I just realized that my ramblings about paths and individual
action had a hidden agenda. A nice way of saying the same
thing would be to call it an assumption. This same assumption
appeared on a web page recently and that is what triggered this
tome. I hate it when people press one agenda without clearly
identifying what it is. So, here is the assumption.
Today sustainability is dominated by cultural issues
If this is true then most of todays problems have roots in our
cultures. This says the solutions also deal with culture.
Pick your favorite issue and see if the struggle involves
culture. Better yet post a list and we can look at each
one.
cultural definition:
Sum total of beliefs, values, institutions, rules, tecchniques,
and artifacts that characterize human population.
http://somunix.uafsom.alaska.edu/~john/ba460/culture.html
has a discussion of culture and lists the following elements:
language religion values attitudes manners
customs materials aesthetics education institutions
What all this says is that our struggle to save forests and
nature needs to be balanced with cultural activism which
recognizes the impact of consumptive attitudes and the
beliefs about growth. Cultural activism goes beyond building
orginizations, pressuring a politicians, or sending a check
to some cause. It involves understanding what a shift in
culture would look like and how culture is spread. It
recognizes that "we" are culture and how we attempt change
is also culture.
jeff
