On not getting too down about the world

Someone emailed me the other day and asked me something along the lines of, “how do you keep going forward without getting too depressed about the world and everything that is going on in it?”

First let me say, I don’t think that my “going forward” is so particularly commendable. There are lots of people who have been trying not to harm the planet a lot longer than me. These quiet heroes, some of whom write to me with very helpful advice, do what they do just because the believe it’s right. When I meet and talk to these people, I quite frankly feel ashamed that I didn’t begin looking more closely at my impact on the planet before the age of 43.

But about the despondency over the planet: in my youth, I used to reason that there could be no God because if there was, how could there be so much suffering? Some years ago, I realized that if there is a God—or Hope or Truth or Oneness or Mystery or Goodness or whatever—then maybe the God resided in the feelings of compassion and grief over the suffering. In other words, if there was something Essential within us, maybe it was that Essence that lamented and asked, “how could there be so much suffering?”

Now, I’m not saying anyone should or shouldn’t believe in God or anything along those lines at all. I’m just talking about noticing that as well as suffering the human psyche contains a lot of concern about suffering. I’ve said before and I believe that compassion can be as powerful a force in human nature as greed when we choose to let it.

What buoys me is the fact that so many altruistic people are choosing to let it. Of course, I could do more, and maybe we all could. But I have hope. And when you embark on a project like No Impact Man and meet so many wonderful people who work and have always worked to help the world, you only get more hope. And more inspiration.

Some say it’s too late. Who knows? But I love that there are so many who help because it is the right thing to do, even if it is not the most efficient or even the most productive. They don’t care whether it is too late or not. They try. That’s what keeps me going forward.

Comments

[Sara]

In my previous job, documenting the decline of critically endangered fish in the desert southwest, I had a lot of people ask me how I could deal with those facts every day without getting utterly depressed. My answer always was, it does make me sad, and mad, that sometimes it seems like all we are doing is watching idly while species vanish before our eyes. But then I would remember that I was doing something, whatever that small little something is, to try to make things better. And that's all anyone can do, really.

I wonder more about people who go into work every day and produce widgets or revenue or nothing at all and how they can live with knowing that not only are they not doing anything to make things better, they are actively making things worse.

[Sandy]

I'm glad you addressed this as I was wondering the same thing just last evening. I was out working in my yard and hanging clothes to dry and then I came in and flipped on the TV and there was a Vegas commercial...all the lights, the water in the middle of the desert, etc. And I shut the tv off and thought "how can me hanging laundry make one whit of difference?". Well, thanks for the timely uplift. I can do what I can, and no more, but at least I've done it. Thanks for the encouragement.

[Anna]

Just found your site.....bikes, organics, and ditching plastics - a man after my own heart! Just linked your site, and will be checking in for sure, keep it up!

[Patrik]

I am a Parent of three boys. I also believe in God. Since becoming the former, my appreciation for the later has greatly increased. I love my kids with everything I have in me to love with. There are very few things that I would not do for them. But I have learned that the only way sometimes for them to learn a lesson is to make a choice and to learn from that choice. This doesn’t mean that I will let them jump off a bridge to learn that it will kill you, but it does mean that sometimes I will let them misuse something they care about to learn that it will break. I’ll also let them argue with each other, sometimes incessantly, because I know that when one of them is hurt or in trouble they are there to help them up or to protect them. I will allow them choice, and I will allow them “suffering”. I will, however, nurture them, love them regardless of their choices, and help them to repair any damage they’ve caused. These are lessons I learned from my father, and I hope my children will learn from me.
It is common to refer to people as “playing God”. Doctors can keep people alive when perhaps they shouldn’t be, or even create life through science and technology, but giving life is only half of the equation. God doesn’t just give life; He helps you to learn how to appreciate it and to preserve it. He gives us free will to make choices, and I believe he steers us toward the right ones if we let Him. How does this relate to the planet? Well, I believe that some of us are waking to the fact that we’ve been allowed to misuse it. We’ve exercised our choice, and we are learning the lessons. Some have started to repair the damage as best they can; perhaps while others have not yet learned that any damage has been done. Some have suffered floods, famines, heat waves, while others have come to their aid. Because somewhere deep down we know we’re brothers. We’re related to each other. Maybe not by blood or birth, but something ties us together. This is why I have hope. These are the lessons I learned from my Father.

[Keith Beavan]

"God" is just a useful three letter word so we can communicate the idea of something "other" when we speak to another person.As for the specifics I can't fully grasp your concept nor you mine, but a good working definition is "God is love" and that is internal as well as external. Anyway, when I tap into within me or outside me, it makes me feel better.

[Peter]

It starts and builds over time. Of course you don't feel like you're doing much, but you are. You are having an impact (for the positive) to so many people. Keep it up!

Interesting perspective on the lamenting designer within us. I agree totally and believe God does, indeed, grieve over the suffering in the world. He designed us to fellowship with Him, in harmony. We have chosen as a people not to do so. The anguish we feel inside represents the very anguish God feels for us. Humbling thoughts.

[Catherine]

In our discussions about the Big Picture, my boyfriend sometimes wonders if we're too late and if efforts can actually change anything. I usually respond that I have to hope in the potential to create a better world, one little bit at a time, because the despair would be too overwhelming if I didn't. And if there are enough people, hoping and acting, their small contributions will add up and actually turn their optimism into reality. I look around at individuals, organizations and even governments making positive changes, and I can't help but see a better future.

[dare]

Your email came when I was feeling the same way. Some days I feel like I'm trying to put out a forest fire out with a water pistol. It makes me want to throw in the towel.
Knowing that there are others out there who do care and want to make change for the better is one of the main things that keeps me going. I have to remind myself that what I do has an impact. Twenty years ago when I first started learning about what we are doing to the planet, I've seen many people wake up on many issues since then, and it's growing. We must continue to communicate, share our ideas, experiences, and stories.
I think of people throughout history who refused to tow the line, and be like sheep. They stayed the course, and it had an affect on the next generation. We may not see the impact of our actions today, like planting a tree, we may not see it when it's full grown, but we left something for the next generation to admire and enjoy.
Starting about April 25-30 is "Turn Off TV" week. Even though I don't own a TV, I thought what else could I do, turn off for that week? Well, I have a few techno devices that I could at least cut back on, and the main one is my computer. So I've decided to shut down my computer for the week. Maybe TV turn-off week could be expanded to "Techno-Turn-Off Week" or "Unplug-An-Appliance-Week". I will let you know how it went, and if others, TV or whatever, decide to do the same, let us know. Imagine (don't just imagine it!) what the impact, or better said, the "non-impact" would be.

[Jake Jones]

I was reading some comments on other entries where people were railing against you and anyone else who would have a baby and create a "polluter/consumer (ie, child)" who will screw up the world for the next 70 years with its foul impact on the earth. Well, if those people are so concerned about the impact of humans on the earth such that they will bad-mouth innocent little babies, then maybe they should just commit suicide. This will remove their own selfish impact from planet earth. If they kill themselves in a remote part of the wilderness, then coyotes, wolves, birds, and ants can eat their bodies and complete the cycle.

[Leslie]

Don't feel bad about being 43 before looking at your impact. I was 50. That's not much consolation.

What keeps people from changing consumption habits even when they know the habits are bad? There's a million dollar question.

[piddler]

"There's a million dollar question."

Are you being literal, Leslie?

Because it is actually the billions of dollars question - it's how much money has been and is being spent to convince us we need the things advertisers advertise. Growing up in a consumer culture, consuming becomes so normal it is hard to even realize it needs to be questioned. Kinda like growing up with an alcoholic parent and assuming all parents are like that...

That's why it takes 43 or 50 years for some of us to figure things out. Our brainwashers are hoping we'll never figure it out at all.

[Jason]

I know this isn't totally on topic for this post, but since 'god' has come up, i want to share my thoughts. Part of what is standing in the way of progress on this side of the world, at least from a certain portion of the population, is religious belief. I think the problem manifests itself in a number of ways:
1) The whole 'dominion over the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea' thingy - i think this has been very liberally interpreted.
2) The Christian belief that we live in a world of God's design - if this is how God made the world then how can we, as mere mortals, be arrogant enough to think that our actions could somehow interfere with/alter God's master plan?
3) The complete integration of capital accumulation into religious practice - God wants us to be as rich as we can possibly get, and so by accumulating wealth I'm doing 'his' work - likewise God doesn't want us to be poor, and if this 'environmentalism' thing is going to hit pocketbooks, then that must not be what God wants either.
4) Stewardship and the Apocalypse - I'm fairly certain that most Christians on the earth today feel like they're living in the 'end-times', perhaps even that God will return to Earth in our lifetime. If this is so, then, from that perspective, why bother trying to fix this mess, it's all just a sign of Satan's work here and the 'chosen ones' aren't going to be here much longer anyway, so it's the sinners' problem.
I guess what puzzles me is this: most good parents would insist on their child taking care of themselves, their room, their belongings etc...and would likely exact some form of punishment for a child failing to adhere to these rules - probably in the form of removing some of the child's liberties or keeping them from the things they cherish the most for a certain period of time. Now, if God is our heavenly father, and we here in the west, as 'his' children, have done nothing but s**t our pants and sully our bedrooms, then what makes us think we're going to get the ultimate reward - that of ascendancy to heaven?
any thoughts out there?

[Colin Beavan aka No Impact Man]

Jason--
I would neither call myself religious nor non-religious, so I'm not a defender of religion, per se.

I do think there is a big problem here in that many secular people think that religious people are the proplem and many religious people think that secular people are the problem. Meanwhile arguing about who is the problem and geting angry at each other instead of figuring out how to talk to each other misses the point. I discuss this at length in my post A word to the critics and a story about a cat.

The way I see it what we all have in common outweighs our differences a thousand times. We all love our children and hope for the best for them, for example. So I'm personally not into pointing fingers anymore (I used to be though). Instead, I'd like to acknowledge our differences and then look for a common language.

I'm not a Christian conservative by a long stretch, but I've had a lot of supportive emails from Christian conservatives. They say they like the No Impact Man approach because it emphasizes individual action rather than what they consider to be coercive regulation. I'm really proud of the fact that they like NIM. It means that some of these Christian conservatives and I have stumbled upon a commonality that we can work with together.

I encourage us all to look for more commonalities and ways to work together. If we are having problems with people we consider to be on the other side, let's ask ourselves what their concerns are and see if we can't find common ground.

Religion in this country is pretty certainly here to stay. It gives a lot of people consolation and meaning in difficult times. To say it is no good doesn't seem to help much. To accept people as they are and to look for a way to dialog with them seems a more constructive way forward, at least to me.

Thanks so much for your comment, Jason, and please write more anytime.

All the best,
Colin aka No Impact Man

[Niki]

In the past few weeks, I've noticed some interesting changes at my workplace. People have voluntarily begun turning out the ladies washroom light when it's not in use (it's a large washroom with about six stalls). In my office, we only turn the photocopier on when we need to copy something....the light in that room also stays off. Small changes, but they've come about without any formal discussion about energy conservation. Isn't that neat? Before I left work for the weekend today, I turned off my computer and unplugged all of my electronic devices (office television, fan, radio, etc.). Feels good. :-)

[robert]

i appreciate your candor with concern to your faith. as a christian AND an environmentalist, i believe that creation is a gift to humanity, and we continually disrepsect God by trashing His gardern. i think you might appreciate the book 'blue like jazz' by donald miller. he write about this struggle you feel/felt between compassion and the existence of god. you might like it.

[Alison]

Hi Colin

I find it very interesting that your project has lead you to discussing some sort of 'faith'.

I'm agnostic two out of three days, but I am often surprised that having converted to a lower consumption lifestyle, my perspectives and priorities are more spiritual and less worldly. I am more connected with the environment than I ever was, and the joy and sustinance that comes from that connection surprises me. The 'other'- what ever it is (and yes is does feel like Love) is always close.

You might find the following blog interesting:
http://www.divineuniverse.info/2006/12/20/why-i-believe/

It's more science than religion, and written by a Francisan Brother, but unlike any take on God I've ever read. I think it partly explains what I am experiencing as I draw closer to the natural world and take more responsibility for my impact on it. I'd love to hear your take on it, and those of your readers.

[Judith]

I really appreciated, and basically agree with Jason's comments. And thank you Jason for posting them. I don't view your discussion (observations!) as pointing fingers, but attempting to raise awareness through articulate discussion. I am an atheist, actually a Humanist. NIM and most readers and their comments are very inspirational and motivating. Some people are very slow to simply learn by example, which I think you hope for Colin. Unfortunately, we are running out of the luxury of time, and things said quite pointedly, sometimes, will bring it home a little quicker!

[Sonya]

Dear Colin

I really applaud you for your efforts. I have been following your blog with great interest. Like you, I feel more than a bit sick at what we are doing to our planet. Like many others have commented, I feel it is hopeless trying to do something because it is too late. However, that has not stopped me making changes in my life even though I feel I'm bailing water with a cup when the whole ship is sinking.

Anyways, one very small cheery note. Last week at work, I put a cloth hand towel in the women's bathroom so I wouldn't have to use paper towels after washing my hand. (I also have a dish towel in the kitchen at work now and use a cloth napkin with lunch.) I put a note for the janitor not to chuck my towel during his cleaning. As an afterthought, I added a ps to my note to my fellow employees to feel free to use my handtowel after washing their hands. The entire last week, the use of paper towels in the women's bathroom has dropped 80 to 90%...I checked obssesssively :-)

sp

[Brendan T.K. O'Brien]

Hope I don't think hope is a good thing. "Hope" seems to be something we feel when we have no control. Credit to Derrick Jensen for this thought process:

When you hope, it tends to be towards the things you feel you have no control over. "I HOPE the plane doesn't crash"... When you "Hope the world becomes a better place" you are admitting you have no control over the matter. If instead we said "The world IS going to be a better place" perhaps we would be more inclined to take action?

[Heather]

Two thoughts after reading this interesting blog and its comments:
1. Stereotyping sucks. Many people of Judeo-Christian faith are not white, conservative (read: Republican), gas-guzzling, end-time-living-so-screw-the-planet people. I know I'm not! I agree with Colin, let's look at the similarities we share with others, and not be divisive or make assumptions about large groups of people after observing only a few.
2. Personally, as an environmentalist AND a Christian, I feel God has called us to be stewards of our planet. That's where that inner hopelessness of our planet's future meets with the desire for action. Belief in God and passion for the environment work synergistically as motivating factors to change, in my opinion. Like the Native American proverb says, we didn't inherit the earth from our ancestors, we're borrowing it from our children. The love and concern we show for our planet now is another important way we love our children and grandchildren, and as an added benefit, we have the opportunity to teach them to do the same.
God is love,
Heather

[Peter]

On the "hope" comments, I view hope as Hebrews 11:1 relates it to faith.."Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."

Hope is not something we feel when we have no control. Hope, in a literal sense means we have utter confidence it will happen. Unfortunately, in our language, we have made the term to mean some kind of wishful thinking. Hope is as positive a word as I can think of when thinking "I hope we will all begin to realize we are taking more away from our earth than it is giving us and we need to reverse that course of action."

[Julie]

Fascinating discussion of hope, faith, and courage. Whenever I need a dose of any of the above, I read a book. Many leading nature writers are seeking reasons to remain optimistic in the face of so much gloom, notably Bill Mckibben (Wandering Home: A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Landscape) and Scott Russell Sanders (Hunting for Hope). There's also a lovely new collection of essays about Rachel Carson called Courage for the Earth (Houghton Miffling, 2007). Carson often felt despair and anger over our abuses of the earth but believed it was her duty to act, despite the long odds against success. She wrote, "I have felt bound by a solemn obligation to do what I could--if I didn't at least try I could never be happy again in nature."

But the book I turn to most often is Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac. An early ecologist, Leopold's prescient awareness of environmental declines by the mid-1900s left him feeling isolated as well as discouraged. He said, "One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds." Yet Leopold did what he could, like the rest of us. He spoke and wrote about his convictions, raised his children to love the land, and planted pine trees as a step toward restoring a worn out farm in Wisconsin. He wrote about the creative meaning of pine-planting in his Almanac essay, "Pines Above the Snow." After several seasons of planting, Leopold could turn to his trees when doubts about the future threatened him. On a winter night, wrote Leopold, . . ."my pines, each with his burden of snow, are standing ramrod-straight, rank upon rank, and in the dusk beyond, I feel the presence of hundreds more. At such times I feel a curious transfusion of courage."

[jasmine]

This post actually shaped my weekend, thank you Colin. I brought your observations up to a friend on our walk through Rome's Villa Pamphilj park, the Italian equivalent to Central Park. Cherry blossoms are in bloom and there are wildflowers everywhere. It was hot. At the fountain, there was a long line of red flushed kids waiting for water, and I confessed to my friend that these sorts of scenes give me terror flashes for the future, instead of that enjoyable summer feeling I want to have.

She asked me to distiguish between two voices in myself. The first voice feels connected to a whole network of lifeforms and people and history, and this voice has serenity and is able to have perspective on suffering.

The other part, the anger part and activist, gets involved in my daily work with climate battles, discussions with corporations and governments, etc. This voice guards and defends against rising CO2 levels.

She pointed out that this first voice, the serene voice, is just as important as the activist. They sustain each other. I can get so caught up in the urgency of political and social change that I lose balance.

What I respect about this blog and your project is that you are balanced, and (for whatever the negative press wants to say) a good indication that your path will be fruitful is that you seem to be getting happier and more optimistic as you proceed.

Glad you are here!

[Leslie]

More on hope and faith...

How about Proverbs 13:12

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.