Oil and Me

So many of my friends are posting videos of the Gulf oil spill on Facebook. They post the worst one they can find and then express their fear and despair over the disaster and/or their anger and frustration.

I suppose this is natural. It's a terrifying thing to see birds, whales, dolphins and turtles covered in oil and dying - terrifying and shameful because it is the result of our desire to lead lives of greater and greater comfort and variety.

But does it help?

During my time as a preschool teacher I learned a lot about what motivates people. One important thing I learned is that children cannot be governed by fear. When you threaten a child they find ways to ignore the threat or they rise to meet it in order to see just how bad something can be and to prove to themselves that they can endure it (or find out if they can't, where their own limits are) or they move on to something completely different. What they don't do, what they never do, is address the threat as you have presented it. In the rare instance when it does seem to work, it works only once and it sets you up for having to increase the fear stimulus exponentially the next time you try the same tactic. (that's why we end up with "delinquent" kids, they have almost always had caregivers who tried to parent with fear and shame.)

People are like that, even in adulthood, the main difference being, in adulthood, it is a lot easier to ignore the fear stimulus and declare the situation hopeless and therefore completely beyond any attempt at personal responsibility.

In my spiritual progress through this life (limited as it is) there have been two contributors that have prompted me to challenge myself on this way of thinking. In Judaism, we are asked to accept moral responsibility for our actions. There is no vicarious salvation and G-d will not fix whatever is wrong with your life or the earth or anything else, that's up to you. G-d, in Judaism, flows only through us, through beings.

In First Nations traditional religious belief, you can only tell the stories that are yours. There is a similar emphasis on personal responsibility and the idea of beings having a soul, a right to be here and sentience extends to everything on the planet. Yes, even rocks. We are also taught that we are responsible not only to ourselves but to our place in the community. Any decision made must take into account the interests of the seven generations that preceded me and the seven generations that will come after me.

While it would be easy to lament the fact that others have apparently not taken these ideas into account when doing things like drilling for oil or establishing economic structures that rely on filling the skies and the waterways with waste - that would be disingenuous and arrogant. I have ridden in a car, I have driven a car. I liked it. I like to fly and many of the decisions taken by people that led to this spill were taken quite honestly with my tastes and my benefit in mind (although not directly.)

It also bears remembering that the oil that is spilling into the ocean right now is oil we collectively intended to spill into the sky.
I honestly do not see how that is very much better. It's less visible, but it still causes death and destruction, more of it every year.

We are upset because Creation and our actions have combined to spill this oil into a confined and highly visible space. I know I will sound crazy when I say it but that is a gift.

We need to see the natural consequences of our actions. Natural consequences are great teachers. Nevertheless, there is a big difference between natural consequences and the kind of fear, anguish, anger and despair that comes of repeatedly watching the results of our actions on the other beings in our world, bemoaning it, blaming others and then obsessively showing it to others so that they too will feel enraged, frightened, threatened and impotent.

For the last 15 years, I have led a life with a relatively small footprint. Much of that has been deliberate. I left a place of comfort and material security in order to move into a life that had the potential to be more meaningful and more interesting. I accept a certain level of poverty as one of the results of that choice and at the same time I wrestle with how much I can assume responsibility for my place in this oil-based culture. How much more am I willing to give up?

I liked being a princess. I liked driving my car and eating whatever I chose. I liked having nice, new clothes and expensive shoes, I like nice restaurants, I like nice houses, I have expensive tastes - tastes that go beyond brand labels which frankly, I still consider to be somewhat vulgar; as far as snobbery goes, I am as bad as it gets. and I will tell the truth - I'm getting awfully tired of going without those things. Just the same, I am aware that I can only heal what my own life touches and so as much as I would like to be able to do a lot of things that damage the environment - fly more often, drive a car every day, those are not responsible choices and until I know for sure that I have the strength to decline consistently, it is probably better that I manage my negative inclinations by a kind of personal perimeter shopping. I work to meet my needs. I publish when I have to and I try to be careful in the world in every other way. Because at heart? I am an irresponsible hedonist and I will not do the things I need to do in order to have the positive impact I want to have on the world. I don't dip into places where I might be tempted to return to that lifestyle. It is too much fun. I cannot manage that addiction.

I think, collectively, if we really want to address this oil spill we will need to come to terms with the idea that we just can't have all the stuff we want to have. We have to pick a place where we live and live there (I am still guilty of avoiding that choice) We have to accept the indignity of public transport at least half of the time. We have to politely decline the delicacies that are brought in from G-d knows where at a cost that is so high it cannot possibly be reflected in the dollar amount we pay to consume them. We have to wear last year's clothes. We have to use last year's computer and we have to keep it and love it and care for it as though it had to last us a lifetime.

We have to take more pleasure in each other and less in our stuff. We have to look at those turtles in the river, those birds in the marsh, those whales in the bay and accept that they have their lives and the right to live them as fully as we do and if that means we don't get the pleasure of observing them up close, well, that's what it means.

And I am convinced that nothing can be achieved by catastrophic thinking. Stop telling your friends how bad they are and how much you regret it and start finding ways you can fix the things you do that add to the problem.

If there's an answer, that's where we'll find it.

Done ranting, go back to sleep.