Though our time frame and scale were limited, my group’s action project gave me insight into the process of collective deliberation and action and it inspired me to dream of a healthier world. The challenge of coordinating our schedules to meet outside of class and the extra time it took to create plans for a project which we were all excited about, rather than making decisions autonomously, gave me a small taste of what it would be like to organize action in a larger group. Though consensus-seeking and cooperation are fulfilling, I have a better understanding now of why it is so challenging to organize people around issues like sustainability and climate justice. Still, this did not dash my hopes for a movement towards a society with less environmental impact. In fact, my group’s action project combined with readings like Active Hope made me want to adopt a more optimistic and grateful attitude. Like the authors of Active Hope, I believe that this type of mindset will help us find peace in the face of our mortality; and following the tenets of terror management theory and the arguments Oelschlager presents in “History, Ecology, and the Denial of Death,” this peace would help us lessen our environmental impact (as we would not feel so compelled to dominate the Earth) and to be more open-minded towards people with different belief systems, making our interpersonal relationships healthier.
I leave our course content and my group’s action project with the takeaway that rekindling community relationships will be an important factor in our ability to respond effectively to the ecological destruction we are causing. In a less individualistic society, people will feel more secure and grateful, and they will feel more responsible for people other than themselves. This will motivate people to change their individual behaviors to be more sustainable. Also, scaling down our industries and supply chains, giving greater support to local small operations, would reduce emissions. It would also reduce consumption and cultivate a more circular economy overall because people would be more careful with their resources if they were in close proximity to both the “inputs” (plants, animals, etc) consumed and the waste generated by their consumption.
Though our generation may be less religious, terror management still influences our choices. We can turn that into positive action. Let’s take advantage of this peak of systemic unsustainability to make a change.
It was hard to choose a photo that represented everything I talked about here, but I settled on this image of a piece of a sustainable city. I love the idea of community gardens for several reasons–to scale down the food supply chain, to provide a space for community interactions (and just a place to be in public for free), and to bring us nearer to the cycle of life and death.
