5.0 -- How to Change the World (with Resources!)

Undoubtedly, the most difficult challenge facing the human species currently is the climate crisis. We are on an uncertain path, and our present and future choices determine what sort of planet Earth will remain for future generations. 

Instead of only suffering from a sense of hopelessness, however, I believe that we can choose to make changes in our lives in order to create radical change. 

Some of these changes are very small, some are very large, all can make a difference. Additionally, instead of making these changes from a standpoint of sacrifice only, we can decide that these decisions are being made from a place of joy, hope, and creativity. 

I have broken down the actions (which are obviously not mine in any way) we can and should take into a few categories, and further broken those down into subcategories. The first three categories are things we can do in our own day-to-day life, and the the fourth is about enacting social and political change. The most important thing is that we start wherever we are, move forward (asking for help whenever we need it), and do it from a place of hope and joy, rather than obligation and fear.

The categories and ideas are taken from the Drawdown website (https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions).

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CONSUMPTION

FOOD

According to the Drawdown website, changing to plant-rich diets is the second most effective strategy in reducing carbon emissions. Reducing food waste is the first. 

There are several strategies we can use in order to help with both of these problems. Here are a few!

1. Buy food from your local CSA (community supported agriculture)! The food will taste better, you will be helping local farmers, and your food waste will decrease --https://www.localharvest.org/ 

2. Limit your meat intake. You can go vegetarian, or vegan, or simply reduce your consumption by a quarter or more! https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/climate/what-if-we-all-ate-a-bit-less-meat.html

3. Join a company like Misfits Market or Imperfect Produce. They scour market shelves for produce (and other items) that have blemishes, are near their expiration date, or will simply be tossed in the garbage to make space for other items. The companies deliver a box of organic produce to your doorstep every week, and you can start and stop the service as needed. Here's a review of those two companies side-by-side: https://www.consumerreports.org/food-shopping/ugly-food-fight-misfits-market-imperfect-foods-food-waste-a6326488257/

4. COMPOST! Either DIY (here's a link how to do that: https://www.npr.org/2020/04/07/828918397/how-to-compost-at-home) or use a company like Black Earth Compost. They will pick up your compost at your house and deliver fresh flower garden-ready compost to you in return. There are other local companies you can search out as well.

ENERGY

According to Drawdown, developing more onshore wind turbines is the sixth most effective strategy, solar is both eighth and fourteenth, insulation is sixteenth, and LED lighting is nineteenth. Included in the top forty also are included electric cars, geothermal, carpooling, efficient trucks, smart thermostats and more.

Here are some easy things to do!

1. See what sort of options your electric supplier may have in terms of ordering your electricity from cleaner sources. Here's an example from Lexington, MA. 

2. Go solar! This is an easier and easier thing to do these days. You can decide whether to power your whole house, part of it, to remain on the grid or off, or anything else. Some installers do it in just two days, and friends of mine have seen their monthly bill decrease substantially, even if they are financing the whole project!

3. Go geothermal! This used to be unreachable by many, but many states give large compensation packages that, combined with federal incentives, make it more and more affordable. Dandelion Energy offers full financing for up to twenty years.

4. Make your next car electric! Or hybrid! Not only is it the cleaner choice, but it is much more affordable with the current gas prices. You don't have to get a new car (although that is the only way to get incentives), and you don't have to get a fancy hybrid. There are several affordable options currently, and the network of charging stations continues to improve! Also, electric cars are incredibly fun to drive.

GOODS

1. Buy less, repair more. Not long ago, people would REPAIR goods that got marred--imagine that! Use YouTube to figure some of these repairs out. My dining room table was $50 used, seats up to 8, and after refinishing it (nope, I had no idea how to do this until I did it...), it looks pretty great, and we regularly use it to have friends over for dinner.

2. Buy more used. Whether it is something small like a book, or something large like a car. Buying used takes zero resources except the money you use to purchase it! Make a project out of seeing how you can remake a used item! Thrift shops can be great places to buy clothes...(and it's so much better than buying something from a fast fashion store).

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EDUCATION

Drawdown refers to family planning and education as being the third most important strategy for lowering carbon emissions. The reasons for this include slowing population growth, but also when there are more educated women in a society, the society has better health outcomes as well as more positive livelihoods. 

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ACTIVISM

VOTING (THE NORMAL TYPE)

Vote at the ballot box, not just at the federal level, but also at the state and local level. Research your local candidates for school board, sheriff, councilmen, etc. You can get fully involved and run yourself, or attend meetings, or simply read on their websites about their campaign.

Here is a website I have used to look at how candidates' viewpoints on a myriad subjects match (or don't) with my own. 

Here is a website that will help you find information about local elections.

VOTING (WITH YOUR DOLLARS)

If you often use a company for certain products or services (I'm looking at you Amazon, Facebook, etc.) or a store, you can find out where their politics lie pretty easily these days. 

Making small moves away from companies whose values are not aligned with your own is a manageable thing. You don't necessarily have to cut all ties with Amazon delivery, but perhaps looking for goods in local stores as a first venture will make a difference. Do what you can!

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REGENERATION

The Drawdown website lists twelve different land regeneration concerns in its top thirty strategies. They include tropical rainforest restoration, silvopasture, peatland restoration, tree plantations, temperate forest restoration, and abandoned farmland restoration. 

In our own backyard, here are some things that can be done:

1. Go native #1: Native lawns grown much more easily than Kentucky bluegrass, and are much more beneficial to not only the soil, but also to beneficial insects. Look to see what the native grasses are in your area. 

2. Go native #2: Try to get rid of any invasives that silly landscapers in the 70s and 80s might have planted without knowing (or caring) about their negative aspects. Invasive, not native species are not efficient in feeding beneficial pollinators, and they can even take over native species (which DO feed local pollinators) that grown in your lawn. Often local groups have a brochure on invasive species and how to remove them. Here's a website that may be useful.

3. Let the grass grow! Let some parts of your lawn "wild". Yes, there may be "weeds", but as long as they are not overly invasive and non-native, they can help feed your pollinator population in the spring. And when you do mow, shoot for every 2-3 weeks rather than weekly. BONUS: less work for you!

4. Let the leaves stay on the ground! Here's a guide on how to do this well... BONUS: less work for you!

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TRASH

With trash, as with energy, the less the better. So reducing is the best thing you can do, followed by reusing, and finally, recycling. A few ideas here from around our house:

1. Reduce 

As a family, we love sparkling water. But we replaced our cans with a SodaStream, and we use True Citrus for flavoring (no additivies, very little waste). We have saved money and produce much less trash with that. 

2. Reuse

We were ecstatic when a zero-waste store opened up half an hour away. Here's a website where you can see if there are any near you. You bring in a clean, empty container, and weigh it. Then you fill it with granola, nuts, dried beans, dried fruit, tea, etc. Then you buy it! No waste. (This is how humans bought a great many items before the 1950s...it's certainly not a new idea!) You can also refill olive oil, vinegar, cleaning products (soap, shampoo, conditioner, dishsoap, dishwashing detergent, laundry detergent), etc.

(I put this in the reuse section, since we are reusing the containers that we put the new food/cleaners in)

3. Recycling

Things that are often not recyclable in typical containers include soft plastics (e.g. wrappers, plastic bags, etc.) and styrofoam. First, try to limit the amount of these things that you can. Then see if there's a local place that WILL recycle for you (e.g. our local grocery store has a plastic bag recycle bin).

Composting > recycling

Make sure that your containers are CLEAN before you put them in the bin. One dirty container can screw up the whole works. 

Here's a website on how to recycle properly.

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So there you go, a quick all-in-one place post on things that you can do to make the world better.

I do presentations with school children with a group called Bash the Trash, where we make instruments out of reused materials and perform for them. At the end of presentations, we challenge the kids to do: one thing today, one thing this week, and one thing this month. What can you do?

4.0 The problem with America

Nietzsche famously proclaimed "God is dead" in 1882 in his book "The Gay Science". What Nietzsche meant by this phrase was that the need for a Christian God had vanished (or was in the process of vanishing). The concept of God had been needed to explain things such as illness (medicine and hygiene have replaced prayer), existence (evolution has replaced Genesis 1), and man's place in the universe (astronomical discoveries have shown us the earliest parts of our universe). In other words, the concept of God continues to become ever smaller, as humanity learns more and more through science. Nietzsche's concern, though, was that with this radical shift would come the tendency towards nihilism, and his  philosophical pursuits were mainly to attempt to help humanity move away from nihilism, towards something greater. And although he never developed a philosophical system (i.e. a system based on a moral presupposition), he advocated for starting anew based on natural law (this is his famous "will to power). [Note: if you're curious as to what my personal view on what God is, is that God is everything, and everything is God, which includes creation and destruction--this is a Buddhist/pantheist view]

My pet theory is this--"America is dead". It has been dead for quite some time, but most of us don't realize it. What do I mean by this? I mean that most of what Americans were taught about what America was has been shown to be either at least half-truths or at most blatant lies. The myth of American exceptionalism, of the American Garden of Eden, of the great shining city on the hill, have all come tumbling down. 

Columbus never laid foot on American soil and the myth of Columbus Day came from an attempt to decrease racial hatred for Italian-Americans. The first Thanksgiving was likewise a fictional attempt to gloss over the beginning of the Native American genocide. The American Dream was another fictionalized myth to keep poor people down, believing if they just worked hard enough, they could be rich, too. The ridiculous sanctity of a document written hundreds of years ago, for and by rich, white, men. The American Revolution was fought because a small percentage of colonists didn't like to pay taxes on goods, and would prefer to smuggle contraband goods into the country (the smugglers were also known as the Sons of Liberty). Most of the founding stories of the U.S. have been invented or just cleaned up in order to fit a narrative of American exceptionalism.

Then there's just how "well" we are doing in the world. Here's a few depressing statistics. The U.S. is 33 out of the 36 members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries with regards to infant mortality, wealth inequality is one of the worst in the developed world, we have one of the highest amount of gun deaths in the world, our life expectancy is on the decline, etc. Even positive ideas about the U.S. are not true--I thought we were one of the most diverse countries--we are 68/232 in terms of religious diversity, and we are not in the top 50 of the most ethnically diverse countries. And even though the U.S. has a very large immigrant population in terms of sheer numbers, in terms of per capita, it doesn't look very impressive--it's 65/232. It seems that the whole "nation of immigrants" idea is also quite exaggerated (Norway, Sweden, Ireland, are included in these countries).

The greatness of the middle class in the 50s leaves out the fact that women couldn't own a credit card and that Jim Crow was alive and well in the South, as well as sundown towns in the North. The cultural backlash in the 60s (the music!) leaves out the My Lai Massacre and multiple assassinations on American soil.

What is American culture? Hot dogs and hamburgers? Country music? Chain restaurants? I would argue that there is NO ONE American culture. It is simply too new of a place/country/concept. Culture develops over time and among people with similar life experiences. We have neither.

So if our history is made up, if every metric of a country's success is failing, and there is no culture to hold us together, what other conclusion are we to come to other than "America is dead"?

Like Nietzsche and his concern over the death of God, the greatest concern at this time is which path to take. Do we stand next to America's corpse and pretend it isn't dead? Do we take the body and attempt to fruitlessly breathe life back into it? Or do we recreate America with true honesty and looking forward rather than backward?

What we are seeing in America right now--growing inequality, housing market going crazy, mass shootings every day in every imaginable type of public setting, overturning women's rights, a fascist undercurrent, anti-science people who refuse vaccinations and feel that wearing a mask is an attack on their freedom, conspiracy theories embedded into state and national politics--these are ALL symptoms of the recognition of the death of America. Some of these extreme symptoms are due to denial, some are due to despair. We seem to be unable to treat even the symptoms at this point. Maybe we have to find the root of the problem and remove the cancer. Sew it up. Make it better.

Last week I went to a play in Boston. In the booklet there was a paragraph "about this theater". It first talked about the Native people who used to live in that area, then to the people who displaced them, then to the history of the building itself. That seemed to me to be a good first step.

My wife and I just bought a house a year ago. I'm learning about the tribes who may have lived here (Nashaway, Nipmuc), and what happened to them (sent away to live on Deer Island in Boston Harbor after King Philip's War). I've also learned a little bit about the name of the street I live on--it's named after a family who bought the land over a hundred years ago and have lived in the area for over three hundred years. The name of the creek at the end of the street is named after the commander of the local company of minute men during the American Revolution. The town I live in is named after the person who was once the biggest slave-owner in Massachusetts (he lived in Maine, that was still Massachusetts at the time).

I think we need to know where we live in order to move forward. People have a hard time with this--they love Fourth of July fireworks, it fills their heart. Their history makes them feel secure, even if it's nonsense. They feel unsafe, having to change from Columbus Day to Indigenous People's Day. Honesty requires bravery and looking at, and accepting, ugliness of the past in order to move into the future. Honesty requires knowing that successful white people get there because of the system that continues to help them along, because wealth breeds intergenerational wealth, and the sins of our fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers will continue to haunt us.

Honesty requires knowing that people are driven by their thirst for power (even if this power is illusory), and they will say or do anything to keep it (as evidenced in the 2020 election and the January 2021 insurrection). The medicinal cures for this dangerous mania for power (which is a power with disregard for others, from a feeling of powerlessness) is safety and respect (these are elements of true power, which leads to the desire to help others feel powerful).

What kind of country, what kind of principles, what kind of virtues, would you like to see if you could start from scratch? I'll supply a few of my ideas: 1) Respect for the land, water, and air--this includes sustainable farming practices, grassland reclamation, low emissions, etc. 2) Giving every person (as much as possible) the chance to live their life as they see fit so long as it does not harm another breathing, thinking being--this includes not only freedoms, but also resources. 3) Elevating all of the arts to a higher status--again this includes not only freedoms, but also resources. 4) Recognizing the inherent value of all cultures and having this diversity be the backbone of the country.

I try to live my life in accordance to these principles, participating in activities that support them and supporting individuals (including politicians) who also support them, and always looking to see what more I can do. This is how I am neither nihilistic nor pessimistic, nor looking at life through rose-colored glasses. This is how I can retain realism, with a slight bent toward optimism, and continue to feel that I have power.

2.0 -- Morality in the time of Covid-19 (Kant, with a side of Popper)

Dear Readers,

What seems clear to me is that the Covid-19 pandemic is bringing two things into great relief: all the things that were good and right with people and society (religion, politics, etc.) and all the things that were bad and wrong with the above. Generosity has been in abundance between friends and neighbors--getting groceries for each other, checking in through video and phone calls, making masks for health care workers, donating to people. Democrats and Republicans are agreeing about the necessity to DO something, and this time around, Republicans are offering a stimulus to the economy (remember that the last time this happened, it was the Democrats who wrote a stimulus bill). Religious service is continuing through prerecorded means and is giving people a sense of community. But it's not all gumdrops, folks. There are still masses of people continuing to hold large parties, there are megachurches gathering in the hundreds who are preaching that this coronavirus is a hoax, and there are still politicians who are actively working to dismantle protective measures. Yes, these people and institutions do seem to be a minority (one hopes), but they are a vocal one and, therefore, a dangerous one.

In a college philosophy course, I learned about a concept that changed my way of thinking: Kant's "Categorical Imperative". [In fact, it changed my way of thinking so much that I forgot that it wasn't my own idea to begin with until rediscovering Kant about twenty years later.] Kant was living in a time of political, religious, societal (really, everything) upheaval known as the Enlightenment. Simply put, the reason for a search for a new moral doctrine was that the ability of religion to supply all moral guidance was eroding. When people see the moral failings of religion (or any other institution), they have two options: close their eyes to them and go on as if all was normal, or look elsewhere for moral guidance. This was a time in Western civilization for the latter option to take center stage.

Kant's "Categorial Imperative" has three different formulations, the first two of which I summarize below:
#1: Act according to those maxims that, if universally applied, would contain no contradictions or irrationalities.
#2: Treat all people as an end, rather than a means (i.e. the worth of individuals is inherent in their existence).

Philosophers since have taken Kantian ethics and augmented, reformed, criticized, and negated them, but the fact is unshakeable that Kant's contribution was massive. His moral arguments were predicated on the idea of duty of the individual to both himself and society. [Aside: it is not my purpose here to field all of the arguments that there have been, but rather to see, in the light of the current world situation, the utility of this way of thinking. That being said, I've listed a short caveat below this essay as an example.] Below are a few examples I've come up with that exemplify violations and proper usage of the first two formulations.


Examples of proper usage of Formulation #1:
   *Staying at home, washing their hands, assuming that they have the coronavirus and do not want to spread it to others.
   *Reaching out on the phone to check on friends and family.

Examples of (in the time of Covid-19) violations of Formulation #1:
   *Hoarding toilet paper and trying to make money off of price gouging cleaning materials.
   *Spring breaking in Florida.

Examples of proper usage of Formulation #2:
   *The glorious work of doctors and nurses, treating all patients to the best of their abilities (the Hippocratic oath is a clear example of Formulation #2)
   *Respecting grocery store clerks by being careful when shopping, wearing a mask and gloves. The clerks are not there just to give you food (means), they are also there because they are people (end).

Examples of violations of Formulation #2:
   *Enacting policy that will protect oneself over others (Trump's determination to reopen the U.S. economy by Easter)
   *Enacting policy that will protect the many while putting the few at risk (U.K.'s herd immunity policy)

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The two largest questions for me regarding morality in the time of Covid-19 are:

1. Can those, who already are respecting Kant's Categorical Imperative, influence the actions of those who are not? And if so, how?
2. When this pandemic ends, which it eventually will, how do we take what we've learned about morality and apply it to our daily lives to better ourselves, our society, our world?

My answer for the first question is, I honestly don't know. Those people whose actions fly in the face of societal necessity are, according to Rousseau, people who need to be brought back into the fold through any means necessary. But we are not a society that looks kindly on the threat of police involvement, martial law, etc. We are far too individualistic and anti-disestablishment. Karl Popper talks about the limits of tolerance as being something that liberal societies must always grapple with. According to Popper, tolerance, if given free reign, leads to the dissolution of tolerance (full tolerance means that one must tolerate the intolerant, eventually leading to the intolerant rising up against the tolerant and dissolving them). Tolerance should be granted to those whose actions are tolerable. So we certainly don't need to tolerate those people who hoard toilet paper, congregate in large groups, continue to attend live church services. We should continue to educate them (and perhaps shame them if that's what it takes) but can we change their behavior? That is to be seen.

The more interesting question of these two for me, is the second: What happens after? When this global threat has passed, what moral lessons will we have learned? After all, these moral lessons are about care and respect for others. Can we remember these lessons when we think about how many shoes we buy vs. need? Or where the shoes were made? Or who made the shoes? Or what their wage and working condition is? Can we extend the care and respect to non-humans? Can we remember the lessons when we decide if it matters is we buy cruelty-free lipliner? Or factory farmed meat?
Can we extend the care and respect to our water and our earth and our air? Can we demand companies stop commodifying natural resources and bottling them for a profit? Does my company really need me to fly across the country for a single night to attend a single meeting that could just as easily happen over the internet?

What this all boils down to, for me, is the realization that to make a society work, not just for the healthy and the wealthy, but for the sick and the poor, we must give up the idea that we are separate from one another, and that our actions do not matter. The recent comedy-philosophy show, "The Good Place", talks about the impossibility of being human, because every action we take, no matter how small or innocuous, can create waves of positive and negative effects throughout the universe. This is a Hindu/Buddhist concept known as "Indra's Net"--everything is connected to everything else. But this should not result in hopelessness, but rather a striving. Just because we will not make it to the goal line this time does not mean that we shouldn't kick the ball a little closer. There are others on our team, and they rely on us, as we rely on them, in getting the ball further down the field.

One more suggestion: let's take that second formulation and apply it to non-human elements as well. Natural resources (water, air, earth, minerals), and non-human animals have inherent worth. The worth of water is not how much in can be sold for in a plastic bottle. The worth of the earth is not how much a waterfront property can be sold for. The worth of a cow is not its price and weight in ground chuck. Let's look at this world and see it as an ends, rather than a means, and treat it as such.

Stay well,
Trevor

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* A caveat to Kant (or, a Kant-veat, if you will): the main problem that I see with Kant is simply that he wanted there to exist over-arching moral decisions that could be made, independent of situation. This is an over-simplication of reality. There are times that the possibilities at our disposable are dictated by our environment and our knowledge. For example, in the U.S. 1950s, smoking tobacco was an integral part of adult life. It was part of the environment and the public lacked the knowledge of the harm of cigarette smoke (first- and second-hand). This action would not have been immoral at the time. It only became immoral when the knowledge became prevalent that one was hurting others, not just oneself.

1.0 -- Science Fiction in the time of Covid-19

Readers,

A caveat: I am nowhere near the most well-read science fiction fan in the world. I have read many of the classics including Asimov's Foundation Saga, Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land", the first few offerings in Herbert's "Dune" series, and Card's "Ender's Game". The same goes for tv shows and movies--I have not watched much past the socially "required" offerings. But that being said, it does seem that the most interesting and thoughtful additions to this genre are ones in which philosophy takes a front seat. Typically, a catastrophe (nuclear war, disease, supervolcano) has befallen the human species or even our entire planet, and it is up to the characters to make sense of their new reality. New problems arise, and with them new solutions. The great questions, many philosophers have said, the only real questions, are once again examined: What is our meaning? What does it mean to live a good life? How do we create a fair and just world? And the story is off and running. The creators of these stories have invented calamity, new worlds, even new species, really to once examine the great questions of life.

The human species is again at a time of great reckoning. This is not the first, and this is not even the most terrifying. It is simply the new. We have had two global wars, the threat of nuclear annihilation, pandemics, genocide. This new virus will not spell the end of humanity. This new virus will take thousands of human lives, it will upend the economy, it will bring to the surface problems that we would prefer to continue to ignore. This virus has no inherent meaning, no message, no reason, except for what we make of it.

We are living through the very real beginning of a science-fiction scenario. In a 300 page novel, what has happened thus far would only be the first fifteen pages. The tragedy, the anxiety, the uncertainty. The unsung heroes, finally being celebrated (nurses, grocery store clerks, gas station attendants). The artists, doing what they have always done, creating in spite of all odds. The good politicians, doing their utmost to solve this problem in spite of an increasingly broken system, and the bad politicians, taking advantage of the situation for a little insider trading.

The rest of this novel is unwritten. What is for certain, is that the end will be different than the beginning. The prequel to this novel will come out a little later, perhaps in the form of history books. Through reading this, we will remember that forests had been dying from carbon dioxide, cattle ranching, and invasive species. We will remember that the waters had been polluted from microplastics. We will remember that the promise of democratic institutions had been derailed by runaway capitalism in the form of kleptocracy and multinational corporations. We will remember that religions had been taken over by extremists and bad faith actors. The list goes on. In other words, this virus has not entered the Garden of Eden.

So, the biggest question of the big questions in most of these science-fiction stories is this: what do you want the world to look like? Not a question asked out of fear or desperation, but a question asked out of hope. Philosophers have asked this question for centuries, and institutions have arisen from many of these very philosophies, but our institutions have forgotten their purpose. Perhaps new philosophies need to be invented, and new institutions need to arise. Or perhaps old philosophies need to be remembered in order to reorient the institutions that already exist. More likely, a combination of the two.

I'll start with a couple of answers, and over the next couple of months, see where these answers might take me, and where they might take you, the reader.

#1: I would like to live in a world with clean air, water, soil, and healthy biodiversity.
#2: I would like to live in a world where humans have equal access to healthy food, clean water, good health care, and education.

In this blog, I will be looking at some of the great philosophers that I have been exposed to in my life, and how their thinking could be practically applied to meet these goals. As a non-philosopher, but very interested thinker, it will be my attempt to correctly represent their ideas as best as I can, while recognizing that at the same time, that I am, in all likelihood, (slightly) twisting their thoughts in order to fit my own present needs. I hope they (and you) will forgive this.

Stay well.