Sacrifice or story

Thanks for the comprehensive response. The points you make make sense to me and make me feel we're both right. From your explanation, it's clear giving up the computer or the camera wouldn't need to be a sacrifice, and the very flexibility to change your identity probably represents your identity and story more than anything. And you're very right. We absolutely don't need to be dependent on computers or digital cameras.

Sacrifice was the wrong word. How about "potentially detrimental idealism"?

I know you'll feel better if you're not supporting industries that are damaging the world, but without the products they create (computers and cameras), I and others wouldn't have come across your weblog and what it represents.

I also think your not having a computer in your house may not support the computer industry but it won't harm it either, whereas if you write about what is wrong with computer production and consumption as it is now and disseminate that writing over the Internet, there might be slightly more chance of getting things changed.

Sure, you may feel hypocritical in the sense that you are not "practicing what you preach." But is it that simple? Doesn't leadership involve utilitarian compromises of idealism, or in other words making "greater good" decisions? Couldn't the greater good in this case be getting the message out?

I certainly think the story you're telling using your camera and your computer is worthwhile enough for me to make this second attempt at playing devil's advocate.

If you are playing devil's advocate you should be aware that I am playing angels advocate. Of course I agree with most of what you say, especially the "potentially detrimental idealism" part. I am not totally dedicated to my comments on the site, just trying on a new theory or concept or whatever you want to call it.

On the one hand, I "know" that it is right, I also "know" that it is not realistic. But I wanted to see how it feels.

Antoher thing you made me realize is a little more about my "goal" or "purpose" with this site and the reason I am studying here. For a while now, I have been thinking that I actually don't care so much about "getting my message out" or changing the world. A major part of me being here is just because *I* don't want to live stupidly, and I want to learn how I can live smartly. If everyone else is stupid, at least I am not. But I realize now that I *do* have a goal to get other people to live smarter also. Not really for my kids or whatever, although I would like to have kids and don't feel I can justify it now (for their sake), but rather, the reason I want to get the message out is that I don't want to be a part of a stupid group or organization either, and no matter what I do, I am always a part of this society, so I guess I want it to be a smart society.

I've also been reading your blog for a long time and have been following closely your struggle with how to live wisely in the world (I think perhaps you are getting smart/ wise and stupid/foolish mixed up), in great part because I have also been wrestling with my own attempt to make sense of this modern world. I once left a comment on something you wrote and your response was somewhat "heavy", so I left off continuing with what I was trying to say. But I keenly understand your reactions and the frustrations that you daily go through. So that "heaviness" made a lot of sense to me, especially because your intent is so important.

Until recently I was a member of a closeknit bloggers forum in which I had imagined that everyone was of very similar bent concerning the dedication to and protection of the natural world and our place in it. When a discussion started about what we can do to help make our society sustainable everyone immediately launched into "there's nothing I can do so I'll just concentrate on myself" mode. Some voiced despair and hopelessness. I waited for the discussion to grow into a community effort to help one another by listening to grievances and suggestions for thiings we might do to make a difference, instead the whole thing just petered out.

I got very upset and told everyone very bluntly (and tactlessly, as I tend to do) that I wasn disappointed in them and that if the natural world was going to be protected and major social disasters to be averted we had to work together to think of practical and spiritual solutions to the wreckless way we live now.

Nobody liked that. I was roundly attacked and told I had no idea what I was talking about, most strongly by those who insisted they were workiing to save the world "in their own way". I tried to backtrack somewhat to clairfy my position, but the damage was done. So I left the group.

I think perhaps the very first concept we humans have to address, comprehend, and accept, is that we are simply animals. What we do and think and how we live all follows the same principles and requirements of every other living creature on the planet. We cannot do without the planet. And every single thing we do is "natural". We cannot do otherwise, whether we believe we are separtae from the rest of nature or not. We are part of the whole that has always existed and without which we cannot survive.

I don't know why this concept is so hard for modern humans to grasp. Perhaps because we cannot maintain this present way of living without conviincing ourselves that we are separtae from nature.

I agree with both you and Setsunai on what kind of outlook we must work toward. Nature is beautiful and sustaining, but all creatures must make a living. We are no different. The question is how and what is appropriate. ANd these are the questions that you are asking, both here in this blog and in the Sustainability Blog. For that nothing but computers and the internet could have gottent the word out.

But then, since I've been doing it myself lately, it is so good to be away from the computer. Away from the house!

Butuki, I never meant to be "heavy" I guess I may come across like that sometimes when you can't see my offline self. Even when I am writing something about not being stupid anymore, I am genereally doing so in a lighthearted manner, if that makes any sense.

I look for something to relate to myself in enverything I read, so I am going to look for something in your story as well. I realize that you may not have been meaning it in any specific connection with me, but I would guess that I am the person in just concentrating on myself mode.

Yes, I am, and I also think that all I really can do, all any of us really can do, the most powerful thing any of us can do is to get our own house in order. Then, perhaps, we can shift our main focus to other people. This is not to say that as we try to get ourselves on track we can't also work on others, but the focus should be oneself... otherwise there will be so many people out there trying to change each other, but no one willing to change themselves (this leads to a situtation where few people change I guess).

I think we're very similar in our outlook in things and even perhaps in our personalities. So much happens offline that you never really know if what you see online is even close to the real person. Anyway, I want to apologize for the using the word "heavy" (I actually thought yesterday, when your site didn't show up for a while, that you had taken great offence and pulled the site off line!)... I meant more "enthusiastic". Whatever your reactions, I've always returned to this site because I really like what you say and it often makes me think a lot about a lot of things. A lot of questions keep popping up. Sometimes very hard to answer.

Of course I understand about "doing things for oneself first". That is the only way that we can hope to cope with our lives and the only perspective we have any way. What I am getting at, I think, is something similar to the traditional Japanese approach to dealing with communal issues, like "hansei", in which we suspend our personal desires when coming together to talk about and implement solutions to environmental issues that simply must be addressed. I think this kind of thing happens all the time when disasters strike, but that is the point... it only happens *after* something terrible happens.

One example of working in communal mode is this blog and my own blog, where we take the time from our personal lives to hash out these problems through dissemination of information, making people aware, and through discussion, in which people get their turn to say things and try to comprehend and amend things that have been said. That is the genius of blogging... it isn't just pulpit preaching, but also dialogue, with opposing ideas often getting their day out. Coming to understandings.

Working on our personal lives is all very fine and of course very necessary, but so is a communal effort. And by that I don't mean people changing each other personally, but rather changing our attitude toward being a member of the community whole. Because that's what we are, members of a community, whether we see it as a human community or a bioregional community. The tendancy to rear away from any mention of "community", clinging to our sense of individuality, seeing the world through only our selfish eyes is the crux of the whole world environmental problem. As long as we only focus on the individual all the time (and I am not saying that the individual is not important) and seek to continually satiate the needs of individuals without considering the effect it has on the balance of the entire system, as long as we don't consider ourselves as integral parts of a whole, there will never be any significant change in policies or strategies to deal with the ecosystem breakdown. because the ecosystem is a whole, not the individuals.

Look at it this way... you have a colony of lemmings on an ice floe that is slowly melting as it floats into temperate waters. Each lemming decides, with their limited perspective and access to information about the entire situation, to go about doing their own thing in response to the emergency. Some jump off the floe and die in the water. Some build stronger houses for themselves, denying entry to any other lemming. Some build boats, some high towers that might stay above the encroaching waters, some diving suits, some buy up large tracts of the higher ice floe space to stay clear of the waters as long as possible, some just keep doing whatever it is that lemmings do. A few hit upon the bright idea of shaping oars so that they might row the floe back up into arctic waters where the floe will stay frozen. They try to tell the others that the only way to make this idea work is to work together, suspending their immediate desires for the survival of the entire race. But of course, no one wants to listen; they all have their own perspective on things and each thinks they have the right answer, or else is too caught up with daily living to heed the warnings of impending disaster. So the ice floe keeps floating south until one day it sinks entirely, drowning the entire population. Now, this doesn't mean that the surrounding sea has died or that other creatures will not go on surviving... it just means that this population of foolish lemmings, because they refused to come together in a time of crisis, perished according to the basic rules of nature: adapt to change or die.

It's really quite simple. The Earth has absolutely no sympathy for foolish or stupid creatures. And nature makes not an iota of exception for us humans. To me it is right so. Living according to the laws of nature is the fundamental principle of what it means to be alive. It provides the elemental structure for our existence and our outlook on creating a society. Ignore the rules and we die. To believe ourselves outside this whole structure is just plain madness. And yet that is what most humans today believe to their core.