; "invasive" species; “whole” foods; nutrition – supplements; vegetarianism and cars, carbon footprint reduction; natural disasters, bad design, humanitarian aid, inaction, callousness, responses, solutions, minimizing devastation, assumptions about human life, resources; global slave trade and resources, health, children, women, social justice, earth as home, earth as unsafe home.......