Seeds for Thought: an Ecopsychology Blog

dreaming and the Age of Stupid

I went to see Age of Stupid and wish everybody would go, well UK anyway so far.

People who've seen it mostly think it's great, and I've been puzzled by fellow environmentalists who don't want to. Preaching to the converted they say, as if there was a divide. 

But it's a continuum. At one end Clarkson and the guy from AoS setting up a cheap airline in India who wants everybody to be able to fly. At the other maybe some perfect person chained to a power station and living on leaves. But most of us in the middle somewhere. The woman in AoS celebrating defeating a windfarm proposal, who asked if she is worried about climate change says Yes of course we are, nervous smile, becoming uncertain. You. Me.

get Clarkson

Environmentalists are often stereotyped as negative, against, angry.  Is this fair? Do we look up at the stars or down at the mud? (And anyway I like mud)

MIke Cohen's methods are wonderful for reconnecting us with nature, making us feel good again. But should we? Or should we be despairing with Joanna Macy?

Dog crap when I'm out walking  makes me doubly cross, because it is disgusting and irresponsible, but also because it forces me to notice it if I don't want to step in it. I try to avoid that which just makes me pointlessly angry. 

For example Top Gear. Yet I can't believe that mainstream television gets away with actively encouraging law breaking, hate speech. Where are the thousands of protests that rock the BBC over many less obnoxious and pernicious broadcasts? 

Nowhere. Because I'm certainly not going to watch it in order to complain. Mary Whitehouse and successors are happy to wallow in what they ostensibly hate just to get rid of it. But clearly we environmentalists are not so negative. 

Campaigning will necessarily involve us in going where we don't want to be, the boredom of economics, meetings, leafletting shopping centres and roadsides. It's important to remember what we are fighting for too, what we love. Please try Mike Cohen's reconnecting with nature I mean really, get out and do it, don't just read about it. 

what do you mean "we"?

I've been thinking how to talk about disagreeing. Arguing. Criticising. Guilt tripping. 

Someone asked a while back "why environmentalists don't talk about population" and many of us responded "which environmentalists? I do"

Our language is clumsy with its single YOU, though we could bring back THOU. But English never had different WEs for
1) you and I (sorry thou and I) and
2) Us lot (unspecified probably) 

So it's easy to manipulate our feelings and polarise us between US and THEM.

So as this is the personal is ecopsychological - do I talk about population? 

Would I try and dissuade someone considering a third baby? Difficult. But so is questioning friends who fly several times a year. Challenging allies who drive their dog to the riverside in their SUV for its walk. 

I'm trying to do it though, just by raising the issues and then trying to listen, being less attacking.

And do "WE" support coercive measures to limit population? Well we aren't coercing flyers and drivers and general overconsumers are "WE"

The way to curb population growth is by empowering women, educating girls. And free access to safe appropriate contraception and abortion of course. 

So lets practice constructive disagreement.

This is getting a bit incoherent, probably it's two posts scrambled together. I'll stop now. And hope somebody argues with me :-) Please.

housekeeping - things to make and do

ecological auditing for myself / my household

I've started writing down gas, electric and car miles per month 

I got fed up with urecyclable plastic containers from otherwise exemplary suppliers Yeo Valley yoghurt. So I've started making my own, it's easy. All the google hits make it complcated and require equipment, I just use a thormos

boil milk
cool to just above blood heat

put in thermos with 4 tablespoons of live yoghurt wholemilk is best

leave 8 - 10 hours and decant

I use a litre of wholemilk for this. Very easy apart from the timings, don't forget to decant after the 8-10 hours or it will curdle

I made hummus too and have lost the link, and the envelope I ascribbled the recipe on, something like:

125 grams tinned chick peas drained and washed (that was half a tin. rest in freezer)

2 tbsps tahini

juice and zest of 1 lemon

2 cloves garlic

4 tbsp olive oil (maybe I have this wrong -  I put a lot less than this)

pinch of salt, and pinch of baking soda

grind together I used a blender, very quick

I thought this was delicious but I have a cold this week, it's VERY garlic :-)

They both probably save money depending on the ingredient mix, the hummus is much better than bought.

I mend things, wish I could sew them from scratch.

Negatives

I have a cold and have had the heating on during the day 

I have acquired an abandoned cat. Here I am  cutting down on meat and feeding tinfuls of it to this little carnivore. This is a real issue. You know I've filled in a few carbon footprints and not seen a mention of pets....

next week is recharge the media week in the UK ring that chat show, write to your local paper. for instance what do you think of the budget's downplay of the environment? And of course how to save money the green way :-)

breathing again

ah pre election stress disorder. I have been fighting the urge to hide under my duvet, avoiding newspapers tv and radio. remembering all the tory election victories I stayed up to watch - I'm the only person I know who didn't watch the 1997 labour landslide because I was so sick of being disappointed.

I remember the day after it though, bright sunshine and smiling faces on the train. Not feeling an outsider for a change.

(and yes, slow disappointment and disillusion is better than the kick in the teeth that was thatcher 3 times and bush twice)

We need our turn to be catching the wave instead of choking under it. But it isn't a time to relax and just enjoy going with the tide for a change (well not for too long anyway).

We are labouring to give birth to the future, it's time to push when the wave comes.

a huge thank you to all those Americans who saw past the trivia of skin colour and fancying sara palin.

And in case you missed Samantha Bee on McCain and his air quotes:

I thought it was hilarious and never even saw the original

small groups

Groups of people seem to develop a dynamic that is independent of the will of their members. How? Do they become systems is their own right? There is something quasi organic in the way they grow, die off, change, reproduce even.

Self organising groups that get tired and elect paid workers to lead them. Groups that try and remain democratic and equal and struggle with power relations. Groups that astonishingly do remain stable against the odds.

The first time I was puzzled by this was when a women's health group started to do free pregnancy testing (it was not easily available then). After a time most of us complained that organising this was taking up all our meeting time and we never got to discuss interesting topics any more. The group split into two, and the interesting one we said we wanted almost immediately folded.

our debt to the planet

I received this by email today. Is it too much to hope that the recent economic crises are swinging the tide against our debt culture?

We really can't eat the future.

TODAY humanity has used up ALL of 2008's natural resources. From now to 31st Dec we're in ECOLOGICAL DEBT to the only home we have.

Humans now require the resources of 1.4 planets Just like any company nature has a budget – it can only produce so many resources and absorb so much waste each year. Globally, we now demand the biological capacity of 1.4 planets. But of course, we only have one.

Each year, humanity's ecological footprint is calculated (its demand on cropland, pasture, forests and fisheries), and compares this with the amount of resources the world’s lands and seas generate. Our data shows us that in less than 10 months we consume what it takes the planet 12 months to produce.

Earth Overshoot Day creeps earlier every year Humanity has been in overshoot since the mid 1980s, when the first Earth Overshoot Day fell on December 31, 1986. By 1995 it was more than a month earlier, arriving on November 21. Ten years later it had moved another six weeks earlier, to October 2, 2005.

Earth Overshoot Day (also known as Ecological Debt Day) was a concept devised by the NEF (New Economics Foundation). NEF's Policy Director Andrew Simms is one of the internationally acclaimed speakers at this year's Leeds Schumacher Lectures on 4th October. Tickets and more details are available here.

i hate shoes

The Independent annoys me by having excellent articles about the environment interpersed with injunctions to keep consuming, for example a weekly 50 Best series of things to buy. Last week it was shoes, illustrated with the usual 8 inch spike heels and I was so enraged I removed the front cover before I could bear to read it. There's something about high heels that epitomises everything I loathe and despise about fashion and postfeminism. I experience them as if they were actually grinding my face, rubbing my nose in it ha ha we hate you you hideous hairy old thing.

I was talking to my lovely feminist niece about Sex in the City, which she likes, though understands why I don't. But it's changed hasn't it?  Episode one poured scorn on men who had sex with models, a couple of series later and Carrie was teetering down the catwalk.

well they got women on TV but I still ain't satisfied
cos cooptation's all I see and I still ain't satisfied
they call me Mzzzzz, they sell me blue jeans
call it women's lib, they make it sound obscene..
(red star singers, back in the 60s)

Beware all your hopes and dreams and best ideas they will try and sell back to you.

material girls  in the Guardian on the new golddiggers says it well

does it matter? Yes, they are still thrashing about trying to keep us stupid and unhappy and buying buying buying.

Meanwhile back in the real material world no one wants to worry their pretty little head about..
  Climate chaos is inevitable. We can only avert oblivion

eve of may and one party newspapers

best Beltane wishes to everyone. I was going to write a blog reviewing 1st 4 months of retirement, but am distracted. There seems to be trouble around, personally, as well as in the world of course. I'll talk about a tiny one.

My neighbour came round with a problem with the little stream that runs through our gardens. I checked and it was running fine through ours, high after yesterdays thunderstorm. In her garden downstream it was still and had been seeping out. I put on my wellies and tried poking into the culvert at the end, could not reach any blockage and the next people down are away. So not much I could do.

And it seemed a bit like a tarot reading. blocked energies, numbness, feelings leaking out into the wrong places. and strong people picking up the pieces, getting out their plungers and doing their best  while trying to keep distance from the bits we can't reach or help or solve.

mayday, new life, labour, help me

and if in the UK please go and vote tomorrow particularly in London, a curse on the tory fool and the monopolistic daily paper that is his campaign mouthpiece. The only local paper here "forgot" to mention the Green candidate. Funny no one worries about them while accusing the BBC of bias.

workers, mothers, lovers go and vote in your shared interests. we are in this thing together

strong women

Canada's theme for international women's day is strong women - strong world. Over the border the possible first woman presidential candidate and possible first black presidential candidate are destroying each other's chances. Can they not cooperate? Has nothing been learned since the arguments over whether woman or black people (men of course) would get the vote first?

So too sad today to feel strong. let's turn instead to a strong black woman to cut through the crap, oh Sojourner where are you we need you?

Sojourner Truth (1797-1883): Ain't I A Woman?
Delivered 1851
Women's Convention, Akron, Ohio

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?