Change, part 1
We have these doors on campus that keep getting moved around. They're not really doors, they just look like them, four of them, lined up in a row in the middle of some big open outside area. They have pictures and blurbs on them from the 1960s and 1970s talking about the University District, the culture of the U-district, the history that passed through this area. I like reading them, peering closely at the newspaper clips printed on the hard plastic surface, staring at the people in the pictures holding signs, marching, shaking hands.
I stopped there today, thinking about Thoreau and Jack Turner and Edward Abbey -- large, important figures in the environmental movement -- and wondered what it would have felt like to have lived through those years of action and end up...today.
Jack Turner is an interesting read. He says we're all apathetic. He says, "we end up feeling helpless, and since it is human nature to want to avoid feeling helpless, we become dissociated, cynical, and depressed." He says, "If you go to Mecca and blaspheme the Black Stone, the believers will feed you to the midges, piece by piece. Go to Yellowstone and destroy grizzlies and grizzly habitat, and the believers will dress up in bear costumes, sing songs, and sign petitions." He says, "we fear our anger because it might lead us to do something illegal, thus threatening our freedoms." He says a lot more, too.
But standing in front of the plastic doors that lead nowhere and everywhere at the same time, with the sun setting in bright colors over the cloudy mountains through a gap in the orange and green leaves, I thought, maybe. I thought, energy is not used up, it is only transformed. What have we transformed it into today?
The "organic farming movement" used to be considered radical. Aldo Leopold, the father of the modern conservation movement, says, "The discontent that labels itself 'organic farming,' while bearing some of the earmarks of a cult, is nevertheless biotic in its direction, particularly in its insistence on the importance of soil flora and fauna." A cult? Perhaps we have moved forward after all, although our movement has not been seen in marches and sit-ins.
We have moved, that is sure. Momentum cannot be sustained in the same way for so long. Everything must change because it can't help itself. Life changes. Always.
The universe is expanding, the universe will contract, and then it will do it again and again and again. There is no beginning that we know of, there is no ending that we can see. The world does not fit itself into a simple line.
Do we seem to be moving backwards? Perhaps you are facing the wrong direction.
Are we moving forwards? Perhaps you need to turn around a few times, stand on your head.
There is no forward and no backward. There is no progress as we conceive of the word. Everything is a spiral.
Don't fight the spiral, dance it.
If you wish to change the world, you must work with the change that is already inherent within the world. If you wish to make people change, you must work with what they already know, what they already believe in. Nudge them towards the thoughts they can have, not the ones they will fight tooth and nail to ignore.
Be a catalyst, not a bomb.
I stopped there today, thinking about Thoreau and Jack Turner and Edward Abbey -- large, important figures in the environmental movement -- and wondered what it would have felt like to have lived through those years of action and end up...today.
Jack Turner is an interesting read. He says we're all apathetic. He says, "we end up feeling helpless, and since it is human nature to want to avoid feeling helpless, we become dissociated, cynical, and depressed." He says, "If you go to Mecca and blaspheme the Black Stone, the believers will feed you to the midges, piece by piece. Go to Yellowstone and destroy grizzlies and grizzly habitat, and the believers will dress up in bear costumes, sing songs, and sign petitions." He says, "we fear our anger because it might lead us to do something illegal, thus threatening our freedoms." He says a lot more, too.
But standing in front of the plastic doors that lead nowhere and everywhere at the same time, with the sun setting in bright colors over the cloudy mountains through a gap in the orange and green leaves, I thought, maybe. I thought, energy is not used up, it is only transformed. What have we transformed it into today?
The "organic farming movement" used to be considered radical. Aldo Leopold, the father of the modern conservation movement, says, "The discontent that labels itself 'organic farming,' while bearing some of the earmarks of a cult, is nevertheless biotic in its direction, particularly in its insistence on the importance of soil flora and fauna." A cult? Perhaps we have moved forward after all, although our movement has not been seen in marches and sit-ins.
We have moved, that is sure. Momentum cannot be sustained in the same way for so long. Everything must change because it can't help itself. Life changes. Always.
The universe is expanding, the universe will contract, and then it will do it again and again and again. There is no beginning that we know of, there is no ending that we can see. The world does not fit itself into a simple line.
Do we seem to be moving backwards? Perhaps you are facing the wrong direction.
Are we moving forwards? Perhaps you need to turn around a few times, stand on your head.
There is no forward and no backward. There is no progress as we conceive of the word. Everything is a spiral.
Don't fight the spiral, dance it.
If you wish to change the world, you must work with the change that is already inherent within the world. If you wish to make people change, you must work with what they already know, what they already believe in. Nudge them towards the thoughts they can have, not the ones they will fight tooth and nail to ignore.
Be a catalyst, not a bomb.