Voluntary Recession: Part II

Creating the kind of consensus necessary to effect a radical change in our institutions requires a fundamental shift in our collective consciousness.  Hard economic times could, of course, have such an effect, if the 1930s depression be any guide.  During that difficult decade, tens of millions of Americans became openly supportive of socialist policies.  However, the argument has also been waged for millennia that one's individual (as opposed to collective) action can be the key to a collective transformation.  This is the mystic’s path.  “You must be the change you want to see in the world,” Mohandas Gandhi said.  And Sartre in Existentialism and Human Emotions suggests that each person behave as they desire all people behave.  

Instead of expecting our political and business leaders to blithely accept a redistribution of wealth, we can perform the end around.  If Americans can accept, no aim for a lower standard of living, by letting go of the dream of ever-rising material wealth, of being the child with his face pressed to the candy store window, the addict begging for more even though more is killing him, we could regain our power.  If we’re not jonesing for the goods, the peddlers lose their power over us.  And by the way, in these same decades in which Americans have been working harder and consuming more, Americans have reported becoming increasingly unhappy, according to Richard Layard in his book Happiness. 

The idea is simple enough: work less, produce less, consume less.  Spend more time with family, in leisure, growing vegetables in your garden, puttering around the house, attending civic and social events, volunteering, exercising, meditating, praying, doing all the non-consumer things that bring happiness and ease and physical and mental health to a person’s life.  With less ambition and less drive to consume, one’s daily existence becomes less stressful and life actually more secure.   The house isn’t as big or perfect, the car isn’t as shiny, but more time allows for wiser consumer decisions (so that the drop in one’s material standard of living isn’t to the drop in income).  And, besides, we know, in our quieter moments, that inner happiness makes these priorities fade away like the illusion that they are. 

The reverberations across the social landscape could be immense.  Industry will sell their goods elsewhere, of course, continuing the post-modern form of imperialism, where companies become increasingly transnational, owing allegiance to no nation, to no one, having only to obey the laws their wealth cannot elude.  This may, as it turns out, be good for equality across the globe, but it won’t be good for the environment and our continuing Ecological Suicide.  It'll promote equal opportunity suicide. 

And some suggest that at home a downside of recession--whether voluntary or historically imposed-- is that industry will invest less on Green research and development and that government and business will redirect their focus onto the economy at the expense of the environment.  Perhaps.  However, as every environmental indicator worsens, anyway, technology-driven solutions have thus far proven themselves insufficient.  Economic growth and increased (Green) consumption hardly seem to be the way to improve the environment.  Again, these objections sound more like the addict's rationale for staying the course when their drug is threatened.

As for the recession, ours can become individual, voluntary and liberating.

Voluntary Recession: Part I

Robert Reich in his Feb. 13, 2008 New York Times op-ed piece, Totally Spent, says “We’re sliding into a recession, or worse…”  Americans have been spending beyond their means for decades by having more women join the workforce; by working longer hours; and by borrowing on the value of their homes through home equity loans.  The American consumer is running out of ways to “keep the spending binge going.”  He suggests that we either have to accept a lower standard of living, or “reverse the trends of widening inequality and more concentrated wealth.” 

Both are radical solutions, given the power of the American beliefs in consumption as the way to happiness and in the inevitability of progress and economic growth. The etymology of the word radical suggests going to the root.  The roots of our worldviews and of our behaviors need to change simultaneously.  Since the levers of power are firmly in the hands of concentrated wealth, wresting any of that wealth would prove to be as difficult as it has been since the dawn of civilization.  

In this country, however, the constitution is still enough intact to allow such a change.  As Robert Reich says in his book Supercapitalism: “ government could change the rules.  In theory, it could enact laws to make it easier for all employees to unionize, require all large companies to provide … …health insurance and pensions, enact zoning regulations to protect Main Street retailers from the predations of big-box retailer, and raise the minimum wage high enough to give all working people a true “living” wage.”  

We could, if we saw fit, but we have been properly trained to hold sacred the separation of finance and state.  So removed has economics become from the concept of freedom that, as Benjamin Barber notes, we now view ourselves as consumers, not as citizens.  In other words, we have come to voice our opinion by what we buy, not through the voting booth.

Ecological Suicide and Spirituality

Humanity has been caught in the act of performing Ecological Suicide.  We are in the process of destroying the ground of our material being, the complex bio-geochemical system that supports our animal nature.  And like an addict, we seemingly cannot stop ourselves.  We proceed knowingly, willingly, even though we are horrified by our behavior.  We continue to beget more children and consume far more than we need.  Our justifying rationale we sing like a drunken mantra—technology and human innovation will save us.  Still, the barrage of scientific reports, like a mirror to our souls, shows us that, by every measure, planetary health is declining.   

To stop the ingrained behaviors of our suicidal addiction will require more than just hard work.  Indeed, it will require the opposite of hard work. To work less, consume less, have fewer children, consume smarter.  And therefore, since these are ingrained in us by our very culture, it will require a transformation of consciousness on the individual and collective level.  The transformation will, in all probability, require the kind of spiritual transformation that the twelve step programs, for example, have found is often necessary for addicts to overcome their addiction.  Fortunately for us, the way to transformation has been paved for us by millennia of spiritual leaders.  It is time for them to truly lead and for us to empty ourselves of our previous convictions.

Ecological Suicide

Ecological suicide—particularly as it relates to humanity’s ability to feed itself—now looms as a far more immediate threat to human security than does global warming.  Indeed, global warming is but one, albeit significant, factor leading to the likely collapse of the post Cold War, Globalization dream.  A synthesis of the peer-reviewed papers suggests that “peak oil, water, soil, forests, fish, biodiversity and grain yields” will occur—if they haven’t already—within the next half-century.  Of the many disturbing consequences, the most unsettling remains the prospect of mass starvation within the Third World.  Yet, because the same global forces that have shaped our dreams have shaped our delusions, this horrific implication has received relatively scant notice in the mainstream media.  

Blowback and Amoebas

Blowback is a recently become well-known term, coming out of the CIA jargon, to describe unintended consequences for one’s actions.  In some respects, the fact that all actions have unintended consequences could render the world meaningless.  However, blowback signals to us of past mistakes, and can be used as learning tools.  

The amoeba, like any living system, will remain in a place as long as it’s needs are being met and it is comfortable.  When that balance changes, it will move. Most species of amoeba move by sending an extension of itself called pseudopods (false feet) in the desired direction, and then exerting the rest of its mass in that direction.  Pseudopods are tools of learning.  Our civilization has been comfortable for the last one hundred years in an oil energy regime.  Now, as prices rise to $100 a barrel and peak oil is being projected within our lifetimes, the system must find alternate energy resources.  It must exert itself to alternative spaces.  Naturally, we are sending pseudopods in many directions—other fossil fuels, nuclear, renewables, various solar and geothermal, etc.  Some of these will ultimately not net us long-term homeostasis.  They will be mistakcs.  It is becoming clear that certain renewables—specifically biofuels from grain and palm oil—are not the answer.  We need to withdraw our research pseudopods from these directions. 

From the Dec. 14, 2007 Science came one of the latest arguments against grain-produced biofuels—Amazonian deforestation.  Generous U.S. government subsidies have enticed many soy farmers to grow corn.  “Since 2006, corn production has risen 10%, while soy production has fallen 15%.”  This has fueled a rise in soy prices, which has in turn raised (soy-fed) cattle prices.  This then encouraged more Brazilian farmers to raze Amazonian forests to cash in on both soy production and cattle ranching. Blowback.  Mistake.  Feelers in the wrong direction. 

Front page January 19, 2007 New York Times, we read of more blowback from our energy-searching pseudopods, this time with respect to palm oil, soybean oil and other vegetable oils.  The oils provide energy as measured by calories.  We can use them as food or fuel.  We can eat them or we can heat our homes and fuel our cars.  The competition has contributed to about half of the 51% rise in the food price index (of the U.N.’s FAO) over the last two years.  Palm oil prices, alone, have risen 70%, leading to hundreds of thousands of acres of Malaysian tropical deforestation.