I honestly can’t remember the last time I gave something up for lent. I clearly remember other people around me agonizing about what they ought to do or give up, but I don’t remember this being a particular feature of my own Lenten experience. Probably thanks to the most recent Radiolab, this year I decided to try it out. At the New Year I blogged about how I thought New Year’s resolutions were unnecessary from an abstract perspective, but useful as one of many times throughout the year when we’re supposed to reflect on how we can improve ourselves. I said my main resolution was to reflect more, which I stuck with pretty well for a few days, stuck with more or less for a few weeks, and then pretty much forgot. Fortunately for me, we’re already at another season to reflect on self-betterment.
The episode of Radiolab I mentioned earlier was really pretty interesting. The show is made up of three stories, and it’s the first one that stands out to me: a woman who smokes two packs a day for decades, after many unsuccessful attempts to quit and feeling harassed by her friend, suddenly declares, “If I smoke one more cigarette, I’m giving $5,000 to the KKK.” She made the vow, and she took it seriously enough that she never smoked again: she’d wake up in the night, reach for a smoke, and say, “hold it, no way.” The hosts of Radiolab broke down the psychology of it by saying that normally our short-term impulses outweigh our long-term desires simply because they’re more immediate—but by creating a situation where we face immediate emotional pulls as strong as the impulses, we can override this natural state of things. They compared it to Ulysses binding himself to the mast of his ship on the way past the sirens in the Odessy, telling his crew not to untie him no matter what happened. This method can be used in a physical way, like tying yourself to a ship, but it can also be less concrete, as in making a vow to give to a cause that you find reprehensible, and it can also be as simple as making a decision (instead of recounting the whole Radiolab episode, I recommend you go listen to it: in one of the stories, a man changes the path of his whole life based on a ‘coin flip’).
For Lent, I decided that I wanted to cut down on my use of Facebook and news sites. I didn't give them up entirely because they both serve an important role for me (keeping in touch with friends and what’s going on in the world). That being said, Facebook, The New York Times, and Huffington Post are my also main sources of procrastination, and are so much of a habit that I’ll sometimes be about to do something productive and find myself on Facebook before I even process that I’m doing it. I’ve found that limiting myself to once a day for these sites has been extremely useful for my productivity. Sure, sometimes I just find another way to procrastinate, but I’m now more selective about when I use Facebook and which news stories I read. As evidence: I’m blogging for the first time in two months.
Returning to the idea of the Ulysses contract, I wanted to say a few words about trying to live an ethical life in a world of easy consumption. I occasionally find myself wondering if my efforts not to negatively impact others around me in fairly removed ways (e.g., not eating meat, not buying clothes from sweatshops, recycling) is just an indication that there’s something wrong with me: Do I have some source of deep-seated psychological guilt? Do I have some form of OCD that amounts to an inability to stop thinking about how I’m affecting other people? But I think what’s really going on can be explained by the same phenomenon that explains how the woman I mentioned above quit smoking: the way I think about living in a world with other people makes the ways that most people contribute to harming others immediate to me. Yes, a hamburger looks tasty and would be satisfying in an immediate sense, but eating it would also be distressing in an immediate sense: I’d know that by consuming it I would be supporting a meat industry that hurts people (I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about how exactly eating meat hurts people in a previous post, so I won’t go over that again here). Buying a shirt produced in a sweatshop might be gratifying in some way, but it would also be paying to support institutions that keep people from having fulfilling lives. For me, in the short term, the negative impulses for these sorts of actions outweigh the positive.
The real question that remains is why I feel this so acutely for some issues: is it just habit? Is it because I spend time reading about the effects of our society’s way of life? Surely there are other ways that I negatively impact people that I don’t feel as bad about, or causes that other people feel in a strong and immediate sense that I don’t respond to at all. Are all of these reactions ways that we bind ourselves, or do they have some other source?
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011
New Year’s Resolutions
If I had to choose between voting either yea or nay, I’d vote in favor of New Year’s resolutions. It’s not that I hold any particular fondness for them, or that I’ve made any particularly challenging or important ones over the years, but more that I support the general sentiment behind them: reflecting on one’s life and making a decision about how that life could be better in the year to come. My only beef with them, really, is the time frame. Making resolutions for a whole year, and only doing so once a year, seems to be dooming yourself to failure. I’m lucky if I even remember what my previous resolutions were, let alone actually keeping them in mind the whole year in between.
What I’m really trying to get at is this: the reminder to reflect on our lives and change them for the better is important, but even better is a way of life that involves continuous reflection and change. Now, as good as our intentions are, it’s easy to get into a rut, and a little reminder to do some reflecting is definitely called for. Yes, sometimes things might jump out at us as needing to change, and we can deal with those as they come, but other things will only be apparent if we take a minute to pause and consider how we can make our lives better: do our actions correspond with our values? Are we living in ways that simply gratify us, or are we actually living lives that will make us happier? What do we want out of life, anyway? These are the kinds of questions that I want to reflect on regularly, and that I think we could all benefit from thinking about. Frequently I do think about these things, but sometimes they get pushed out of mind. Sometimes I feel too busy, or too stressed, and I forget to reflect.
My solution? A new resolution: more personal reflection. When I get to the end of a month, I want to ask myself, “Did I get everything I could have out of that month? What changes can I make to how I live the next month that will make me happier with it at its end?” When I get to the end of a week, I want to ask myself, “Was that a week that I was satisfied with, or did I just let another week go by without appreciating it?” When I get to the end of a day, I want to ask myself, “Was there anything I didn’t do today that I wish I’d done? Is there anything I can try to do differently tomorrow?” Maybe this will be too much. Maybe when I get to the end of the first couple of weeks, my answer will be, “Yes, I need to change, I need to reflect less because I’m stressing myself out trying to change too much.” But for now, I’m going with my philosophical training, which tells me that self-reflection is the best policy.
What I’m really trying to get at is this: the reminder to reflect on our lives and change them for the better is important, but even better is a way of life that involves continuous reflection and change. Now, as good as our intentions are, it’s easy to get into a rut, and a little reminder to do some reflecting is definitely called for. Yes, sometimes things might jump out at us as needing to change, and we can deal with those as they come, but other things will only be apparent if we take a minute to pause and consider how we can make our lives better: do our actions correspond with our values? Are we living in ways that simply gratify us, or are we actually living lives that will make us happier? What do we want out of life, anyway? These are the kinds of questions that I want to reflect on regularly, and that I think we could all benefit from thinking about. Frequently I do think about these things, but sometimes they get pushed out of mind. Sometimes I feel too busy, or too stressed, and I forget to reflect.
My solution? A new resolution: more personal reflection. When I get to the end of a month, I want to ask myself, “Did I get everything I could have out of that month? What changes can I make to how I live the next month that will make me happier with it at its end?” When I get to the end of a week, I want to ask myself, “Was that a week that I was satisfied with, or did I just let another week go by without appreciating it?” When I get to the end of a day, I want to ask myself, “Was there anything I didn’t do today that I wish I’d done? Is there anything I can try to do differently tomorrow?” Maybe this will be too much. Maybe when I get to the end of the first couple of weeks, my answer will be, “Yes, I need to change, I need to reflect less because I’m stressing myself out trying to change too much.” But for now, I’m going with my philosophical training, which tells me that self-reflection is the best policy.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Turkey Day
A piece in the Atlantic, “Heritage Turkeys: Worth the Cost?”, recently raised the following question: why pay $7 a pound or more for a naturally raised heritage turkey, when supermarkets offer commodity turkeys for $1.50 a pound? Although much of the article reads as a PR release about how great their old-school methods of turkey-raising are, there was one passage that caught my attention:
“First, in many ways the commodity turkey is artificially cheap. In the immediate sense, industrial methods do lower production costs. These include intensive crowding in metal confinement buildings; minimal human care, made possible by total confinement and mechanized feed and water systems; and reliance on cheap feeds (often including slaughterhouse wastes and a panoply of pharmaceuticals). Government subsidies and lax enforcement of environmental laws also enable (and cheapen) industrial food production. The result of this system is water, air, and soil polluted by agricultural waste; meat with high levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria; and animal suffering on an unprecedented scale. Although these costs don't show up on our grocery receipts, they are real and, ultimately, we all pay them.”
That last sentence pretty much sums it up: the real costs of cheap turkey (and the same goes for other meats and dairy) aren’t paid at the cash register. These costs are paid in a variety of ways, and by a variety of people. Yes, the people who buy this meat pay some of the costs: they’re eating turkey that has been pumped full of hormones and antibiotics, and the phrase ‘you are what you eat’ goes for turkeys as well as people. Aside from the health costs associated with ingesting these chemicals are the risks related to consuming meat that comes from animals living in extremely poor living conditions: They’re given their drug cocktails to combat the effects of being packed together, unable to move and standing around in their own waste. Giving them large doses of antibiotics may take care of most of the bacteria, but this only clears the way for more drug-resistant strains. Yum.
Aside from the hidden costs to those who are actually buying the meat are the costs that are externalized. These are the costs that other people are forced to pay by virtue of the fact that this meat is being produced. Some of these costs are fairly direct (e.g., tax dollars going toward government subsidies for cheap-meat production), while others are more roundabout. Industrially raised pigs may be the worst of the meats, notorious for the toxic pig-manure lagoons that they produce. Animal feces loaded with chemicals and bacteria is shoveled out the door into nature, where it wreaks havoc on local ecosystems. This waste is beyond the scale that natural systems can cope with, and we all end up living in a degraded environment, or paying to clean it up, as a result.
That’s my rant on meat, so what’s the solution? Well, there are two options. The first is to stop eating it. I know, everybody says, “But I love it too much.” That reason doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny, does it? If I really love pushing little kids, it doesn’t make it ok for me to do—I have to balance my desires with the harm that I inflict on others. I don’t eat meat, but that doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes crave it. In particular, I love lamb: delicious, delicious baby sheep… But before I start drooling, this brings me to option number two: only buy meat and dairy that are ethically sourced (or more ethically sourced than alternatives), and eat less of them. If you “have to” have meat, do your best to make sure you’re inflicting as few externalized costs on other people as possible when you enjoy it. This is the track that I go with dairy. I tried going vegan for a while, but it took an unsustainable amount of effort, and I wasn’t successful in making sure that I got enough protein and other nutrients (it is possible to go vegan and be healthy, but I couldn’t hack it—props to people who do). I now eat a limited amount of dairy that comes from an organic farm. When I’m out, I eat at places that I know use organic dairy when I have that option. I could ride a hard line and only eat organic dairy when I’m out, as well, but I haven’t made that step yet. In our diets, as in life, there’s always room for improvement.
Like many actions we take daily, eating meat and dairy has costs—both for ourselves and for others—that we don’t see on our price tags. Thinking about what these costs are is something that I try to do regularly, and I’d encourage everyone out there to do the same. I started this post talking about turkeys, but even if it’s too late for you to change your Thanksgiving plans, at least give some thought to the food you’ll be eating in the new year.
“First, in many ways the commodity turkey is artificially cheap. In the immediate sense, industrial methods do lower production costs. These include intensive crowding in metal confinement buildings; minimal human care, made possible by total confinement and mechanized feed and water systems; and reliance on cheap feeds (often including slaughterhouse wastes and a panoply of pharmaceuticals). Government subsidies and lax enforcement of environmental laws also enable (and cheapen) industrial food production. The result of this system is water, air, and soil polluted by agricultural waste; meat with high levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria; and animal suffering on an unprecedented scale. Although these costs don't show up on our grocery receipts, they are real and, ultimately, we all pay them.”
That last sentence pretty much sums it up: the real costs of cheap turkey (and the same goes for other meats and dairy) aren’t paid at the cash register. These costs are paid in a variety of ways, and by a variety of people. Yes, the people who buy this meat pay some of the costs: they’re eating turkey that has been pumped full of hormones and antibiotics, and the phrase ‘you are what you eat’ goes for turkeys as well as people. Aside from the health costs associated with ingesting these chemicals are the risks related to consuming meat that comes from animals living in extremely poor living conditions: They’re given their drug cocktails to combat the effects of being packed together, unable to move and standing around in their own waste. Giving them large doses of antibiotics may take care of most of the bacteria, but this only clears the way for more drug-resistant strains. Yum.
Aside from the hidden costs to those who are actually buying the meat are the costs that are externalized. These are the costs that other people are forced to pay by virtue of the fact that this meat is being produced. Some of these costs are fairly direct (e.g., tax dollars going toward government subsidies for cheap-meat production), while others are more roundabout. Industrially raised pigs may be the worst of the meats, notorious for the toxic pig-manure lagoons that they produce. Animal feces loaded with chemicals and bacteria is shoveled out the door into nature, where it wreaks havoc on local ecosystems. This waste is beyond the scale that natural systems can cope with, and we all end up living in a degraded environment, or paying to clean it up, as a result.
That’s my rant on meat, so what’s the solution? Well, there are two options. The first is to stop eating it. I know, everybody says, “But I love it too much.” That reason doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny, does it? If I really love pushing little kids, it doesn’t make it ok for me to do—I have to balance my desires with the harm that I inflict on others. I don’t eat meat, but that doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes crave it. In particular, I love lamb: delicious, delicious baby sheep… But before I start drooling, this brings me to option number two: only buy meat and dairy that are ethically sourced (or more ethically sourced than alternatives), and eat less of them. If you “have to” have meat, do your best to make sure you’re inflicting as few externalized costs on other people as possible when you enjoy it. This is the track that I go with dairy. I tried going vegan for a while, but it took an unsustainable amount of effort, and I wasn’t successful in making sure that I got enough protein and other nutrients (it is possible to go vegan and be healthy, but I couldn’t hack it—props to people who do). I now eat a limited amount of dairy that comes from an organic farm. When I’m out, I eat at places that I know use organic dairy when I have that option. I could ride a hard line and only eat organic dairy when I’m out, as well, but I haven’t made that step yet. In our diets, as in life, there’s always room for improvement.
Like many actions we take daily, eating meat and dairy has costs—both for ourselves and for others—that we don’t see on our price tags. Thinking about what these costs are is something that I try to do regularly, and I’d encourage everyone out there to do the same. I started this post talking about turkeys, but even if it’s too late for you to change your Thanksgiving plans, at least give some thought to the food you’ll be eating in the new year.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
One Week
One Week
Last week, after reading a story in the New York Times about self-control, I decided that I should take a week away from alcohol and sweets, just to prove to myself that I could do it. I used to consider myself to be quite an expert at self-control (maybe even self-denial), and so I thought that it would be a good opportunity to show myself that I still had it. I don’t think that my typical levels of alcohol and sweets consumption are harmful or bad, it was more of a matter of taking some time away from what I consider to be my vices (at least to some degree) to think about them.
I was surprised to find it more difficult than I expected (which I suppose is a little redundant). The occasional craving for a cookie or a doughnut was tolerable, although passing on trying a piece of homemade birthday cake was difficult. Not having anything to drink was tougher. I typically have a drink every evening. From everything I’ve read, drinking in moderation is supposed to be a healthy habit, and it’s certainly something I enjoy. I was able to have relaxing evenings without it, but sometimes I really did crave it. I started my little experiment on a Friday, which meant that day six landed on a Thursday. On Thursdays is the show Fringe, which I watch more consistently than any other, and part of that habit is that I have my evening drink while I’m watching. So I decided that sticking to my guns wasn’t so important, and I poured myself a shot of bourbon to sip throughout the show. I definitely enjoyed it.
On day seven I went to a party and promptly forgot about taking a break from my vices, but I did manage to remind myself of one important thing: alcohol is something that I want to continue to enjoy for a long time, and that requires enjoying it always in moderation.
Last week, after reading a story in the New York Times about self-control, I decided that I should take a week away from alcohol and sweets, just to prove to myself that I could do it. I used to consider myself to be quite an expert at self-control (maybe even self-denial), and so I thought that it would be a good opportunity to show myself that I still had it. I don’t think that my typical levels of alcohol and sweets consumption are harmful or bad, it was more of a matter of taking some time away from what I consider to be my vices (at least to some degree) to think about them.
I was surprised to find it more difficult than I expected (which I suppose is a little redundant). The occasional craving for a cookie or a doughnut was tolerable, although passing on trying a piece of homemade birthday cake was difficult. Not having anything to drink was tougher. I typically have a drink every evening. From everything I’ve read, drinking in moderation is supposed to be a healthy habit, and it’s certainly something I enjoy. I was able to have relaxing evenings without it, but sometimes I really did crave it. I started my little experiment on a Friday, which meant that day six landed on a Thursday. On Thursdays is the show Fringe, which I watch more consistently than any other, and part of that habit is that I have my evening drink while I’m watching. So I decided that sticking to my guns wasn’t so important, and I poured myself a shot of bourbon to sip throughout the show. I definitely enjoyed it.
On day seven I went to a party and promptly forgot about taking a break from my vices, but I did manage to remind myself of one important thing: alcohol is something that I want to continue to enjoy for a long time, and that requires enjoying it always in moderation.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Difficulties
I’m starting to feel back in the swing of things, but for a while I was feeling pretty tired of the whole ‘trying to be good’ thing. There were a few catalysts for my funk, but when it came down to it, none of them were actual reasons for giving up on trying to live rightly. When Ultimately, the life choices that I’ve done my best to turn into habits are geared toward doing right by others, and my lack of motivation—for the reasons I’m about to talk about—don’t change the fact that acting differently would be acting in a way that I don’t think is for the best.
The first is money. Since I’m taking a break from teaching to focus on finishing my degree, I find myself with no income and not very much savings to get by on. This forces me to reevaluate some of the choices that I make that used to have bearable financial consequences. When I talk to my students about ethics in everyday life, and I tell them that I do my grocery shopping in a natural food store and buy organic, and that I only buy my clothes from places that are sweatshop free, one of the first things they say is always, ‘but isn’t that really expensive?’ Yes and no. Yes, because if two companies produce basically the same product, but one avoids harming others in the process while the other externalizes whatever costs they can, the socially conscious product will generally be more expensive. But I also tell my students that my grocery bill stays pretty low. This past week, for example, I spent about $30 at farmers markets and $20 in my grocery store. This is a typical weekly amount for me, so this comes out to between $200 and $250 per month. I’m sure I could eat more cheaply if I bought the least expensive version of everything at a supermarket, but these products would be worse for the environment (being non-organic, less local, etc.) and worse for me. Part of the reason that my bill doesn’t skyrocket just because I don’t always buy the cheapest option available is that I didn’t simply switch from cheap to organic, but also made other changes: I stopped eating meat, stopped buying things with so much packaging, and stopped buying ready-to-eat frozen meals. These changes (and others that I’m surely forgetting) are good for the world as well as the checkbook.
I went grocery shopping with my roommate the other day, however, and it made me reconsider where I shop, and what I pay for things. I’ve been shopping at the same, small natural grocery store for about 4 years. Things there are expensive. This is partly a factor of the reasons mentioned above, but also partly because there’s a pretty high mark-up at this store. I’m not sure why exactly this is, but I’ve always brushed it aside as a price worth paying for the community feel (the owner is usually the one at the cash register, and we chat every week), and I think of the markup as a cost I’m willing to pay to support a local business instead of a chain. When I’m feeling the pinch, however, I have to reconsider whether this is really where I should be shopping (could I live rightly and be better off individually by finding the nearest Whole Foods or Trader Joes?). For now my plan is to keep shopping at True Nature for most things, but find a better place to buy some of my staples in bulk.
The other difficulties are more social in origin: In the past six months my living situation has gone from ‘living with someone who tries to live in the same way that I do’, to ‘living alone’, to ‘living with someone who doesn’t care about this stuff’. Although it’s good to now be forced to reevaluate some of my choices (for example, by seeing how cheaply I could be buying my groceries), I now find myself questioning all of my choices and asking, ‘why bother?’ Why do I bother to take my canvas bags to the grocery store and farmers market when the landfills are overflowing with cheap plastic bags anyway? Why do I bother to avoid meat when the environment is going to be inundated with antibiotics and hormones, and the cropland is going to be used for feed regardless? Despite their demotivating effects, I know the answers to these questions: I make the choices I do because I don’t want to be a part of the problem. I won’t give in just because I’d be doing what everybody else already does. The common question is ‘if everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you?’, but a more poignant question might be ‘if everyone else jumped off a bridge, does that mean you should too?’ There’s no immediate logical connection between how other people act and what it’s right or acceptable for others to do. Just because all of your neighbors enjoy shooting school kids with bb guns, it doesn’t mean that it’s ok to do. I can’t bring myself to ignore how my actions impact the rest of the world, even though it’s how most people go about their daily lives.
What’s my conclusion? For one, I do need to constantly reevaluate the choices that I’ve made regarding the way I live. When I see other people doing things differently, it should always be a challenge to my own choices: do I have good reasons for doing what I do? Secondly, I need to take my experiences with others as reminders of perspective: just as there are choices that I have made that others have never considered, there are surely choices that I could make that have never crossed my mind. Trying to be good doesn’t just mean making up a set of rules and sticking to it, it means always reevaluating and improving. Finally, I need to constantly remind myself that ‘not being a part of the problem’ isn’t the same as being part of the solution. As uncomfortable as it makes me, sometimes I need to be more vocal about the impact that all of our actions have on one another.
The first is money. Since I’m taking a break from teaching to focus on finishing my degree, I find myself with no income and not very much savings to get by on. This forces me to reevaluate some of the choices that I make that used to have bearable financial consequences. When I talk to my students about ethics in everyday life, and I tell them that I do my grocery shopping in a natural food store and buy organic, and that I only buy my clothes from places that are sweatshop free, one of the first things they say is always, ‘but isn’t that really expensive?’ Yes and no. Yes, because if two companies produce basically the same product, but one avoids harming others in the process while the other externalizes whatever costs they can, the socially conscious product will generally be more expensive. But I also tell my students that my grocery bill stays pretty low. This past week, for example, I spent about $30 at farmers markets and $20 in my grocery store. This is a typical weekly amount for me, so this comes out to between $200 and $250 per month. I’m sure I could eat more cheaply if I bought the least expensive version of everything at a supermarket, but these products would be worse for the environment (being non-organic, less local, etc.) and worse for me. Part of the reason that my bill doesn’t skyrocket just because I don’t always buy the cheapest option available is that I didn’t simply switch from cheap to organic, but also made other changes: I stopped eating meat, stopped buying things with so much packaging, and stopped buying ready-to-eat frozen meals. These changes (and others that I’m surely forgetting) are good for the world as well as the checkbook.
I went grocery shopping with my roommate the other day, however, and it made me reconsider where I shop, and what I pay for things. I’ve been shopping at the same, small natural grocery store for about 4 years. Things there are expensive. This is partly a factor of the reasons mentioned above, but also partly because there’s a pretty high mark-up at this store. I’m not sure why exactly this is, but I’ve always brushed it aside as a price worth paying for the community feel (the owner is usually the one at the cash register, and we chat every week), and I think of the markup as a cost I’m willing to pay to support a local business instead of a chain. When I’m feeling the pinch, however, I have to reconsider whether this is really where I should be shopping (could I live rightly and be better off individually by finding the nearest Whole Foods or Trader Joes?). For now my plan is to keep shopping at True Nature for most things, but find a better place to buy some of my staples in bulk.
The other difficulties are more social in origin: In the past six months my living situation has gone from ‘living with someone who tries to live in the same way that I do’, to ‘living alone’, to ‘living with someone who doesn’t care about this stuff’. Although it’s good to now be forced to reevaluate some of my choices (for example, by seeing how cheaply I could be buying my groceries), I now find myself questioning all of my choices and asking, ‘why bother?’ Why do I bother to take my canvas bags to the grocery store and farmers market when the landfills are overflowing with cheap plastic bags anyway? Why do I bother to avoid meat when the environment is going to be inundated with antibiotics and hormones, and the cropland is going to be used for feed regardless? Despite their demotivating effects, I know the answers to these questions: I make the choices I do because I don’t want to be a part of the problem. I won’t give in just because I’d be doing what everybody else already does. The common question is ‘if everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you?’, but a more poignant question might be ‘if everyone else jumped off a bridge, does that mean you should too?’ There’s no immediate logical connection between how other people act and what it’s right or acceptable for others to do. Just because all of your neighbors enjoy shooting school kids with bb guns, it doesn’t mean that it’s ok to do. I can’t bring myself to ignore how my actions impact the rest of the world, even though it’s how most people go about their daily lives.
What’s my conclusion? For one, I do need to constantly reevaluate the choices that I’ve made regarding the way I live. When I see other people doing things differently, it should always be a challenge to my own choices: do I have good reasons for doing what I do? Secondly, I need to take my experiences with others as reminders of perspective: just as there are choices that I have made that others have never considered, there are surely choices that I could make that have never crossed my mind. Trying to be good doesn’t just mean making up a set of rules and sticking to it, it means always reevaluating and improving. Finally, I need to constantly remind myself that ‘not being a part of the problem’ isn’t the same as being part of the solution. As uncomfortable as it makes me, sometimes I need to be more vocal about the impact that all of our actions have on one another.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Air Conditioning
Air conditioning has been on my mind a lot lately. I resisted using it until last Wednesday evening. On Wednesday I rode with my brother from Crystal Lake to Chicago in a car without AC. By the time I got back I was dripping with sweat, and I decided to go ahead and put in the window unit. Later in the week, when talking with a friend, I mentioned that I’d just put it in. They asked where I’d gotten it from, thinking that I had only recently acquired it. My response was something along the lines of, “oh, it’s just been on my floor, but I had been resisting putting it in because…” Because what? I had some vague sense of ‘I shouldn’t use the AC too early in the year’, but I didn’t really have any sense of where that idea was coming from.
Then today I read this story. It’s not super-informative, and not super-damning, but it did get me thinking again about why exactly it is that using AC all the time isn’t ultimately what I want to do. Do I want to use it some of the time? Yes, I do. Sometimes I come in from outside and just need to cool down. Sometimes if I’m sitting around in my apartment, there’s just nowhere I can be that I’m not sweating, and it makes me pretty unhappy. But taking that all into consideration, and typing from the comfort of my air conditioned back room, here are a few reasons that I don’t want to use my AC:
1. Cabin Fever – I don’t know what this technically refers to. When I hear the phrase ‘cabin fever’, I usually get an image in my mind that’s some sort of cross between ‘Little House on the Prarie’ and ‘The Shining’. When I have my AC on, it makes me reluctant to leave the house (or, since I’m using a window unit: the room). When I don’t leave the house all day, and only leave the room to get food or use the bathroom, it makes me unhappy. I don’t notice it right away. Usually it’s around 4 pm, and I’m wondering why people bother to keep living, and I say to myself, ‘Mark, you haven’t left the house all day, that’s why you’ve suddenly become a pessimist’. If I can muster the motivation, I leave the house and go for a walk. I get sweaty, but I ultimately enjoy it because I’m outside and moving around. On good days I realize that this is going to happen before I start to go crazy, and I get outside preemptively.
2. Adaptation – When it’s been 32 degrees for months, and it finally hits 60, it feels downright hot. People put on their shorts and leave their jackets at home. Leaving the AC in the closet for a few months of 80s may seem like a drag at first, but it makes the 90s seem a lot more bearable.
3. Heating up the city – How do air conditioners work? Magic, as far as I’m concerned. But I do know that the cooler they make my apartment, the hotter they’re making the outside: and it’s not an even trade. If you don’t believe me, try plugging in your AC in a closed room with a thermometer. (OK, you probably shouldn’t try that.) Millions of air conditioners in millions of houses, stores and cars lead to an appreciable amount of heat exhaust coming from cooling ourselves down. That’s something that I want to avoid participating in as much as possible.
Maybe this is a half-baked post, but it all comes down to these same issues that surround ‘trying to be good’. Using AC too much is bad for me as an individual because it leads to me being cooped up too much and being less comfortable in the heat in general. It’s also bad for me to use to much because ultimately it contributes to harm done to others in the form of global (and local) warming. On the other hand, if I don’t leave it running all day and I turn it off when it’s not an unbearable temperature outside, it’s a pretty important part of my happiness on days when it hits 90.
Then today I read this story. It’s not super-informative, and not super-damning, but it did get me thinking again about why exactly it is that using AC all the time isn’t ultimately what I want to do. Do I want to use it some of the time? Yes, I do. Sometimes I come in from outside and just need to cool down. Sometimes if I’m sitting around in my apartment, there’s just nowhere I can be that I’m not sweating, and it makes me pretty unhappy. But taking that all into consideration, and typing from the comfort of my air conditioned back room, here are a few reasons that I don’t want to use my AC:
1. Cabin Fever – I don’t know what this technically refers to. When I hear the phrase ‘cabin fever’, I usually get an image in my mind that’s some sort of cross between ‘Little House on the Prarie’ and ‘The Shining’. When I have my AC on, it makes me reluctant to leave the house (or, since I’m using a window unit: the room). When I don’t leave the house all day, and only leave the room to get food or use the bathroom, it makes me unhappy. I don’t notice it right away. Usually it’s around 4 pm, and I’m wondering why people bother to keep living, and I say to myself, ‘Mark, you haven’t left the house all day, that’s why you’ve suddenly become a pessimist’. If I can muster the motivation, I leave the house and go for a walk. I get sweaty, but I ultimately enjoy it because I’m outside and moving around. On good days I realize that this is going to happen before I start to go crazy, and I get outside preemptively.
2. Adaptation – When it’s been 32 degrees for months, and it finally hits 60, it feels downright hot. People put on their shorts and leave their jackets at home. Leaving the AC in the closet for a few months of 80s may seem like a drag at first, but it makes the 90s seem a lot more bearable.
3. Heating up the city – How do air conditioners work? Magic, as far as I’m concerned. But I do know that the cooler they make my apartment, the hotter they’re making the outside: and it’s not an even trade. If you don’t believe me, try plugging in your AC in a closed room with a thermometer. (OK, you probably shouldn’t try that.) Millions of air conditioners in millions of houses, stores and cars lead to an appreciable amount of heat exhaust coming from cooling ourselves down. That’s something that I want to avoid participating in as much as possible.
Maybe this is a half-baked post, but it all comes down to these same issues that surround ‘trying to be good’. Using AC too much is bad for me as an individual because it leads to me being cooped up too much and being less comfortable in the heat in general. It’s also bad for me to use to much because ultimately it contributes to harm done to others in the form of global (and local) warming. On the other hand, if I don’t leave it running all day and I turn it off when it’s not an unbearable temperature outside, it’s a pretty important part of my happiness on days when it hits 90.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
How to Try Not to Be Bad
How to Try Not to Be Bad
I called my blog “How to (Try to) Be Good,” but in some ways that’s a misleading title. This post is about why I think it’s right to give (I’m still using this word ‘give,’ but I mean it very broadly—including monetary giving, but also giving time, including lifestyle choices that are made with an eye toward making the world a better place). Doing good can mean a few different things, although we don’t usually think about possible distinctions. In particular, I’m going to try to make a distinction between ‘doing good’ and ‘not doing bad’.
Some people think that these two categories are identical, and maybe they are. I’m inclined to think that they’re not, however, and although if you asked someone at random on the street they might say that they think the two are the same, if you actually tried to tease out their understanding, they’d probably draw a distinction between the two. Ok, enough abstraction for a minute, let’s consider two examples.
You’re walking down the street and the person walking in front of you is carrying a couple of big bags of groceries. One of them rips and its contents go everywhere, rolling away from the owner and toward the street. Many people would try to help this person pick up their belongings and help them to keep their things from being crushed by cars. Why would we do this? Not because we owe it to this person or because it would be malicious of us not to, but because we want to do something good, or we want to be nice.
Now that you’ve helped this poor person collect their belongings from the sidewalk, you get in your car and back out of the parking space. You aren’t paying attention as you hit the gas (you’re still thinking about that person you just helped with their groceries), and you hit a person walking behind you who also happens to be carrying two big bags of groceries. You get out of the car and see that their groceries are everywhere. Again, many people would try to help them collect their belongings. Why? Not because they want to do something nice, but because they want to make an attempt at rectifying the wrong that they have done.
What I’m trying to illustrate here is that there is a difference in how we think about the good that we do for the sake of doing good, and the good that we do for the sake of not doing wrong to others. Now, to the point of this post: why is ‘trying to be good’ important for me as an individual? You guessed it: two reasons.
First, because I think that it’s good to help other people. I know I would want the same if I were in their shoes. The limits of this help are a topic for another time: obviously we can’t spend 24 hours a day trying to aid others, but we can all do something to help. In any case, part of why I give is because I think that even in a world where there is no other reason, the fact that someone is dying of hunger and I can help stop it is reason enough.
The second reason is one that more people may find compelling: we are actually harming other people through our actions all the time. Just like I think that I should stop and help someone if I hit them with my car, I think that I should do what I can for someone whose poverty I’m partly to blame for.
This doesn’t just apply to poverty either: all sorts of things we do indirectly contribute to harmful effects on others. Not doing anything to change our actions means that we’re doing wrong and not doing anything to right it. Most people have a pretty good idea of what it would be ‘nice’ to do. People know that they could do more, give more, or make life changes for the better, but they’d rather not think about it, so they opt not to. Most of us are comfortable (or just a little uncomfortable) with that option if it’s a matter of just being nice or not, but if we’re talking about people that we’ve hit with our metaphorical cars, we need to take a second look.
This is getting long already, so I’ll just give one example for now: books. Let me just say, I love books. I like to buy them, I like to read them, I like to put them on my bookshelves. Incidentally, books are made of paper, and unless the publisher of a particular book happens to be on the conscientious end of the spectrum, the books we buy are coming from paper made from the trees of so-called virgin forests. This means that when we buy books, we’re contributing to deforestation. This deforestation is happening around the world (and has many causes aside from books). Not only does this lead to the extinction of many animals as their habitats are destroyed, but it causes problems for the people (frequently poor) who live around those forests. Deforestation leads to flooding, changes in weather patterns, loss of renewable resources, and soil erosion. When I buy a book, I am hurting people. My best alternative (e-books may be better than material books, but given the substantial issues regarding e-waste, I’m not going there just yet) is probably going to the library instead of buying new—and that’s my next step in trying to be good.
I’ll talk about some other ways we harm people without knowing it in future posts.
I called my blog “How to (Try to) Be Good,” but in some ways that’s a misleading title. This post is about why I think it’s right to give (I’m still using this word ‘give,’ but I mean it very broadly—including monetary giving, but also giving time, including lifestyle choices that are made with an eye toward making the world a better place). Doing good can mean a few different things, although we don’t usually think about possible distinctions. In particular, I’m going to try to make a distinction between ‘doing good’ and ‘not doing bad’.
Some people think that these two categories are identical, and maybe they are. I’m inclined to think that they’re not, however, and although if you asked someone at random on the street they might say that they think the two are the same, if you actually tried to tease out their understanding, they’d probably draw a distinction between the two. Ok, enough abstraction for a minute, let’s consider two examples.
You’re walking down the street and the person walking in front of you is carrying a couple of big bags of groceries. One of them rips and its contents go everywhere, rolling away from the owner and toward the street. Many people would try to help this person pick up their belongings and help them to keep their things from being crushed by cars. Why would we do this? Not because we owe it to this person or because it would be malicious of us not to, but because we want to do something good, or we want to be nice.
Now that you’ve helped this poor person collect their belongings from the sidewalk, you get in your car and back out of the parking space. You aren’t paying attention as you hit the gas (you’re still thinking about that person you just helped with their groceries), and you hit a person walking behind you who also happens to be carrying two big bags of groceries. You get out of the car and see that their groceries are everywhere. Again, many people would try to help them collect their belongings. Why? Not because they want to do something nice, but because they want to make an attempt at rectifying the wrong that they have done.
What I’m trying to illustrate here is that there is a difference in how we think about the good that we do for the sake of doing good, and the good that we do for the sake of not doing wrong to others. Now, to the point of this post: why is ‘trying to be good’ important for me as an individual? You guessed it: two reasons.
First, because I think that it’s good to help other people. I know I would want the same if I were in their shoes. The limits of this help are a topic for another time: obviously we can’t spend 24 hours a day trying to aid others, but we can all do something to help. In any case, part of why I give is because I think that even in a world where there is no other reason, the fact that someone is dying of hunger and I can help stop it is reason enough.
The second reason is one that more people may find compelling: we are actually harming other people through our actions all the time. Just like I think that I should stop and help someone if I hit them with my car, I think that I should do what I can for someone whose poverty I’m partly to blame for.
This doesn’t just apply to poverty either: all sorts of things we do indirectly contribute to harmful effects on others. Not doing anything to change our actions means that we’re doing wrong and not doing anything to right it. Most people have a pretty good idea of what it would be ‘nice’ to do. People know that they could do more, give more, or make life changes for the better, but they’d rather not think about it, so they opt not to. Most of us are comfortable (or just a little uncomfortable) with that option if it’s a matter of just being nice or not, but if we’re talking about people that we’ve hit with our metaphorical cars, we need to take a second look.
This is getting long already, so I’ll just give one example for now: books. Let me just say, I love books. I like to buy them, I like to read them, I like to put them on my bookshelves. Incidentally, books are made of paper, and unless the publisher of a particular book happens to be on the conscientious end of the spectrum, the books we buy are coming from paper made from the trees of so-called virgin forests. This means that when we buy books, we’re contributing to deforestation. This deforestation is happening around the world (and has many causes aside from books). Not only does this lead to the extinction of many animals as their habitats are destroyed, but it causes problems for the people (frequently poor) who live around those forests. Deforestation leads to flooding, changes in weather patterns, loss of renewable resources, and soil erosion. When I buy a book, I am hurting people. My best alternative (e-books may be better than material books, but given the substantial issues regarding e-waste, I’m not going there just yet) is probably going to the library instead of buying new—and that’s my next step in trying to be good.
I’ll talk about some other ways we harm people without knowing it in future posts.
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