I came across this tweet from Chris Turner who spoke at the Spirit of the Land conference in November.
“It’s time we started selling sustainability rather than treating the threat of climate change as some kind of punishment for capitalism.”
— Chris Turner (@theturner) April 2, 2014
This prompted me to look further at his feed and saw this article he had been reading in the Ottawa Citizen. It’s short and worth it, so go ahead and click.
It’s a valid argument that our response to moral imperatives in the Western world is quite often resistance. In the post-modern milieu, I will do what you tell me not to do just because you told me not to! We mistrust authority (sometimes for good reason) and many times act like defiant teens. Even in exploring such life-giving activities as having pot lucks, growing food, and fostering community, we are afraid of what others will think. I’m overjoyed when people come by and think it’s “cool” that I recycle, that I have a vermiculture in my house, and that I want to join the community garden.
Thankfully, we’re not just here to share the scary story of climate change with each other. I deeply feel that Caring for Creation and Spirit of the Land are about showing the belonging, the joy, the self-esteem that can come from engaging with the natural world. After all, our mother Earth is the greatest source of love and belonging there is!
Hey Leslie, great post.
I have been thinking deeply about this very issue as well, so it’s good have a place to discuss this interested subject. Personally, professionally and spiritually I am heavily invested in living a life that has impact and influence within all of my relationships and communications and thus I continue seek to learn how to both live and be effective in these capacities.
Having read that article I find the author’s observation that the problem we are facing as we strive to become ‘active’ in responding to climate change is “a marketing problem” somewhat lacking. Further to that point, although I agree that ‘our response to moral imperatives in the Western world is quite often resistance.’ as a valid observation of the state of affairs I tend to believe that these realities are much deeper ingrained in the human condition.
My thoughts arise out of my work with and for those of us who have become enmeshed in the destructive lifestyle of chemical and behavioral addictions. In addition to the experience of striving to help people who’s behaviors are patently destructive and yet the will/ability to change them is insufficient to the task I also am informed by my faith as a Christian and my belief that the Bible is a source of reliable wisdom.
Not to drop too much Christianese on the group I would like to show that the Apostle Paul was a keen student of the human condition and in his Epistle to the Roman’s he makes an interesting observation about this subject when he says that “… I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.”
I don’t think I have an answer but I have studied deeply the issues of ethics and the discussion on the merits of different ethical frameworks such as virtue ethics and deontological (think obligation/command based) ethics.