Couple years ago, much distressed by the state of the world in general and the sustainability challenge in particular, I wrote a long essay (unpublished) to calm myself and organize my thoughts. This diary is adapted from one section of that essay.
Three books greatly influenced my thinking: Moral Politics by George Lakoff, Collapse by Jared Diamond, and One With Nineveh by Paul and Anne Ehrlich. If you care about the Earth, about life on Earth, about the human family, your own family, or even if you just care about your own individual life and you plan to live longer than a few more years, please read these books. I already knew something big is happening here; after reading these books I have a much better understanding of what it is.
Progressive family values define a course of mature leadership of the human family, and stewardship of the Earth and the natural systems that support all of life. Progressive understanding and values could be summarized this way:
Island Earth
We live on this planet Earth, the only place in the universe that can sustain life as we know it. Earth is large but not infinitely so, and life on Earth is robust but not indestructible. We are children of this planet, and all human life depends on the natural systems and resources of the Earth.
It is essential to recognize our dependence on the natural world, and shameful to harm it or waste its bounty.
Conservatives do not understand that the Earth is rare, precious, and fragile. Some religious conservatives think that the Earth is practically irrelevant and their real existence is elsewhere. All conservatives seem to think we are separate from the Earth, when in reality we are part of it. Their conceptual universe rests on denial of this most simple, obvious, primary fact.
We Are Family
As individuals, our survival and well-being depend on our relationships with other people, and with the natural world. It’s like a family, without which there can be no life, no satisfaction in life, and no continuation of life. What is good for the family as a whole, is good for every member of the family. Healthy, sane people care for their families.
It is essential to care for your family, and shameful not to.
Conservatives seem to think that the parts precede the whole, and that the whole is simply an aggregation of parts. They do not see that without the web of life we call the biosphere, no living thing (such as an individual human being) could come into existence or live its life. The whole may be made up of parts, but it is equally and more profoundly true that the living parts are manifestations of the living whole.
Responsibility
Every family member is responsible to support the well-being of the family as a whole. The part of the family that you have the most control over is yourself, so your primary responsibility as an individual is to take care of yourself to the extent possible. The value to the family of strong, self-reliant individuals lies in their ability to help nurture and protect the whole family. The stronger family members (like parents) are responsible to care for the weaker family members (like children, the sick, or the elderly).
It is essential to meet your family responsibilities, and shameful to deny or avoid them.
To give credit where it is due, conservatives will tell you that they believe in individual responsibility. However, because they don’t understand that they are part of the Earth, of the web of life, and of the human family, they can’t understand where their true responsibilities lie. Consequently, their behavior resembles that of narcissists and sociopaths.
Trust
Healthy family relationships are based on trust. Children have no choice but to trust their parents, spouses are happiest when they trust each other, and parents should trust their children to grow into strong, responsible adults, if they are well cared for. All family members are responsible to be worthy of trust, and to support an atmosphere of trust within the family.
It is essential to be trustworthy, and shameful to betray trust.
Since conservatives do not understand that they are part of the Earth, the web of life, and the human family, or that they have responsibilities to the family which gave them life and on which future life will depend, they see trustworthiness as optional. The appearance of trustworthiness can be deployed as a useful tactic for attaining their goals, to be dispensed with if it becomes a source of inefficiency. I got mine, you’re on your own, caveat emptor, and carry a big stick—these are not the signature phrases of people you should trust.
Transparency
In a natural family, everyone knows what the other family members are up to. In the institutions of the broader human family (like commerce, government, or international relations), trust is supported by transparency. Social institutions require transparency and accountability as necessary conditions for trust.
It is essential to create and maintain transparency and accountability in social institutions, and shameful to block or evade them.
We can use transparency as a kind of test of the conservative value system. If they understand the real world we live in, recognize and honor their family, acknowledge their most fundamental responsibilities, and are truly worthy of our trust, these should manifest in a sort of relaxed openness and complete willingness to let any of us in to see how business is conducted and decisions are made. Hmm. Secret renditions, USA-gate, pre-war intelligence, Cheney’s energy plan, Enron/Anderson/WorldCom, Florida 2000, political supervision of science... no, I don’t think this crowd quite passes the transparency and accountability test.
The primacy of the Earth, the web of life, the human family, responsibility, trustworthiness, transparency and accountability-- these are the ideas and values that humanity needs to emphasize, internalize, and actualize in the 21st century, if we are to avoid crashing the speeding car of our civilization into the brick wall of environmental limits.
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In his fascinating and eminently readable 2005 book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond reviews a varied selection of societies, throughout history and in every part of the world, that faced challenges to their survival with differing degrees of success. Some societies met the challenges and continued to thrive for hundreds or even thousands of years; others did not, and suffered consequences ranging from a greatly reduced level of civilization, to outright extinction. Diamond explores the question of why some societies fared well, while others failed. He suggests that the answers to that question about past societies should provide insights into how our present, globalized society needs to respond to the challenges of this century.
Some of the factors that threatened past societies were beyond the control of their citizens, such as changes in climate. (Tellingly, in our time climate change due to global warming is known to be caused by human behavior-- proof of the qualitative change, in this century, in the scale and power of the human enterprise.) Survival factors that are beyond our control are certainly important to study and understand, but knowledge of such factors is merely academic unless we have a good grasp on the factors that are within our control. The two crucial factors within our control are human impacts on the environment, and human response to the challenges to survival.
Progressive family values carry the genes from which can grow a humane, intelligent response to the challenges to survival faced by global society in the 21st century. In contrast, right wing values and concepts are a prescription for the worst possible outcomes, which include unchecked environmental degradation that threatens critical systems such as food production; needless over-use of resources leading to scarcities and further degradation of the environment; and exceedingly ugly competition among humans as the overall situation deteriorates.
Is the contrast plain enough? In the face of the sustainability challenge, progressive values offer to all the best chance of survival with dignity. Right wing values offer the best chance of catastrophic collapse and ultimate moral corruption. Voters of America, please choose which path we should follow.