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Written by Nigel
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Thursday, 08 May 2008 |
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Switch to a sustainable power supply. Get your organic vegetables delivered. Cycle. Recycle. I am as keen as the next person to go along with those goals, and happily tick the boxes in my own life. I too get a nice warm glow from putting scraps in the compost bin and growing my own vegetables. I too resolve to do even more and be even better next month and next year. And I can see and admire where the most committed proponents of this kind of ethical living want us to go — all the way to a thoroughly Thoreauvian life lived close to the land that would eventually be embraced by everyone in society. In the ideal progression, as you buy your fair-trade coffee and plant your carrot seeds in your wildlife friendly garden, you would become part of a widespread revolution in the way people relate to the land and the market, and seamlessly move on towards a society in which we would live lightly on the land and gently with one another.
 I can see that ideal shining out of the writing and lives of a few people like Dick Strawbridge or Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall, and admire those who live by it in their carbon-neutral homes with their compost loos. Those few have turned their backs on the lifestyle sold to us in glossy magazines and fashion catwalks — a lifestyle that looks so brilliantly bright with its long haul flights to glittering beaches and endlessly renewed clothes, but is in fact so dirty and leaves a snail's trail of filth across the globe. Instead, they are embracing a lifestyle that may look a just a little bit grubbier but is in fact a whole lot cleaner, and that decision is an example for us all to ponder. But it's important to be honest right now, and say that the way that ethical consumerism seeps into most people's lives is nothing like that, and does not seem to be taking society as a whole any closer to that ideal. I wonder why that is? For a start the ethical label is still a brand among other brands, one you can sport now and again.
This pick'n'mix ethical lifestyle is hardly going to start an environmental revolution. You can drink Innocent smoothies while sitting in the travel agents booking your next transatlantic flight; you can eat locally grown organic broccoli but be unable to resist the imported blueberries beside it; you can buy your fair-trade cotton T-shirt alongside a couple of suits that are so amazingly cheap you just can't imagine how little the workers were paid who stitched them. Is it simply a way of taking our minds off the heaps of disposable rubbish that we are buying if we pay for them with our new green pvc-free WWF credit card?
While I'm not saying one should junk those shopping decisions, it's possible to be more honest about their limitations. Because it's pretty depressing that so often the personal choices of ethical consumerism, however good in themselves, are seen as all you need in order to get political change going. Of course it is comforting, in this world in which many people have lost faith in collective action and in the response of political parties, to believe that simply by picking something different off the supermarket shelf we have paid our political and environmental dues.
The other kind of political action, the kind that involves trying to push other people and governments into making the same choices, is a whole lot harder and more risky. Politicians are clearly responding to this narrowing of the political remit. A politician such as David Cameron totally understands the modern desire to believe that easy, pleasant choices in our homes and shops are all that's needed to create all the change we want.
He was quoted as saying there was no need for government coercion of individuals or businesses. "We've all got our roles to play, in terms of the choices we make as individuals, as businesses, as families, but it's not for the government to tell everyone ... we have to travel less, that would be a mistake."
He is the perfect spokesman for this kind of personally oriented ethical living: a figure that cares enough to buy solar panels and a wind turbine for his own Notting Hill home, but doesn't care enough to impinge on the freedoms of others to drive gas guzzling Chelsea tractors past his house and fly filthy jets above it. It may be good to believe we can detoxify our own homes and gardens, but it doesn't mean much if we leave the rest of the world choking.
There's also the problem that in much of this debate ethical behaviour is defined by such very narrow parameters. It is very telling that your average man in the street set his goal from the outset as "reducing his impact on the environment". But is this the sum total of ethical living? Surely there has to be more.
It's so hard to confront the desperate human needs and the glaring inequalities on our very doorsteps which are so much messier and more risky than buying something fair-trade for the sake of the needy far away. And just as there are aspects of personal living that the usual "ethical" remit doesn't speak to, there are pressing political issues that are never going to be affected by ethical consumerism and that therefore risk losing out in a world in which political activity shrinks to merely shopping. How can our consumer choices speak to issues of how a government can tolerate torture of terrorist suspects by its allies, or civilian deaths in its wars, or the poor treatment of refugees?
While this generation may remember David Thoreau's poetic and joyful relationship with the land, we tend to forget his nights in prison for refusing to pay taxes to what he saw as a corrupt government that was pursuing an unjust war. There are other kinds of ethical action that it is absolutely vital to celebrate, alongside the altogether laudable long life light bulbs and reusable nappies.
As a gay man I will never have to face the questions from the wide eyed innocent grand children ‘Granddad, what did you do to save the Whales/Elephants/Tigers the Rainforests and the Planet?’ and for that I’m grateful for even though I like to think of myself as an ethically living human being who has taken some small [maybe even laudable] steps, I’m not sure I have much more than mealy mouthed answers. I fear I only do things in moderation which as we all know
Moderation? It's mediocrity, fear, and confusion in disguise. It's the devil's dilemma. It's neither doing nor not doing. It's the wobbling compromise that makes no one happy. Moderation is for the bland, the apologetic, for the fence-sitters of the world afraid to take a stand. It's for those afraid to laugh or cry, for those afraid to live or die. Moderation...is lukewarm tea, the devil's own brew.
Dan Millman – The Way of the Peaceful Warrior
But I’d rather fail at something I believe is important than succeed in something meaningless and purile. |
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Last Updated ( Friday, 09 May 2008 )
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