Re: [DE] Deep Ecology leads to major changes; but how?

At 19:15 14/06/99 +1200, Eric Storm wrote:
>                  ...  It may still be worth the effort if a sufficient
>number of people could be convinced, sufficient to make large scale change
>a reality.  Whether that's possible or not, how many people is enough, and
>how it should be done are still very good questions.
>
>-possible or not?
>I think it is possible to bring about change purposefully, or at least I am
>not willing to give up without trying. 
> To accept defeat this early would be very demoralizing.  
>
**  Certainly possible, but not including maintaining our present degree of
standard of living. A quick return by N. America and W. Europe to the
standard of living of (but not the detail of) the late 50s and early 60s
would allow a less-catastrophe-littered transition to a more sustainable
world. That was a good time to be in the middle-class in N. America; I
graduated and got my first full-time job then (as an electronic engineer in
Hamilton, Canada). However, business-and-consumption-über-alles since the
late 70s has hacked away so much of the earth's support network that far
greater catastrophes are the more likely future, for most of the world.

>
>-how many people is enough?
>I'm sure that less than half would be sufficient.  25%?  It would depend on
>which 25%.  I think the focus should be on the overdeveloped countries.
>
**  Agreed, to both. Which? Why, those like us of course! Thinkers not 
sheep!

** (Sorry; I should find and use a code-symbol for when I'm being humorous.)

>
>-how it should be done?
>I haven't been able to really get into this yet, but I'm going to just jump
>in to get a dialog going.  We can work it out from there.  So, here goes!
>
>If large scale "wake up" disasters are the only thing that will get people
>to act, then we're in for a rough ride.  Would it be better to create such
>disasters (I'm not sure I like where I'm going.), since they could be
>selected for easy recovery and could happen sooner rather than later, which
>might just save the planet from a lot more destruction that would happen if
>we wait for them to occur on their own?
>
**  This list is one of the few places I could make this point and at least
some readers would get the gut-feeling: "yes, that's right!": 

**  A human-created catastrophe(/disaster, but it has nothing to do with
the stars) must involve humans only: we shouldn't impose more on
long-suffering other species. So to be a 'large scale "wake up" disaster'
tens of thousands of people would have to die and be maimed for life. Only
possible in a 'benevolent dictatorship', not a democracy (even as minimal
as most in the OECD are).


>As Jill said, I think it would be good to start with a "get the message
>out" campaign                                       ...  It may
>also help translate DE into specific things people can do.  This, I
>believe, is already happening, though it wouldn't hurt to do _a lot_ more
>of it, and perhaps with a clearer goal or ethics.
> ... there would need to be a large "grass roots" element.  This is where 
>most of the work needs to be done at present, in my opinion.
>All of this is being done, but not enough of it. 
>
**  Naturally _I_ agree, but I wonder whether the average lurking
list-member sees this sort of thing as putting too much emphasis on
activism. At the beginning of the month there were 181 members, quite a few
in Europe and Canada and a handful elsewhere in the world, but there's been
no feed-back as to whether the direction Eric Storm and I have been taking
this is interesting/acceptable. I see the twin goals here as provoking
thought (hopefully leading to action) and encouraging more people, not
less, to be on the list. I will do nothing to jeopardise either of them.
But I need to know.


>David, are you suggesting that it is not possible to spread the ideas of DE
>enough to make a difference, or are you suggesting that most DE adherents
>aren't comfortable with how it will have to be done?
>
**  At 13:34 14/06/99 +1200, David wrote:
>**  So (i) do deep ecologists (and others with like goals) ... advertising
campaigns effective enough ... ? 
>Or: (ii) should environmentalists in general, and deep ecologists in
>particular, use .. coup methods ...?
>
**  As usual when something is presented as 'either-or' (and especially
TINA), be suspicious. My 3-years-younger sister has accused me of being
manipulative, and I know I used this method on our children to get them to
do what I wanted while thinking they were exercising their own choice.

**  The common answer could well be: "neither and/or both". That is, other
possibilities, and combinations with these two are possible. As I've said
before on my: 13:43 11/06/99 +1200 post: ".. life is complex, and .. simple
black-white; open-shut; right-wrong; yes-no" no longer suit.

**  So here, I'm saying that both of Eric's suggestions are true, _plus_
the fact that complex systems with multiple feedback loops act and react in
what seems at the time to be unpredictable ways. I learnt from the way
things have happened since Marx's Das Kapital and "The Ecologist"'s
Blueprint for Survival (which I read in Jan.'72) that human societies'
reaction to a sufficiently effective description of the current world is to
make just sufficient modifications that the worst is avoided. And that
no-one plans it.

**  [Jill: you asked for wisdom - that's the closest I get!]

David.
(David MacClement) mailto:d1v9d@bigfoot.com 
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/3142/Pg1-AD11.html#top
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