Ecology and Politics Part I.
I have given a lot of thought about the relationship between the ideas of deep ecology and the politics of the Green Party. I have never before tried to put my ideas down in a concrete statement as to why I believe that this relationship is critical to the success of the party.
This is rather long, but probably needs to be. I will need to follow it up with further explorations of the topic over the next several weeks.
I will have to approach this from two different perspectives. The first is personal, biographical, an explanation of how I got from living in about as rural a setting as you can imagine, half way between two Illinois towns the larger of the two having a population of 300 to being a member of the EcoAction Committee of the Green Party. It was not as much of a straight line as you could imagine.
The second perspective is that of a Green who becomes a member of the Green Party at a time when most of the factional antagonisms were seemingly set in concrete. I think that I am not different from many others who joined during or after the 2000 election. Frankly most of us really do not care about the redefinitions of the past that continuously plague all off the exchanges on various email lists associated with the Green Party. Most of them are not relevant to what we need to do about the future.
I was pushed into this undertaking after reading two recent statements. The first came from Burton Anderson, a columnist in my local home town (Morgan Hill, CA) newspaper.
Have you ever considered what life might be like, if, through prohibitive laws, they forced us to return to the agrarian 1800s, but controlled by "vegans," tree huggers, and an anthropomorphic society? God, help us.
This is not too far from the public perception that many have of environmentalists in general and the Green Party in particular. We might rail at their ignorance, but it takes work to change their minds. It means spending our time talking to the wider public and not just to arguing with each other.
Side note: I have been looking for Greens who have regular columns in local media to explaining our views, positions. I have, so far, only found four. write me if you know of others.
The second statement was in Liz Arnone's original post on the subject of Greens – Who Are We? In her attempt to explain how she thought this party got to be what it is, she quoted Steve Welzer regarding the role of ecology.
I joined the Green Horizon project because of its emphasis on ecology. The Green Party of Canada has been growing strongly recently due to its emphasis on ecology. The "green" metaphor is wildly popular all around us these days. The U.S. Green Party could ride that wave if it would present a primarily ecological message.
Liz's reaction to this was somewhat surprising to me, given her leadership in the NJ State Party. (I used to live in NJ.) I extract only what she said about ecology itself.
We cannot only be an eco/environmental organization, centered around EcoVillage enclaves around the world, with our own little organic vegetable gardens protected from the outside world, and only accessible to the very few. This mindset does not concern itself with social justice and corporate takeover of our world.
What I find surprising is that Liz's view of ecology is not so different from that of the local columnist that I cited above. It views ecology as some sort of mystical, agrarian utopian interpretation of the world. Both truly fail to understand what ecology, especially what we call deep ecology really is, as it is neither agrarian nor utopian.
Since I am one of those with their own column, I will answer Burton Anderson when my next column appears. However, I need to use this space to answer Liz.
I grew up in a very Republican family. My parents were proud of saying that, during the Great Depression they did not always know where the next meal was coming from, but they never went on the dole. There was a strong streak of independence and self sufficiency in the entire community. That is one influence.
By the time I was ready for high school, I was very allergic to wheat straw, oat straw, corn pollen and alfalfa. That was not good for life in a farm community where high school freshmen had to choose Ag or Home Ec and the only summer job for a teen was de-tasseling corn. This prompted my parents to move us to Flagstaff, AZ. That was Goldwater country and he was one senator. My Congressman was Stewart Udall. Both, however, had a strong sense of the need to protect the environment. Goldwater understood that conservative and conservation were the same.
It was about 30 years before I took the time to study more deeply, but when I did it was to read The Web of Life by Fritjof Capra. It is from that reading, and those that a curious mind was led to read afterward, that I really began to understand deep ecology.
There is another general thread of deep ecology. It begins with Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess who coined the term and is essentially a moral response to the universe. The other, which I took from Capra, is essentially a scientific understanding of how the universe really works and what constitutes a "living system." It is my opinion that not enough attention is given this scientific understanding, to the detriment of all.
There are two concepts which demand further development. One was given the name autopoiesis. The word was coined by two scientists at the University of Santiago in Chile (Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela) and comes from joining the Greek terms "auto" (self) and "poieses" (making). Living systems are "self making", are networks of interactions with closed loops (feedback loops) that continue the life of the system.
The other concept is that of "bringing forth a world." Even in popular culture there is the idea that you can never cross the same river twice. So it is with all life. We are always in the process of brining forth the world in which we live the next instant, take our next breath.
These concepts are not limited to the descriptions of the physical world, which we can study. They are also at the root of the discussion of how we know what we know, thus Varela's work in cognitive theory and the publication of "The Embodied Mind" that outlines the Santiago Theory.
Finally, the same concepts of autopoiesis and of bringing forth a new world are at the heart of social / political systems. Nowhere is this more clear than in the realm of politics. That is why I believe that no political organization will ever be successful that is only against things without consciously defining the new reality that we are bringing forth.
While some things must obviously be opposed there is always a need to be putting forward a positive side, the invention of the world that will replace the one we now have. This is what I think of when I hear the term "future focus" in Green discussions. We are, with each action, each interaction, brining forth a new world.
I don't know how many parts this will have. I know that there will be at least two more: one that will take the ideas of ecology and show how that apply to social interaction, including politics. The other will be an exposition as to why I believe that all of the rehashing of the past is another reinforcing feedback loop that condemns us to live in the past. We get very adept at what we practice and we seem to love to practice those actions that do us the least good.
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i appreciate the mention of the idea that no politics can thrice on anti alone.
The great challenge to us is the imagineering one. It is easy to list the Monasantos, Bushs, and other enemies of our survival and the beauty of life. It is mere accounting and does not require or produce leadership and vision.
Collectively we posses many more answers than problems.
Even if one confines discussion to those answers with proven effect against our problems, there are more than any one of us knows. The real answer is one of collation. Collecting, indexing, and publicizing the answers is likely the great work of our times.
Arguing about the past has it's place in this context, but it is not the work that matters most. Understanding the past is an important part of choosing our options, but we can only choose from options we know, and we have yet to compile a very good list of those options.
While the platforms of various Green Parties supply an ample list of the larger scale political solutions that are likely to be valuable, they have none of the technical and daily life solutions that we need to understand and choose from.
i think those who are trying to represent the vast majority of our people who understand that great change is needed have a great need to trust more in the average person. We need to find out what we really think and share it with each other better.
Last year i was in a political science class that did a survey of opinion in our state (WI). We intended to show that most people have a deeper understanding of the issues surrounding the minimum wage than most people think. We intended to find out what types of people understand it best. We did this with a prior expectation that people agreed more than most thought they do. We found a level of comprehension of many factors involved in the politics minimum wage that surprised every one of us, even the most optimistic were somewhat amazed.
i found out then, once again, that my own level of optimism about the improvement of our understanding, across the spectrum(s) of demographics, is always behind the times these days. We have to understand that there are few who cannot be surprised at the degree to which they themselves can learn from the accumulated views of our fellow citizens.
We live in a rapidly changing world, where the most dangerous changes happen very quickly, often in a conscious attempt to avoid our reaction. We must do a better job of communicating to the dupes our society has made of of us all, just how much we are not dupes.
Especially when you focus on the positive, there is much that many agree on.
We must understand these agreements, we must articulate them, we must propose solutions, and we must help choose the best solutions.
Corn derived ethanol is a good example of how fast i can go from fearing the public's ability to understand what is wrong with the current technologies and market subsidies, and what we need to do instead. My head is spinning with how fast many different people arrived at the same inevitable answers in different subcultures and markets.
Find answers, share answers, identify best answers, apply them.
There is so much we agree on it is hardly politics, it's demographics, epidemiology really, to find agreement on solutions. Our only real enemy is the lack of understanding that we are our own biggest threat. The media may only keep one distracted until one realizes the solutions are all around us.
We have gone well beyond the point where social and environmental issues have fused. We are beyond the point of arguing what the biggest problems are and who is at fault. Ideology is to a large degree a definitions of who the enemy is. We have gone beyond ideology, indeed somewhat beyond mere politics. We are in the time of discussion of means of embodying the public will to survive.
We must start by knowing that will is stronger and more informed than any effort to overpower or misinform it. We must also know that it's power to inform us has overwhelmed our power to inform it. The cult of personality fights it's dying battle in your own head.