After
years of trying to develop a way to properly judge what actions are
"good" and "bad" based on my values, I finally
reached a point when it all came together.
It
wasn't so much an intellectual epiphany as a physical one. I had
already reasoned through most of the details, but now it was
visceral. The first feeling was one of revulsion, and it hit me
while buying food at a grocery store. There were several kinds of
just about every type of products, with what I knew was very little
difference between them. The embodied resources, labor, and
associated waste felt like a disgusting wall of sludge slowing me
down as I approached it. My shopping list shortened considerably: I
focused on finding the things that provoked the least negative
reaction.
When
I got home, I resolved to find foods that met a few basic criteria.
They would need to be healthy. They would need to be made by
companies that tried to have a positive impact on people and and the
rest of Nature. They would have to be things I could eat on a
regular basis without getting tired of them. And there would need to
be just enough to support me at my ideal weight, which at that time
was nearly twenty pounds less than I weighed. If I lost weight at
the fastest healthy rate, I'd need to eat an average of only
two-thirds of what I would finally use every day, which meant I had
to get used to being hungry for more than two months. At a different
time, I would have considered this a hardship; now I actually looked
forward to it.
My
living conditions reflected my physical condition. With my newfound
awareness, I realized that I could probably live quite happily with
what could be fit in a couple of suitcases and a backpack. I had far
more that that, which required a lot of effort, resources, and waste
to both acquire and maintain. Much of what I owned was bought with
the intention of using; each thing had its own purpose, and
represented a vision of a slice of my life that I had once vividly
imagined experiencing. In my state of brutal honesty, it was clear
that most of those visions would never materialize, at least in my
experience. Rather than mourn the loss of those alternative futures,
I rejoiced in my improved odds of finding a real future that would
have the same net effect with far less waste and far more piece of
mind. I also saw a potential gain: perhaps by giving away what I
wasn't going to use, I could help someone else realize a similar
vision without additional costs.
Several
recent studies about climate sensitivity, and the feedback mechanisms
that could spark an uncontrollable acceleration in global warming,
convinced me there are only a handful of years left to avoid the
worst case future for humanity and most other species. If we do what
we need to, the infrastructure our lives currently depend upon will
have been totally replaced with something far different within the
next fifteen years, which makes any planning we do based on our
current conditions effectively useless. I had naively been thinking
about how to help survivors deal with the aftermath of what I saw as
virtually certain failure, but now I've learned enough to see the
worst case involves having no survivors. I've approached, accepted,
then withdrawn from that conclusion several times over the past
decade, but now that it is becoming more prominent in the projections
of scientists based on new data, and time is running out, I have no
choice but to stop waffling and deal with the consequences. This was
the essence of my intellectual epiphany, that given my valuing of the
survival and proliferation of life, the ultimate value of my life
will be determined by what I do – or don't do – in the next four
years; and of course I'm not alone in this. Beyond that time, we
will either have a shot at a future with life in it, or we will be on
a powerless glide path toward a world without us and most other
species we have come to know.
How
this critical time gets used, for me, has begun with making a set of
decisions about my personal lifestyle and behavior based on the
internalization of the lessons I've learned. What comes next is a
work in progress.
