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Gaian Rants | ||||
What Motivates People to Change? by Linda Marks The plight of the Earth is not news to most people I know. With the dramatic temperature variations we’re experiencing these days, drought conditions in many parts of the country, mutations in frogs, fish, and other wildlife as a result of changes in their environment, the fact that the Earth and its ecosystem are in crisis is hard to ignore. The Earth is certainly screaming loudly in the ways that she can. She has been doing so for a very long time, yet things keep getting worse. What will it take for people to wake up to the Earth’s needs, and ultimately to our deeper needs, since we are part of the Earth? What motivates people to make life altering changes? Turning Points When I was sixteen, a stranger tried to rape and murder me. My life was literally on the line, and I found myself praying for help to the God I was never raised to believe in. God said for me to live I needed to commit to the purpose I had been given at birth — to be a healer and a social architect, a voice of the heart in an often heartless world. Scared as I was of embracing my purpose, I did, and with it I embraced my life. Life threatening situations, significant losses, or the kinds of epiphanies that come when we somehow wake up and see our lives and the world around us through different eyes can be turning points causing us to make fundamental life changes. In the addictions world, this is often referred to as “hitting bottom.” People hit bottom when their familiar, habitual, and often comfortable ways of living and relating totally unravel. To turn his/her life around, s/he has no choice but to make fundamental change. Turning points are about crisis opening the door to higher consciousness, to spiritual connection, and finding the resources to melt away the tectonic plates that life’s wounds and deprivations have placed over our hearts. For many the situation must become life threatening before change is unavoidable. With regard to the state of the Earth, how far down must we to go to hit bottom as a planet? This is a very sad, if not shocking question to have to ask. Why can’t we get it? Is it possible that we’re so wounded and disconnected that, like an addict, we’ve become numb to the reality of our destructive ways of living? Restoring a Sense of Connection to the Land Chellis Glendinning, an ecopsychologist and author who lives in a land-based community in Chimayo, New Mexico, feels that in order to grasp the reality of what we are living with we need to restore a sense of connection with the land. Modern life is about keeping the wheels of progress turning and the buzz of the computer going, 24 - 7, fast and focused, with little attention to the seasons, the cycles of life or even our bodies’ natural rhythms and needs. Chellis feels we must find ways to shed the lifestyles promoted by multi-national corporations and come back to bioregional sustainability. “The bottom line of cultural identity, of well-being, of nutrition, of ecology and economy,” Chellis states, “lies in how you relate to the land around you. You understand your actions and their impact. I say this not from living in the middle of San Francisco as a theory. I say this as a person living in a land- based community in northern New Mexico. I am watching it be overtaken by the dominant culture, but I know what it was. I am watching it break down.” How different our awareness and sense of connection with the Earth is if instead of going to restaurants and supermarkets, we raise our own food or it comes from within one hundred miles of where we live. Where I live in the Boston area, organic vegetable co-ops — CSA’s — are emerging as a way for people to reconnect with the origins of the food we eat. My six and a half year old son treasures those few times each year when it is OUR turn to go to the farm and get the vegetables! Creating a Culture of Sustainability Asking what is more fundamental, an individual’s choice of values and lifestyle or a cultural set of values and lifestyle is like asking what came first, the chicken or the egg. Our individual choices do help shape the culture we live in. Yet, the cultural forces influence the options available to us and the ease or difficulty with which we can express our values through the way we live. When I interviewed Chellis, she had recently given a lecture at the Annual Sustainability Fair in Bloomington, IN where she saw the most highly developed sustainability culture created by white Americans that she has seen. “It’s a very unusual place,” she reflects. “I am used to seeing sustainability cultures developed by Chicanos or Native Americans.” The sustainability culture in the farming community of Bloomington started to grow in the 1960’s. “There were serious homesteaders—people really into growing their own food. They had their own radio station,” notes Chellis. “People had given up their cars, walked everywhere, had bicycles they creatively welded together to hold other things. People had let their yards grow back into wilds. This posed a challenge to the town ordinances. People got together and talked about the new plants, animals and birds that had come to live there. Some built houses from recycled materials like shipping pallets and faucets picked up at the dump. Once it started, because they were isolated, the people continued with this way of life. Bloomington is not a place of gentrification. It is a working class, middle class town. There are no extremely wealthy people and no extremely poor people. Sociologically, at this point in time, Bloomington is a very unusual place.” When looking at how this all came to be, Chellis observes, “There was an awakening to how the dominant society worked, a look at it and a rejecting of it. People asked how shall we live, and decided to live that way.” Living Simply, By Choice David Heitmiller, author of Getting A Life, and his wife Jacki, were once fully engaged in the mainstream culture with high powered corporate jobs and a life style to match. For a time, they were happy but eventually they began to feel less than fulfilled. With the help of Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin’s book Your Money Or Your Life, they gradually simplified their lifestyle and now help others do the same. David uses the concept of the ecological footprint, coined by Bill Reese, which compares the demand on natural resources with the actual supply available. If everybody in the world lived the lifestyle of the U.S., we would need four planets worth of resources. U.S. citizens use about 24 acres per person, the average Canadian uses 17 acres, the average Italian uses 9 acres. If you divide the productive capacity of the Earth by our population, you end up with 5 acres per person, never mind other species. Ethiopia and India use 2 acres per person, China - 5. “Even after fourteen years of simplifying our lives, our footprint is still 14 acres,” acknowledges David. One woman in a group he ran found her footprint was 38 acres. David finds that the concept of the ecological footprint helps people begin to get a grasp on what they need to change in their lives. “You first need to become aware,” David notes. “You then need to find the motivation to change. That is why I keep doing study groups on Simple Living.” David leads groups of ten people through a workbook and has them talk about issues and discussion questions. “These people will make changes in their lives and will talk with other people. Working with them is one of the things I can do.” The first step towards helping our planet survive is getting our own lives in order, including how we live each day, finding right livelihood employment, getting out of the rat race. “When you get your own house in order,” David explains, “it is easier to open up to the environmental level, and then the spiritual level. We started with simple living. Then we talked with people in our community who had more knowledge of environmental issues. We did reading to supplement all of these efforts. In time, we began to see the connections. We saw the social justice aspect: Is it fair for us to be gobbling up the resources here in North America and not allowing people on the other side of the planet to survive? We saw the spiritual aspect: We are all part of the greater universe. Knowing this gives us more reason for wanting fairness and equity, more reason for wanting to preserving the Earth for future generations.” Things you can do to change your life -- and life on Earth 1. Calculate your ecological footprint (How to do this is available on www.redefiningprogress.org). Consider what changes you might make in your lifestyle to contribute to fairness and equity in using the planet’s resources. 2. Form or join a voluntary simplicity group. Meet with others who are concerned with similar issues and ready to talk about how to make changes in their lives. 3. Consume less stuff. What do you really need? 4. Drive less. Down-size your car. 5. Buy food from local sources. Join a CSA or other vegetable co-op. Go to farmers’ markets or help organize a farmers’ market. Garden and compost. 6. Evaluate your current work situation. Are you making a living or as Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin say “making a dying?” Seek out coaches, workshops, friends, and other forums to explore right livelihood. 7. Find good homes for stuff you no longer need. Give clothes to shelters, thrift shops, church fairs. Organize a toy swap. Find a non-profit in need of furniture, an old computer, or electronic devices. 8. Initiate. If you have ideas for how to make changes, find others who might also be interested. Organize groups to talk, study and act. | ||||
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