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I'm depressed. Down in the dumps. Anxious and overwhelmed. For over two years I've focused on personal change: eliminating disposable plastic from my life, reducing my energy consumption, and living as simply as possible. But when I step out my front door, the evidence of overconsumption and waste smacks me squarely in the head: piles of trash, pallets of cheap plastic crap, plastic bags and bottles and packaging. Turning on the TV, I am bombarded by messages to Buy. More. Stuff!
Are any of my individual actions making any difference in the bigger picture at all?
Last month, about twenty different people forwarded me an article by Derrick Jensen in Orion Magazine, "Forget Shorter Showers: Why personal change does not equal political change." I resisted reading it because I feared it would cause me to question the personal actions I've been engaged in and promoting on my blog. But in the last few weeks, I've come to the point of questioning the efficacy of personal change on my own. So I figured, how could it hurt? Living in denial of the bigger picture certainly doesn't help. Despite the logical fallacies and blatant hyperbole that characterize his first paragraph,
WOULD ANY SANE PERSON think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday, or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons...
Jensen goes on to make some important points:
1) Taking shorter showers will not solve the global water crisis when individuals only use about 10% of available water and the rest is consumed by agriculture and industry.
2) Reducing our personal energy consumption is not enough when the vast majority is used for commercial, industrial, corporate, agribusiness and government interests.
3) Cutting our own personal waste is not enough when municipal waste accounts for only 3% of the total waste production in the United States.
4) Shifting our personal spending within our current destructive industrial economy will not be enough to reverse the environmental damage wrought by that very economy.
Jensen goes on to explain,
I want to be clear. I’m not saying we shouldn’t live simply. I live reasonably simply myself, but I don’t pretend that not buying much (or not driving much, or not having kids) is a powerful political act, or that it’s deeply revolutionary. It’s not. Personal change doesn’t equal social change.
He's right that all of our personal changes will not reverse the destruction of our environment without massive political and social change as well. But (and this is a BIG BUT) where does he think the will for political change comes from in the first place?
Last November, I criticized a statement made by Obama that "we can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective." I responded:
Changing lightbulbs can help to change people's minds. Changing lightbulbs is a gateway action that can lead to other kinds of changes: changing the way a person votes, for example. Individual actions help to create awareness, and it's awareness that creates the climate for political change. Because WE are the government. And the government doesn't change unless we do.
Each act of change we make as individuals creates a greater personal investment in the outcomes of those actions. We first make changes for ourselves. We feel like we are doing our part. We learn that all of us are responsible for creating a healthy world. And then we come to understand, as I have, that while those actions are important for us as humans, they are not enough to ensure our survival as a species. If we care about that (and there are some who actually don't) we have to do more. But how can we go further if we haven't taken those first personal steps?
In a reaction to a comment on her blog, Green LA Girl Siel writes,
I do think that essay makes some good points, but one thing I wish it focused on more is that often, it’s the personal changes that actually lead people to get involved politically. I began with taking shorter showers, then got curious about the bigger issues about water in California, then wrote a post about it and have been getting more involved with the issue....
Personal change and political change are hardly mutually exclusive — The two really work in
