Living Sustainably isn’t a ‘Hippie Thing;’ It’s a Survival Thing.

We are living in a time where mere commentary about our modern realities come with a trigger warning. Why are we triggered — and how can we keep it from silencing us? By now, we should all know that neither the government, the police, nor the established systems will save us: we must realize that only we can save ourselves. That is, We with a capital W, we the collective, we the community, we the people.

‘Living sustainably’ has been touted as the answer to the climate crisis, at least by the multinational companies who are themselves the largest polluters. Greenwashing, minimizing, and positioning individual consumers to shoulder the burden of climate change are all well-known scare tactics of industries whose interests lie entirely with their bottom line. The truth is, if 1% of the world went vegan, the factory farms and the oil used to transport animal products would still thunder on. Business as we know it would likely continue polluting the world’s waterways, and the glaciers would still continue melting at the fastest rate on record. The individual will not save the world for the exact reason that the individual did not endanger the world; a collection of polluting, wasteful industries and the (mostly white) men at their helm did.

So what do we do, with all these doomsday calculations circling around us? With the daily depressive news cycle waving flames and disaster in our faces? First, we have to see the PR campaigns by the globe’s richest as the thinly veiled lies and distractions that they are. We have to soldier on with this awareness, and refuse to keep consuming the doomsday predictions from news networks that rely on a steady-stream of clickbait tearjerkers intended to keep us feeling scared, small, and complacent.

“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

The idea of the corrupt few depending on and exploiting an increasingly disparaged majority has held true in our culture for millennia, back to the time when pyramids were built and when global empires were focused entirely on expansion. While infinite advances have been made, in a number of ways, not much has changed. In the late 30’s, the Wizard of Oz even joked about the dysfunctional power dynamic in human societies, insisting that we continue ignoring the power and unimpeded decision making of our bosses and leaders, no matter how desparate our own lives get (likewise, no matter how polluted our water or air becomes). The cruelty of this dynamic comes into focus every so often, when the world’s workers start to unite, share their difficulties, recognize their unfair treatement, and realize that they have the skills and the labor, yet make a fraction of the profit.

It is clear that the world’s wealthiest are also the biggest abusers, guzzling up a disproportionate amount of the planets’ resources, yet it is the bottom half of humanity who pays the price. At this point in Homo sapiens’ storied existence, we’ve seen evidence of entire societies collapsing when their food supplies disappear, or when natural disasters prove too strong to combat. We consider ourselves technology advanced, yet our own gas-guzzling technologies have altered the ecosystem in a manner never seen before .

What seems to be unique in the time since the industrial revolution as to the period before it is the speed and scope to which human activities have altered the planet’s health, and therefore the health of our communities.

So, again: what do we do in the face of all this destruction? First, we bear witness to those who are truly responsible for creating this crisis, we take accountability for the ways we’ve accepted their fiction as fact. Second,
we must become cognizant that the disastrously unethical companies who have created this crisis are still operating, largely impeded, with the support of government subsidizes — and a tax payer who foots the bill.

We vote, and we think we’re electing politicians who somehow aren’t upholding the status quo. Many of us write, talk, protest, voice our disdain for the state of the world and these corporations who’ve put us all in this precarious position: but there is more that we are being expected to undertake, and it requires a fundamental shift in our thinking.

The third option to me seems to be the most obvious, the one that Indigenous tribes have known about far longer than our modern culture: returning to the land, returning our gaze inward — to the community as an extension of ourselves.

For many of us in North America and Europe, the individualistic nature of our culture has us so separated from one another, let alone our connection with the Earth, that so many have started to believe ourselves to be alone, disconnected, one cog in a machine that will roll on, with or without us; but nothing lies further from the truth. Not only are we stronger together, but we will only survive together, by learning to work, live, play, and yes — collaborate together.

Native communities know this. Immigrant communities know this. Impoverished communities all over the world know this, often pooling their resources to stretch meals further.

What will it take for all of us to know this — and practice this?

The critical mass of people needed to reallocate the massive riches currently being accrued by big business to community care hasn’t been reached, or we would already be living in the newly imagined system. From military equipment to the bank rolls of well-known ethical offenders like oil, agriculture, and pharmaceutical giants, there is more than enough wealth to change the trajectory. However, the question remains: What will it take for those at the top echelons of power to decide to transform the modes of operation that put themselves there in the first place?

Just as an individual is not allowed to keep harming without consequences, neither should a police, nor a government — and especially not a billion dollar corporation whose business model depends on robbing poorer countries of their resources and then selling them at a premium. This model of imperialism is so baked into our capitalist society that people believe the Exxon Mobils and the BP’s of the world when they tell us that ‘sustainability is a hippie thing,’ or that the onus is on the individual to make any real or lasting change.

Until enough people stop accepting the current reality as inevitable, nothing noticeable will change; the sea levels will continue to rise, drought will continue to befall us, there won’t be a corner of the globe that hasn’t been touched by the disastrous impacts of climate change.

Understanding all of these wicked forces at play is the first job of the individual; to recognize the fallacies we’ve been indoctrinated to believe, and to begin this journey of refusing to accept them. While this work begins with the individual, it is beyond what one person alone is capable of; it inherently relies on our interconnection with our local communities, with our friends, with our families, not in spite of our differences or disagreements, but in respect of them.

Only by standing together and being willing to have hard conversations, being willing to reach across the aisle to imagine a better world will we be able to develop a new way of surviving, together. Planting food and trees, sourcing resources from our neighbors instead of the billionaire families behind companies like Amazon and Walmart, brainstorming how to hold the biggest polluters accountable — all of this depends on a new wave of being.

One person is not merely a drop in the ocean, but as Rumi says, the entire ocean in a single drop; Native traditions inherently understand the Earth as an extension of ourselves. We, the individual, must begin to understand the wisdom in this vision, and the practicality. Because in a world where a corporate entity is given more power than an individual, this ocean of change will require all of our participation.

How will we show up?

♥