Session 3 Blog Post for Feb 17

William E. Odum and Eric T. Freyfogle are both exploring a similar idea in their respective articles within the Session 3 reading.  Odum is talking about a push for holistic understandings of our relationship to the earth and how an ignorance of the interconnectivity of every individual’s choices can lead to widespread negative change.  The adverse effects of small decisions ignorant of cumulative change are being felt today more so than ever and Freyfogle continues this analysis of  the individual and his/her unintended use of the environment by critiquing the system in which choices about how we live are influenced by cultural understandings of individual liberty and personal property and perhaps not a product of our relationship to others.  With this in mind, in a world in which an introverted understanding of personal liberty and freedom are so paramount to the functioning of society, can we change the understanding of our individual rights as a civilization to be more extroverted and context sensitive so as to establish our rights as tools for the preservation of the common good?

Our society and its current trajectory is fueled by people and their tendency to want things.  If people want more and are never able to truly satiate these desires, then people buy more and the market can grow.  It would seem that this system works because people are unsure of what they want or have been mislead to desire something that can instantly solve their problems but inevitably falls short.  It would seem that the larger the community and more disconnected each individual becomes from the details of the functioning of the society and its health, the more likely the inhabitant of such a city becomes more influenced by the market and its ability to suggest a certain unsustainable existence.  My life began in the Chicago suburb of Skokie.  Later, my family would move to a small town in rural Illinois.  All the time, our way of life was in some way effected by the system in which we lived.  Living in a system influenced by a “satisfaction guaranteed” sort of market is alright.  You do not feel controlled or manipulated to shop at a big-box store or eat out at a fast-food restaurant when you are simply making a decision to sustain your own individual existence and the existence of your immediate family.  But when we separate ourselves from those experiences in those settings, we realize that that system and its insensitivity to the people it affects and the environment it rapes is due to each individual’s selfishness expressed in that system.  Early on in my childhood I thought nothing of grocery shopping at Walmart or eating out at McDonalds.  Now I feel an uneasy apprehension whenever such places are suggested by the system as potential places to satiate my wants and needs.  I feel uneasy because these places are not sensitive to the communities in which they thrive.  They feed off of the individual’s desire to sustain him/herself and not the individual’s desire for communal development and prosperity.  I feel good when I shop at the local co-op, or get my bike fixed at a local bike repair shop because I know that my selfish desires and my decision to satisfy these ambitions will not adversely affect my community.  On the contrary, choosing to support the people around me positively affects my community.  I have seen this tendency to support and contribute to communities in a context sensitive way more and more as I have aged because I have tried to find my place in such a community.  This has occurred within my life because I have compared two ways of life.  One is disconnected and introverted and negative in terms of its impact on people and place.  The other is conscious of change and relies on the interconnectedness of people and the establishment of the true value of place.  I think that a lot of my generation is like me; discontented with the current status of material driven markets and cold industrial growth.  People are social organisms.  Our future communities will reflect the tendency to live for the common good of other people.  People’s feelings about our current manipulative system will be expressed and hopefully, larger cities will be more interconnected and our civilizations will become more sustainable as a whole.