A simple way to view the choice to live sustainably: Think of others more than yourself
People tell me how hard it looks to them to live sustainably. I recently wrote about people thinking it’s hard: First they say it’s impossible, then easy, then easy for me but hard for them. Anything but acting or responsibility.
Almost always, they talk about themselves: “Me, me, me. It’s hard for me. I don’t want to give up doing what I like.” They never talk about the people that their actions necessarily hurt. They know the plastic, pollution, etc hurt others, but they only talk about themselves and what they want or feel entitled to. They don’t say they feel entitled to whatever perk they get for being at the top of a dominance hierarchy. They just act entitled.
How they can think about others instead of just themselves
It’s hard to think past those perks after you’ve lived with them for a while. They feel a part of life. It’s hard to see what you’re doing to others when you’re the one indulging. In all fairness, you didn’t as to be born into a world where it’s hard not to hurt someone just to eat breakfast, but a lot of food comes packaged in plastic. Paying for it funds container ships, long-haul trucking, advertisers addicting people, and lobbyists to get government to fund more pollution and depletion.
It’s easier to see when you see someone else having to choose and not in your world.
Consider in 1800 someone in Liverpool who hasn’t witnessed the cruelty of slavery but has to feed his family decides to board a boat to help bring slaves from Africa to North America. When he leaves Liverpool he doesn’t know what to expect, but he feels he has to go to feed his family.
When the ship reaches Africa, he sees humans being packed onto the ship. He can imagine the squalor, disease, and death to come on that voyage. Say he decides that participating in this trade is wrong.
What does he do?
His easiest choice is to keep going on the ship, deliver the slaves, and go home. I think most of us would call that choice wrong. He would profit from killing people and making others suffer.
Another choice is that he could stay in Africa. Then he wouldn’t be complicit in the slave trade, but what would he do in Africa the rest of his life? He might never see his family again. Still, he’s only one person who would never see them again. If he stayed on the ship, he’d cause dozens to hundreds of people never to see their families again. He’d cause them to live as slaves.
Another choice: he could try to make his way back to England through Africa, then Spain and France. The key word there is “try.” Who knows if he could make it? I don’t think many ships would go north, backward. If none, he’d have to walk. He might not make it.
I think nearly all of us would agree on choices he could make that we think are wrong but easier and that we think are right but incredibly difficult. If he honestly didn’t know what slavery looked like, which the industry and his culture would have hidden from him, then he didn’t ask to be put in that spot.
There are differences between that situation and someone today who feels compelled to do things that pollute and deplete, and thereby necessarily hurt people, but many similarities. The biggest difference is how much greater today’s suffering and cruelty are, as I wrote in my post on the Magnitude of suffering and death then and now.
Say you live flying distance from your family. You probably chose to live that far away not knowing much more about the cruelty and suffering flying causes. Like the guy from Liverpool found out off the coast of Africa, you can’t help but cause that cruelty and suffering—that is, unless you stop.
Saving grace
The saving grace to what looks like your predicament is that it only looks like stopping polluting and depleting make your life and culture worse. It’s more like stopping puts you through withdrawal from your behavior that hurts others. Keep at it and the withdrawal passes to where you never want to go back and you wish you started earlier.
If you find that outcome hard to believe, my Workshops enable you to kick the cruel habit. I’m not trying to sell them, but they’re the only way I know that gets those results.
In the long run, I recommend not choosing to live in a way that requires hurting others. It’s tempting to say, “But I can’t avoid driving or ordering takeout. That’s the way the world is.”
Then you’d just be repeating what we mean when we talk about changing culture: yes, we have to change those things that make living sustainably hard. That’s why I work on sustainability leadership, not engineering, activism, science, teaching, etc. They don’t lead. I do.
It’s hard not getting on that ship, but much easier for you than him. You can make dinner instead of ordering takeout and many other things that you’ll agree improve your life more than the loss you fear, despite knowing it’s in your head.
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