Life: from high up in Cincinnati

Towering over downtown Cincinnati, brown haze in the distance, glass and concrete as far as one could see, I peered from my luxurious hotel suite. I was at an Ethics conference, contemplating the ethics of my society. This wasn’t the best place to be doing this, or trying to write an essay on the wonderful novel Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit, previously blogged about here and here.

(I was in the Omni Netherland Hilton, the taller building here in the center)

The central problem of our society is wanton consumption. Beyond racism, religious intolerance, anti-intellectualism, violence, and all the rest is consumption. All these are bad, but no one of these could single-handedly wipe out entire ecosystems one after another and eventually threaten the future of our very existence.

But how does one seriously think of such things while looking out the 9th floor of a Hilton hotel room that is larger than most of my friends’ apartments? How do I contemplate waste having just flown halfway across the country and eaten a $30 breakfast? It all seems a bit juvenile, or worse, hypocritical.

Central to the story of Ishmael is that we live imprisoned in a myth of human exceptionalism and domination. The story of creation ends with us – and if we don’t change this understanding, then we’ll ensure that creation does end (with us). Our path is so destructive that our extermination is the natural, logical outcome…. It is only a matter of time.

I brought this up with a couple fellow ethics-buffs. One agreed, we’re going down hill and things must change. But he spoke with no urgency. He had accepted the truth of our mistake, but seemed resigned to let others try to fix it. Another one, slightly older, insisted he’d be dead before anything really terrible happens (he’s a bit eccentric anyhow). For my own part I still struggle with the extent of my culture that I have taken in, the life plans I have for myself, and the growing knowledge of the damage to the world that I will cause. It is impossible to quantify such things, but if we accept that:

1. pollution from cars, airplanes, and industry is altering weather patterns and that
2. altered weather patterns will cause more severe droughts and stronger storms and
3. these change will increase the number of lives lost

then it follows that my actions (1) are tied to lives lost (3). I am living in such a way that others will die.

That is not a very Buddhist way to live. It is not a very Christian way to live either, or a way anyone should live. The central question is: could it be otherwise? Or do we simply have to accept it as human nature or some such thing? That seems to be the greatest defense of our destructive way of life: that there really is no other way. Such a defense is useful only for those who lack education or imagination though. For those with either of these, another way is easily seen.

There are probably a thousand ways to start to change your life today (perhaps the sheer number makes all seem a bit thin and weak). One that I return to time and again is Terra Pass, which allows me to counterbalance my CO2 output by investing in clean energy development. Granted, I still put out CO2, but now I’m helping replace someone else’s CO2 with wind energy or helping to develop biomass technology or increase industrial efficiency. I know I’m not going to be able to simply abandon my whole way of life up to this point – but I also know that if I do nothing I will feel (as I should) morally culpable for the deaths of unknown numbers of fellow human beings.