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Global Warning - Dec 9, 2006 - Printable Version
- Shining City on a Hill?
by Robin Buckallew
“Man is the only animal that blushes; or needs to.” Mark Twain For those of us brought up in a mass-media dominated world, there is little difficulty recalling certain moments in movies, songs, or TV shows when our entertainment seemed to generate significant insight. Many of these moments linger long after the final credits have rolled and the lights have gone up; in fact, it isn’t that unusual to find yourself thinking about them or talking about them years, even decades later. One such moment for me came during the musical play, Man of La Mancha. We know the story – nice elderly man goes just a little bit crazy, dons a suit of armor, and goes roaming around the countryside picking fights with windmills and gallantly rescuing fair damsels who don’t seem to understand exactly what they’re being rescued from. Toward the end of the show, a turning point is reached in our hero’s escapades where a friend of the family, desperately trying to save him from himself before he totally ruins the family reputation, dresses up as “knight of the mirrors” and forces Don Quixote to look in a bewildering array of mirrors to see himself as he really is. The first time I saw this, it had a strong impact on me, leaving me bleeding and battered from empathy and sorrow as Alonso Quiaxno collapsed to the ground, the ashes of his delusion all around him. Three decades later, I still remember that moment with clarity. A bit of an eccentric Don Quixote myself, embarking on a mission to save a world that doesn’t really want to be saved, I also find myself longing for the special strengths of the “knight of the mirrors”. Forced to look at ourselves in a merciless barrage of mirrors, perhaps we would see beneath the thick cosmetic coating we’ve applied to our lives, see beneath the shiny, glittery coating of illusion that we surround ourselves with, and see ourselves as we really are. I find myself talking to people everyday, sitting there gaping in astonishment at the things they so casually drop off their lips, and wondering how they would feel if they could hear themselves, just once, through my ears.
As a disclaimer: the column you are about to read is not some sudden rant arising out of a momentary fit of anger or disillusionment. For years I have struggled against the conclusions I have reached here, but the weight of the evidence has finally become overwhelming. The characters that people this column do not represent a small slice of humanity, but rather represent hundreds of people I have encountered over the past decade. They represent my students, my teachers, my friends, and my family. They represent casual strangers who start up conversations in the grocery store or the doctor’s office. They represent those who write letters to the editors, and those who are the editors. They represent politicians and voters who speak at debates. It is amazing what you will hear when you keep your mouth shut often enough to listen. This week, I’ve finally heard enough.
For the past two decades, I have devoted a great deal of my time and energy to protecting the world that surrounds us, the world that most people take for granted and don’t give a lot of thought to as they rush about their busy days. In addition to my actual boots-on-the-ground work in restoration and preservation, I have spent many long hours teaching and writing about the topic, hoping to inspire and motivate others to join in the battle. I am not alone in this activity, there are hundreds of others out there working beside me, shouting in the wilderness. I can say that it has not been totally fruitless. Some who have heard me have been moved to join the fight, have made significant changes to their own lifestyles, and have begun speaking, teaching, and working in the field themselves. Unfortunately, it is not enough. Most Americans have heard at least part of what we have to say, and blithely tell pollsters that they are “for” saving the environment. They rarely translate this into actual activity beyond taking the aluminum cans to the recycling bin at the curb once a week. We still cannot reach critical mass, and in fact, we appear to be losing ground as our funding steadily gets eroded away by a callous Congress and a pre-pubescent President, while the public yawns and looks the other way, hoping the gasoline will be cheaper in the gas station on their left. Nothing much changes but the rhetoric.
Last week, once again I was discussing this issue with some of my students as part of a classroom exercise. Once again, I heard the same words I have been hearing for years. We all want a clean environment, we all want wilderness available for us, but we don’t want to do anything about it. The words I hear, over and over again, year after year, from everyone I talk to: “You’ll never get Americans to change the way they do things. You can’t ask Americans to give anything up”. Finally, in exasperation, I got up, and wrote on the board the exact words they had said to me. “Americans are lazy”. “Americans are cheap”. “Americans are selfish”. I asked them how that made them feel, to see it written out there in black and white, bold and harsh. They told me it made them feel fine. They liked being that way. It was their right. It was their birthright, in fact. There was no shame, no moral dilemma at all. If something meant the slightest inconvenience for them, it was taboo. One student told me, “You just don’t understand. Your generation cared about things. My generation doesn’t really care about anything but our own convenience”. Did he feel ashamed or embarrassed by these words? Not at all. In fact, he felt decidedly morally superior to me, because I found myself disturbed by such a train of thought. This was not the first time I had encountered this attitude; in fact, I encounter this attitude every day. Even those people who really feel sure they are ready to commit to changing things usually balk when it comes down to real changes. I hear the same words, see the same look of smug superiority everywhere I go. We know what’s wrong. We know what we have to do. We have just decided we’re not going to do it, and that’s all right.
Long ago, I got over the utter shock of hearing such things uttered so boldly and so openly. I came to realize that most people have lost the sense that there is something wrong with being so self-involved. Many of my friends that came over here from other countries, to visit or to go to school, find themselves watching what we’re doing over here with horror. They can’t believe what they hear and see. They can’t believe that Americans are so uninterested in or unaware of what is going on in the rest of the world. They can’t believe that Americans feel a sense of entitlement to get what they want, when they want it, and at a cheaper price than it is worth. Many countries are making hard choices and facing up to harsh realities; Americans remain swaddled in cocoons of self-indulgence and self-denial. In fact, Americans are so deep into self-denial that they are not able to recognize that they are self-indulgent! They regard their wants as “needs”, their luxuries as “necessities”, and their privileges as “rights”.
Once upon a time, John Winthrop, first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, referred to our ancestors as inhabiting “a shining city on a hill” which would set a fine example for the rest of the world to follow. This refrain was already sounding a bit sour and unfulfilled by the time it was picked up by a much later leader of the New World, President Ronald Reagan. Now, it is positively nauseating when I hear our politicians parrot this phrase like so many trained monkeys. We are no longer a “shining city on a hill”. In fact, I would venture to go a little further than simply saying we’ve lost our moral compass. In light of our total inability to feel shame in the face of our own excess, in light of our total inability to put the brakes on our appetites, in light of our total disregard for the needs of the rest of the human world and the needs of the other millions of species who share this world with us, I would suggest that we have lost the moral authority to continue to govern ourselves.
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