Every little thing is polluted
This last year opened a lot of eyes. Covid and the continual viral infections of racism and sexism showed how “essential workers” are often moms, health workers, servers, clerks, and drivers.
We saw how “all being in this together” affected everyone disproportionately. It showed us that for some “liberty” is of more value than life itself. Some marched for an end to police brutality, some marched for the right to ignore public health warnings, and “nanny-state” big government.
(Does that sound biased? Oh, yeah, I am human too, and therefore, biased toward scientific/medical expertise.) What matters is to learn our biases.
The year 2020 culminated in an actual insurrection — although technically in 2021 — the “stop the steal” campaign had everything to do with public panic over perceived injustice.
Everything has become politicized, polluted by attitudes shaped and reinforced by those who cry “injustice.” Some are dead on correct. Some are believing their own lies rather than their eyes. Either way, there is a huge problem. We often don’t see our own bias, but we must begin to see it.
We fight each other as Earth burns
In the fog of tear gas and wildfire smoke, we often ignore the Earth. While some struggle to breath — it’s horrifying in Delhi this week — others have plenty of time to complain about potato heads, or Dr. Suess.
Nevertheless, we must welcome those who complain into the fold.
To my mind, the greatest pollution of all is our collective denial and inaction. In this third year of the first 21st century, global pandemic, we face terrifying crises on all sides. Despite Greta Thunberg’s Earth day words about our desperate need for one another, we go on fighting amongst ourselves.
She said, “The one thing we need more than hope is action. Once we start to act, hope is everywhere.” Action means meaningful, revolutionary improvements at every level.
To do this, people must cooperate, collaborate, and create. We don’t have to sing and hold hands, just work. Take action.
In the media, conflict pays better so we will stay with those stories that direct us to which side we are on. I am not at all sure how to get off this insane merry-go-round of blame and shame. Surely, so long as we pollute the world itself with forty billion tons of toxins emitted each year, none of us have the right to point fingers.
Yet, that is just what humans do. Bias has its place in our arsenal for self-defense, but until we see it, admit it, and confront it, we are in big trouble. We all have to see past our individual bias in order to collaborate to solve big problems.
Like a process where one bad apple ruins the whole rotten bunch, the system itself is designed for us to live this way.
A social species needs a whole society
Despite promises of reform to address white supremacy and #Me too style sexism, we have far to go. Most stories and issues, I read on Medium and elsewhere, are about our sensationalized conflicts, and not about our untapped potential.
Many are intractable arguments about who is racist and who is sexist. We need to see our own pollution: to one degree or another, living in pollution means we are polluted. All of us are racist, because it is everywhere. All of us are sexist, because the world is still largely a patriarchy.
Countless articles about how so and so is NOT racist gets us nowhere.
Countless articles about how so and so CAN’T be sexist, because “blah blah” similarly gets us nowhere.
And, even more than the “not possible to be” articles, are those that say “I am not!” followed by piles of words that only come off as psychological self-preservation of “I am a good person.”
Guess what? Every person believes they are good. We have to believe we are good in order to survive, it’s a programmed survival mechanism in every social species. Finding our bias is key to stopping that particular pollution.
Because we are a social species, we can’t isolate anonymously behind social media (a neologism and oxymoron) and expect things to get better. We need one another to have one another’s backs.
Bigotry is pollution
Why can’t we all just admit that dirty “air” is everywhere? No one is without some damage from it; Black or white, male or female, or gender fluid.
Although we can — and certainly should be anti-racist and anti-sexist — it is folly to pretend that any person living on the planet is not affected by these two filthy pollutants: inequality due to sex, and inequality due to color.
Yes, some are more racist than others. Some are more sexist. We need to say so, but then move forward to join forces for good.
Counterproductive accusations get us nowhere. Denial gets us nowhere.
Most of all, I see that those who run the world, are the ones least attacked for the continuing status quo, of dominate, divide, denude and desecrate.
We have set up a capitalism of competition. We struggle to get our share while there is still something left to get. The same people (often multi-national corporations) who profit from actual pollution also profit from social pollution. It’s time to call them out, (diplomatically) not one another!
While we fight among ourselves, solving nothing, we are literally losing ground. Islands have disappeared, coastal cities are flooding, forests and grasslands are burning, reefs and ocean organisms are dying. Glaciers are melting and invasive species are proliferating. More spillover pandemics, due to our broken relationship with food, tainted by inequality and profiteering, are lurking.
Species loss is terrifying, yet there is hope in technology and new industry. There is hope in the human heart, if we can look past our selective bias.
All Climate injustice is exacerbated by our living under the ugly, toxic cloud of biased sensationalism.
Although we should still discuss race and sex, all arguments that set up defense shields must be abandoned. Reform begins with love, not accusation, forgiveness comes with our caring for each other. Hatred ends progress.
Human nature versus human nature
Our human nature, our tendency to go tribal is very strong. That’s good and bad. What we need is for more people to align on Team Earth.
That’s our best tribe. That’s our best hope. Aligning against all pollution, emissions, single-use trash, toxic money in politics, and our toxic attraction to finding scapegoats (or just squabble as Us versus Them among our human tribe) impedes critical progress.
Many today, see signs of hope: reform in the justice system, reform in pollution standards, positive hope for green jobs, electric grids and infrastructure, conservation while we still have time.
The world, if cared for by our human nature, will suffer greatly in the coming decades, but we who are blessed with human nature can aim for full belonging to a truly inter-connected global society.
It’s been said a lot, there is no Planet B, but attending to the BS of bias selectivity can help us go a long, long way.
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This post was previously published on Greener Together.
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