There must be a thousand influences for every belief.
Sustainability is not some word I picked from the air, or a token cause for our trip. It is to me, the defining concept of the 21st century. It is the most overused and least understood word I can think of.
Where to begin? It seems like the “green revolution” has worked its way into every corridor of culture. Many people are aware of how they can save the planet; the advertising of green products and energy saving tips is prolific. But there is a why behind our actions that is often unexplored. We have beliefs based on our values that guide our decision making. Why am I talking about this? Because it will take more than recycling and changing lightbulbs to change a complex system we call culture.
If a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves...There’s so much talk about the system. And so little Understanding.”
-Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
There must be a thousand influences for every belief.
What could the origins of our beliefs look like? Some researchers interested in this question asked professionals from four major conservation organizations to describe what life experiences were the most significant in developing their conservation interests. They found 44 of the 45 had youthful experiences in the outdoors and experience in pristine environments. Other categories included influential parents or teachers and some cited witness to environmental destruction. (Significant Life Experiences: A New Research Area in Environmental Education, Thomas Tanner)
Naturally, the concept of sustainability involves much more than significant life experiences shaping environmental conservation beliefs. This is just one way to exploring our relationship to nature: the foundation.
Like our relationships with other people, the relations we have with nature are dynamic, complex, and different depending on who it is. Maybe a tree, maybe and animal, maybe a place. But here’s a secret- everything on this planet is nature.
“I used to cling tightly to a chimeric vision of nature as something pure and somehow prehuman and to the idea that anything human-made removed a place from its natural status. But I have come to understand nature differently. Surely there is a continuum from a pure, undefiled wilderness to a trammeled concrete industrial area. But there is no place, we know now, as the relentlessly global impacts of climate change become increasingly understood, that humans have left untouched; and there is no place that the wild does not, in some small way, proclaim itself. Many human activities are wholly ugly, working against the nature upon which we forget we depend. Still, we do not flip flop back and forth, now in nature, now in culture, now feeling quite animal-like, now wholly intellectual. We are, at all times, both at once. In this humans may be unique, but we are no less natural. We are the human species, living in culture, bound by nature...When we allow ourselves to think of nature as something out there, we become prey to complacency. If nature is somewhere else then what we do here doesn't really matter”
-Lyanda Lynn Haupt, Crow Planet
It is with this introduction I invite you to create, if you are so inclined, a small representation of your relationship to nature. It can be anything. Lyanda’s reflections leave the door wide open. Perhaps you write and wish to post an essay or poem you have written. Maybe there are some pictures you have that articulate a feeling or place discoveries were made, or where they perished. Dig into origins. What moves you?
(Email it to paddleforsustainability@gmail.com and I’ll post it here.)
POSTS
May 24th, 2011 by MVG: Marvin and the Martin
