What does giving up open up? - by Isabelle Drury - 0 views
isabelledrury.substack.com/...what-does-giving-up-open-up
consumption consumerism response culture capitalism ideology rationalization resilience
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A friend of mine recently ran a climate education session with a local university. The workshop guided the students through the science of the changing climate and the findings of the IPCC reports and, apparently, empowered them to take action.
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Instead, they rebuffed with arguments blaming corporations for causing climate change, asking why they had to give up stuff when big businesses are allowed to freely fuck it all up; declaring their lives are hard enough already!
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Don’t get me wrong; I don’t hold these beliefs and never buy fast fashion or a piece of plastic. I hold these beliefs whilst sometimes buying new clothes or out-of-season strawberries in a plastic container. It’s the justification I have a problem with.
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Because I see these arguments constantly. Why should *I* have to do XYZ if a large corporation is doing ABC? Why can’t *I* go on holiday when an insert celebrity is flying their private jet 10x a week? Why should *I* care about this thing when no one cares about this other thing?!
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I’ve become a staunch believer there are few excuses when it comes to actions which directly harm our planet.
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We live in a society where unless you’re very wealthy and VERY time-rich you cannot exist without impacting the planet. Let’s not kid ourselves into believing there is any other reason we live in this way.
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the real question we should be posing is what does giving this stuff up open up for us? How does living in this different way enrich and improve our lives and our wider community’s lives?
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You don’t overconsume because your life is hard and big corporations exist, you overconsume because you live in a society built in a way to funnel you into doing exactly that.1
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I wrote ‘the narrative younger people are fed’ because whilst these things are true, I often feel they’re used as a way to keep us down, to keep us depressed and complacent so we don’t rebel.
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I think these students believe these narratives to be true, doing so keeps them safe in their current way of living, and allows them to get through the day without as much mental turmoil.
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I’ve been there. I tried to do it all. I tried to be zero-waste-thrift-store-girly, but it drove me crazy. One person can’t live in a completely ‘sustainable’ way, without ever leaving a footprint on this planet, it’s impossible and will only leave you feeling extremely exhausted and extremely guilty.
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The truth is sometimes I buy new socks and plastic contact lenses. Sometimes I want to buy a nice bag and a new pair of shoes and fit in with the wider society and others in my age group. Yes, it plays directly into capitalism’s hands, yes, I am doing what the man wants me to do, I still feel guilty, and I still question all my life choices, but god damn, you gotta live.
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can you blame ‘em? With the narrative younger people are fed these days: you’ll never own a house; the job market is atrocious; good luck building any kind of safety net; another oil and gas line has been approved; one war is brewing and one has broken out; oh look! another recession.
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Rather than saying we have to give things up to Save The Earth!, that we have to stop consuming to Live Sustainably!, we need to tell people why living in this alternative way is so rich, so nourishing, so plentiful, so beautiful.
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I’ve quoted before and will quote again from Donella Meadows: “People don’t need enormous cars; they need respect. They don’t need closets full of clothes; they need to feel attractive and they need excitement, variety and beauty. [...] People need identity, community, challenge, acknowledgement, love, joy. To try and fill these needs with material things is to set up an unquenchable appetite for false solutions to real and never-satisfied problems. The resulting psychological emptiness is one of the major forces behind the desire for material growth.”2
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Our climate conversations–our climate education–cannot just focus on what we need to give up, instead it must focus on what we get to build and welcome into our lives when we’re not wasting our money, time, and energy on buying or not buying new clothes or plastic-wrapped food.
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The majority of my friends growing up did not have hobbies, we found joy and community and connection in consumption. Yes, consuming less is an essential piece of the climate puzzle, but telling people they can no longer consume will not get us there, it will only be taking away many people’s only sense of joy and satisfaction in life.
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We will not empower people by telling them to Be More Sustainable!, we will empower people by inviting them to create a world that finds value and beauty and satisfaction in more human ways, without the dark tint capitalist society has clouded our view with.
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Those of us in the global north are some of the biggest individual contributors to climate change, if we all lived like the average American, we would need 5.1 Earths to sustain us all (sorry, we can’t fob it all off to corporations).
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But, in a way, we are often the ones who are most cut off from any possibility of reactivating older institutions, ones that know how to live in harmony with the environment and the local land and could guide us to a better future.
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We’re so dependent on existing systems we don’t even notice they exist–until they break down. Just take away one piece of our modern lifestyles and we are suddenly unable to function. A power cut? No cooking, no heating, no warm showers, not even the ability to boil the kettle for a lukewarm bath.
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A food supply chain issue? I don’t know a single person in my local area who grows any type of fruit or vegetables
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we also see ourselves as the hero, we’re going to save the world with our unrealistic techno-fixes (that don’t yet exist). We have the self-important sense that if we just had the right technology we could fix all of the world’s problems and then everyone would be happy.
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Westerners are often cast as both the villain and the hero of climate change. We’re the villain because we’ve created so many of these problems with our unquenchable thirst to pillage, develop, and create more and more crap.
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I don’t know how we can turn back the wheels of modernised helplessness, but whilst we figure this one out, we need to consider what we want to bring into the new world.
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learning new skills for a new future is an act of resilience. Creating a community of individuals who can look after each other is an act of resilience. Building a better way of life for yourself–and those around you–is an act of resilience.
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I can’t yet name the plants I meet on my walks, nor can I name the bird calls I hear outside of my window, but I can learn how to feed my family with food grown in my community garden, support builders and creators using reclaimed materials, and connect with people who live a stone’s throw away from my front door
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Anything we learn to do for ourselves–actions that can be taken out of the hands of large corporations in an act of helplessness–is a way of helping our Earth. This is my act of resilience.