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Interview With A Green: Why Isn't Everyone Green??

Question: So why do you think some people are drawn to this perspective, while others fight it tooth-and-nail??
                                               

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Well, I’d say that to give just one reason would be to greatly oversimplify human nature.  There are myriads of factors involved on both sides of the fence.  But my basic reaction is to reflect on how newborns and toddlers have only a consideration of their own wants and needs, and eventually with maturation and evolution of the thought process begin to realize that other people matter too.  I believe this gradually creates the propensity to look outward toward others, rather than always being consumed by self-motivated desires.

Some people, regardless of their physical age, simply have not yet grown beyond acting only on their own selfish interests.  How else can one explain why they would continue to buy products from Hershey after being told about the atrocities of child labor they perpetuate??  Or to buy coffee from corporations that wantonly destroy entire the very forests where coffee was traditionally grown for ages, simply to reap more profits by faster ripening in the sun??  How many people still shop at Wal-Mart when their immoral and despicable methods are so well documented??  Their attitude seems to be “who cares what these corporations are doing to others – it’s on my way to work”, or “it’s more convenient”, or “I can save money there”, etc.

Examples of this are everywhere.  For instance, I recently saw one reader’s comments to an article regarding the raising of CAFE standards by the Obama administration.  They obviously didn’t understand that this applies only to the average fuel economy for a manufacturer’s entire fleet of vehicles, because the complaint was about “having to give up their beloved GTO.”  Utter nonsense!!  But even so, my reaction was “I had to give up my childhood toys at some point also.”  I’ll be the first to admit it was fun to go cruising with my buddy in one of them, but times have changed and we have grown wiser about the problems associated with those gas-guzzlers.  Human thinking evolves.  We also put an end to slavery once we realized it was wrong!!

Consider the greed and corruption resulting from the corporate attitude towards accumulating every last almighty dollar, and the public devastation that it causes.  Yet there are so many who condemn any attempts to correct it.  Why??  Mostly because these corporations have become quite good at stirring up emotions and unfounded fears of what it might cost us financially or in some perceived loss of “rights”.

Another factor relates to our “out of sight, out of mind” mentality.  We tend to be more concerned about others who are close to us than those who are “way over there” in another country…especially if their culture and traditions are different than ours.  This has been documented in terms of how the public’s opinion on foreign involvement has changed since television began providing live coverage of the atrocities being committed by some dictators.  We tend to react with much more indignation at the destruction of our wildlife and coastal ecologies by negligent corporations when actual pictures of it are thrust right in front of us.  Many times the impacts of our actions seem insignificant because they are remote or we do not immediately suffer the consequences, and so we can quite easily ignore them.

Greens believe that no one is free so long as others are oppressed.  It doesn’t matter if I am living in the lap of luxury, I cannot truly be happy while others are starving.  Like John Lennon so eloquently put it, borders (i.e. any type of division or classification) separate people, creating a “me” and “you,” while what we need is to be working together to find ways to make the planet better for everyone.  This requires that we begin to look beyond ourselves to what is best for humanity in general, and that is an evolutionary process.

I believe green thinking also involves a certain spiritual attitude.  I once took a comparative religions class and learned about the various ways humankind has attempted to prove the existence of a higher intelligence.  The one that struck me most was the teleological argument.  Basically, it is illustrated by a caveman who happens upon a pocket watch, and discovers minute gears and intricate machinery inside.  He is immediately aware that no one existing at that time in history could have made such a thing.  Likewise, I look at the patterns of the cosmos – the atoms below and the stars above, the cell structure, the cycles of harmonic motion and of the seasons, the fact that each animal or plant has the exact characteristics they need to help them survive – and see something there that is far beyond explanation in this plane of existence. 

So, like the Native Americans and Transcendentalists before me, nature is my church.  It is through the creation that the Creator is revealed, and it is therefore something to treasure and respect.  With the coming of the Scientific Age, humankind began to lose this reverence for nature – no longer appreciating the oneness of the universe and the rippling cause and effect of our actions.  We began to believe that we are smarter than nature, and that we can depend on technology to resolve all our worries.  Instead of looking for the root cause of a problem and undoing it, we simply put a patch on it – and this almost always creates new and more difficult problems.

Examples of this are abundant, from the culling of deer trapped in our parks by roads and fences – rather than designing greenways between developed areas, to manufacturing millions of plastic gadgets rather than just doing things manually, to fighting invasive species originally brought in to combat some other pest.  Consider the more recent practice of attempting to create new wetlands elsewhere instead of preserving them where they presently exist.  There is a very good reason they are where they are!!  Will we never learn that nature is such an  interconnected maze of links that one cannot move one piece and expect the remainder to survive in the same balance??  Imagine finding that a roadside rest you were depending on has been closed – yet we do that with the habitat and breeding grounds of other species all the time!!

I think this is why the Greens tend to embrace the natural over the artificial.  Now don’t get me wrong, I am not a Luddite.  I enjoy the television and my iPod and the internet.  But we need to find a balance between industrial technology and a mindfulness of nature, choosing the latter whenever possible.  The irony is that we all appreciate the need for a thermostat to reduce the heat produced by a furnace as the room warms,  yet we don’t seem to “get it” when it comes to overconsumption, unbridled deforestation and wetland loss due to development, escalating air and water pollution, and many, many, many other social and environmental issues where we are blasting away uncontrolled.

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This page was last updated on February 12, 2023

Always remember to "Think Green" because good planets are hard to find!!  

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