There are numerous problems and crises plaguing the world today. From an Ebola outbreak in West Africa, US-led bombing in Iraq, drone strikes in Yemen and Somalia, and two major catastrophes looming over the planet, climate catastrophe and nuclear war, as Noam Chomsky puts it, justifiably, people are confused and overwhelmed. Stacy D. VanDeveer and Pierce put it, “one can give to despair—and ensure one’s own political impotence, or one can be part of the resistance” (649). This essay focuses on why activism is important and there needs to be much more than simple personal decisions.

It is important to start with that VanDeveer and Pierce write in their two-page article on this topic. They write that while it is temping to feel that there is “nothing that one can do” and that individual citizens are powerless against governments and big corporations, there is a fundamental choice that people have to make: “we can either be part of the problem or part of the solution. We can either “roll over” or fight back” (VanDeveer and Pierce, 648). They further note that “great transformations” came from small acts, that figuring out what side you are on for a specific issue doesn’t require “direct scientific expertise” but rather just an “intelligent decision” (VanDeveer and Pierce, 648). Later they note correctly that it is impossible for someone to fight for every single cause, and that people must pick their battles, and “pick an area of desired competence” while having some obligation to be a citizen “informed about the issues at hand” (VanDeveer and Pierce, 649). While I have been skeptical in the past of the ideas of moral obligation, it is clear to me that it is important for there to be an informed citizenry, since that makes democracy, in its true form, possible.

While personal action can lead to people becoming “part of the solution” as VanDeveer and Pierce put it, it is clear that personal choices on their own, are not enough. This is what Derrick Jensen criticizes, writing that there is an overfocus on personal consumption of resources, without a focus on institutional consumption, saying that focusing on just personal consumption will not solve the problems at hand. While he says that he supports living simply, Jensen thinks that living that way is not a “powerful political act,” and even declares at one point that “personal change doesn’t equal social change.” While there is some truth to this, what Jensen writes reminds me of the idea, first developed by feminists, that the personal is the political, meaning that personal decisions can be political decisions. In addition, one must add Cynthia Enloe’s suggestion that the political is the personal, meaning that politics is not simply shaped by what happens in traditional halls of power like Congress and corporate board rooms. Still, Jensen’s point that personal change is not the same as social change does not negate the suggestions that the personal is political or that the political is personal.

Jensen later writes about how perceiving simply living “as a political act” is flawed for a number of reasons. He writes that simple living “consists solely of harm reduction” while: ignoring “the fact that humans can help the Earth as well as harm it;” incorrectly assigning blame to the individual, rather than the system and those running the system itself; accepting the redefinition of humans from “citizens to consumers” by capitalism; and that the idea that it is a “political act” is basically suicide. It seems to me that Gambriel and Cafaro would not agree with Jensen’s claim about simple living not being a political act. In the end, Jensen ends by arguing the role of an activist is not “to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much integrity as possible,” but rather to do something more radical: “confront and take down those systems.”

There is something that could easily get in the way of Jensen’s push for confronting and dismantling “systems of oppressive power”: what Jonathan Frenzen calls “techno-consumerism.” Frenzen writes that current technology has become adept at “creating projects that correspond to our fantasy ideal of an erotic relationship” which makes us feel “all powerful” and it contributes to the “ultimate goal of technology” which is the replacement of the natural world with an artificial world that is “responsive to our wishes” meaning that it is effectively “a mere extension of the self.” This current technology is pushed along by the “commodification of love,” the likeability of consumer products and the enabling of narcissism. Frenzen’s solution is a bit different than Jensen’s, but it still involves an action, that he says is “an existential threat to the techno-consumerist order”: the act of loving. He writes that if you just stay in your room by yourself, then the problems of the world are daunting, but he argues that if put yourself “in real relation to real people, or…real animals, there’s a real danger you might love some of them,” which he implies is revolutionary.

Jensen, Frenzen, VanDeveer, and Pierce are not the only ones who have written about this subject. Kristin Shrader-Frechette writes about how environmental advocacy among “scientists, philosophers, and other intellectuals” is important and “ethically mandatory,” arguing that “neutrality is not objectivity” and that “the greater the catastrophe we face, the greater is the acceptability of advocacy to prevent catastrophe” (634, 636, 640). Despite my disagreement with her moderate position on this matter, it is clear that Shrader-Frechette’s argument is completely acceptable and valid. Then there’s J. Baird Callicott who writes that for the “sake of ecological integrity,” one may have to impose “certain restrictions on the animal members of one’s mixed community” or to make certain sacrifices, which is correct since one has to make sacrifices if they want the world to be a better place (169).

There are many who despair and feel all is lost. After all, if personal change can’t serve as social change, then what can? As Jensen points out, there a number of resistance tactics that one can employ, ranging from voting, not voting, running for office, lobbying and protesting. In the end, the words of VanDeveer and Pierce will hopefully be a reminder that there is hope on the horizon: “when enough people choose to swim upstream, and to fight in an organized matter, great changes occur” (649).

Bibliography

Franzen, Jonathan. “Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts.” New York Times 29 May 2011, New York Edition ed., Opinion sec.: WK10. New York Times. Web. 22 Dec. 2014. <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/opinion/29franzen.html?pagewanted=print>.

Jensen, Derrick. “Forget Shorter Showers.” Orion Magazine 7 July 2009.<https://orionmagazine.org/article/forget-shorter-showers/>. Some good critiques of this article are the comments below it along with here, here and here.When I wrote this paper, I didn’t know about Jensen’s transphobia (see here, here, here, here, and here, for examples along with this section of his wikipedia page), but I still think there is at least some validity in his argument.* I may reconsider Jensen’s piece in the future, but for now, what is expressed here is my current view.

VanDeVeer, Donald, and Pierce, Christine. 2003. “Sidelight: A Resistance Movement of One’s Own.” The Environmental Ethics and Policy Book: Philosophy, Ecology, Economics. 648-9. Belmont: Wadsworth. Print.

*Jensen and Rachel Ivey say that DGR (Deep Green Resistance) isn’t transphobic, but has a “difference of opinion about the definition of gender,” believing that gender isn’t fluid but should be rejected and abolished.