Corollaries to my recent post: Replacing “sustainability” with “not hurting people” and “polluting” with “hurting people”
I want to clarify some consequences of realizing that polluting means hurting people, as I wrote in my post Replacing “sustainability” with “not hurting people” and “polluting” with “hurting people”.
People often say that some people can’t worry about sustainability because they’re working three jobs to take care of three kids and having to worry about the next meal means they don’t have the luxury of worrying about the environment. They don’t know what they’re talking about. I suspect they lack hands-on practical experience.
I recognize they aren’t speaking out of logic or effective leadership, but the emotions that their own internal conflict creates. We live in a culture where it’s difficult to avoid doing things that hurt innocent people. It’s uncomfortable to face the emotions that arise from compromising our values and acting against them. It’s easier to lash out at someone like me than face those emotions. The people suffering most are in worse predicaments than the people they’re talking about.
Anyway, I wanted to clarify things that hurt people. I’ll leave out the middle steps of how pollution and depletion hurt people, but they’re there. And to clarify, I’m not writing these things to make people feel bad but to empower them to change their behavior based on consequences they might not know of. Stating them feels like writing the sky is blue or water is wet.
You can’t buy packaged food without hurting people.
You can’t buy an airplane ticket without hurting people.
You can’t buy gas without hurting people.
You can’t keep a pet dog or cat in a city without hurting people.
It’s tempting to act like you can’t live at all without hurting people, but 250,000 years of human existence before modernity belie that false claim. You can live without hurting people. I think it’s very difficult to live in mainstream global culture without hurting people, but you can exit most of that culture and, more importantly, you can change global culture. Yes, it’s difficult, but so was abolition. Which side would you choose between abolitionism and slavery?
I find the view of taking responsibility for my actions that hurt innocent people helps make it easier to stop things that hurt others. People act like the following are hard for many, and I probably would have agreed before actually trying, but you can avoid packaged food more than you do. You can avoid flying, buying gas, and owning pets more than you do. Thereby you can avoid hurting innocent people more than you do.
You’ll be glad you did. I predict you’ll enjoy seeing the claims about people with three jobs etc as defensiveness and distraction. You’ll replace that defensiveness with enthusiasm.
Read my weekly newsletter
On initiative, leadership, the environment, and burpees