Wild Ones #2: Connecting the dots
Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry and Per Espen Stoknes on connecting the dots between our actions and the wider world
One idea from me:
Zoom out. Connect the dots. Go big.
Our actions and their effects are sprawling webs of interconnection far larger than we are often aware of.
This, in no small part, is because those who benefit from the status quo (ahem, fossil-fuel companies) are deeply invested in making us believe our individual actions are small, fleeting, and irrelevant.
It’s no wonder BP spent over a $100 million promoting the idea of ‘personal carbon footprint.’ The aim was to pin responsibility from climate change on the individual consumer, in order to deflect it from the corporations responsible.
Wendell Berry writes that “eating is an agricultural act.” What he means is that every bite of food we eat is not an isolated incident, but a link in a long chain of invisible links that connect my boiling an egg to a vast industrial agricultural system and that system to a global fossil-fuel system. Michael Pollan describes how he connects the dots in his own work on food:
In a way, all my writing about food has been about connecting dots in the way Berry asks of us. It’s why, when I write about something like the meat industry, I try to trace the whole long chain: from your plate to the feedlot, and from there to the corn field, and from there to the oil fields in the Middle East. Berry reminds us that we’re part of a food system, and we need to think about our eating with this fact — and its implications — in mind.
“We stand to gain so much by connecting these dots,” Pollan argues.
Much self-help out there embraces this fundamental point: change yourself first, then change the world. Watch for my next post, Thursday, when I’ll explore why that kind of “zoom-in self-help” needs a redesign.
One quote from others:
“Optimism and pessimism are tools we can apply when considering the wild different futures lurking beyond the horizon. And they are best used in parallel, like the left and right eye. It's not an either-or, but a both-and.”
― Per Espen Stoknes, in What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming: Toward a New Psychology of Climate Action
One question for you:
What are the barriers (and who is making them!) that are preventing you from connecting the dots, and making visible the links between your everyday actions and their healthy or damaging relationship to the wider natural world. Bonus question: What tools are available to you to help break down these barriers to better connect the dots?
P.S. One tool I find helpful to connect the dots between my seemingly everyday actions–and their links to wider environmental affairs is the emerging field of environmental psychology. One key researcher in the field is Norwegian psychologist Per Espen Stoknes who advocates for climate communication strategies that break down barriers and invite the public to individual and political action on climate change. I highly recommend checking out his TED talk: How to transform apocalypse fatigue into action on global warming.