Promoting Dialogue Instead of Preaching At People

(Original post 9/08)

An aspect of my concern about ecological issues involves me intending to engage people . I intend to seek dialogue instead of preaching or otherwise trying to get someone to agree with me.

My guess is that if I try to get someone to change her or his mind, I detract from my ability to engage in dialogue and to otherwise have psychological connection with people.

But my ecological concerns have involved me being inclined to want other people to agree with me, despite that I like to think of myself as someone who is open-minded, tolerant, and not preachy.

I have sometimes wondered why some evangelizing Christians have seemed to me to be intense in their apparent desire for me to believe in Christ as my savior. At least one person has told me that I have been a sort of eco-evangelist by being preachy and wanting to talk about nothing but environmental issues.

I don’t know why an evangelizing Christian would want me to believe as he or she does. Perhaps part of the motivation involves them having a genuine concern for my well-being in this life and in what they believe to be an afterlife.

Maybe part of the motivation, whether it’s a Christian evangelist or someone such as me who’s been inclined to eco-evangelizing, involves trying to get someone else to think as we do in order to give ourselves a sense of control in our conception of reality.

Maybe that desire to try to control what someone else thinks results from us not being honest with ourselves about what we actually believe. Maybe if I am secure about what I believe, I don’t have the strong urge to try to get other people to agree with me.

I am currently much more focused on engaging people in dialogue and trying to be open-minded than I was a year ago. I occasionally relapse into the mentality of wanting to get other people to agree with me about ecological issues.

At least to some extent, when I used to be intensely eager to somehow cause other people to share my concerns about ecological issues, and when I sometimes relapse into that state of mind, currently, it seems that I have thought that if enough of us worked together, we could at least reduce the suffering that ecological problems are causing or may cause.

The apparent lack of interest and the apparent lack of a sense of urgency among the general public has at times angered, frustrated, and depressed me. At times, it has seemed to me that members of this and other societies are wasting our opportunity to reduce the damage to our quality of life and that of future generations.
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As I write this sentence in March of 2009, people who tend to be conservatives and Republicans have been expressing concerns about futures generations of Americans being saddled with debt. This concern seems to be expressed in reference to the trillion dollar stimulus package that the Obama administration has drawn up. In some odd way, this conservative and Republican concern about future generations reminds of liberals or progressives expressing concerns about Climate Change and other environmental issues.

To what extent have the same people who are now expressing concerns about government spending, expressed concerns about the cost of the war and occupation of Iraq and the cost of the Bush administration’s 2000 and 2001 tax cuts?

To what extent have the people who are now expressing concerns about the Obama administrations funding of abortions abroad and lifting of the ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, expressed concerns about the people being killed in Iraq amidst a war President Bush dishonestly waged ?

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When I get in those moods, my mentality is perhaps similar to someone having a sense of urgency about waking up everyone so that they can grab some belongings and escape unharmed from a burning house.

But thinking of myself and a select few ‘environmentally conscious’ people as being awake and having the responsibility of waking up the sleeping members of society seems megalomaniacal.

During the past couple of months, the idea of promoting dialogue and public discourse has inspired me. It seems that being inspired about that idea has reigned in my inclination toward thinking that I have a mission to ‘wake people up’ or help them to ‘see the light.’

In my opinion, seeking dialogue and otherwise engaging with people instead of trying to preach at them is not a matter of me allowing myself to cave in and commit some sort of unethical comprise of my principles.

My guess is that I can do more good-all else being the same- by working with people, as opposed to trying to dictate to them about what our problems are and what our solutions are.

I’m trying to be open-minded. Maybe I am avidly concerned about environmental issues simply because I’m misinformed.

I have been seeking out writers, scientists, and other people who can put to rest, or at least cause me to have doubts about, my concerns about ecological issues such as climate change, the peaking of the world’s oil, water shortages, deforestation, and the loss of biodiversity.

So far, the writings and speeches of the non-environmentalists and the anti-environmentalists seem to me to be deliberately vague and unnecessarily complicated, as if they are trying to mislead people. Their writings, in my opinion, are, generally, not well-annotated.

I say this not only in terms of the quantity of annotations, but also in terms of the quality of them. I mean that in the sense of there not being appropriate connections between what the non-environmentalist or anti-environmentalist author claims and the information he or she cites to support those claims.

I not only strive to keep an open mind about the possibility that I am wrong about my ecological concerns, but being wrong about the complexity and severity of some if not many of the ecological problems would be a relief to me, (assuming there wouldn’t be or perhaps already is, some other set of equally challenging threats to our well-being.)

Or is our ecological situation so dire that there is no time for talk?

I want to engage in dialogue people who seem or claim to be unconcerned about ecological issues. I don’t want to approach environmentalism in such a way that I dismiss as stupid and/or evil people who don’t agree with me.

I won’t claim that the non-environmentalist experts and the anti-environmentalists experts are nothing more than the fossil fuel industries’ liars for hire.

But I strive to live in a way that, to me, makes the most sense. What else can I do? Should I live as if I were a small child, acting as if I had no intellect, so as to go against what seems to me to be my best judgment about what my future may hold, unquestioningly having faith in what makes sense to someone else, even though it doesn’t make sense to me?

Amidst my genuine efforts to be open-minded about my own fallibility, there are situations in which it seems to me that I am better off to come to conclusions in order to establish priorities and take various actions in my life.

In some situations, it seems that the risks of a continued suspension of me coming to a conclusion about a particular question are greater than the risks of me taking action based on coming to a conclusion.

Sure, I admit that I may be mistaken, but my best guest, as I write this sentence, is that concerns about, for example, climate change, the peaking of world oil supplies, and the loss of biodiversity are well-founded.

I can form social ties with like-minded people and make changes in my daily life, but I keep thinking that there is something valuable about engaging people who have access to the resources of our governmental, business, educational, religious, and other types of institutions,

though they may not currently regard themselves as environmentalists.

I would also like to engage environmentally minded and non-environmentally minded people who don’t have such privileged access.

I would like to get more people to genuinely inquire into these matters, and weigh the evidence as best as they can. Then they may come to their own sense of what, if anything, to do, according to their own consciences, and from that point, if they want to do something about it, join with others in working on addressing those community and societal goals.

I am trying to foster public discourse about the details of ecological issues, that gets past conflicts between democrats and republicans or between progressives and conservatives.

Based on my experience, it seems that in many, if not most, social venues, people don’t talk about public affairs, and if we do, it tends to be within a left- versus- right, democrat- versus -republican, and liberal-versus-conservative framework.

I want to genuinely take an interest in what other people care about. I realize that many people either aren’t concerned about environmental issues or their environmental concerns, and environmental solutions differ from mine.

I don’t like the idea of trying to win a PR war, at any cost. I don’t like the idea of doing lots of intellectual work with the goal of getting people to come to this or that conclusion. I would rather focus on striving to be honest with ourselves and with one another, whatever our beliefs may be, in our attempt to determine what it is that poses a threat to our well-being, ecologically or in some other way, and what it is that we may be able and willing to do about those threats.

An activist here in Columbus advised me to focus on making connections with people who are already addressing environmental issues, and not concern myself with trying to dialogue with people hostile to or not interested in environmentalism. Assuming that I understood her correctly, I disagree with her somewhat.

I intend to make those connections that she recommends, but I also intend to engage people who are currently hostile to or indifferent to, environmental issues, but I don’t intend to try to change their minds.

Maybe whether someone would want to engage people disagreeing with environmentalism or not want to do it depends on her or his personality. For example, some people may be more fulfilled with focusing on engaging people who are convinced about the importance of ecological issues, while, others, such as myself, for one reason or another, want to have dialogue with people who likely disagree with us on multiple issues.

But it’s more than just that. I genuinely believe in the value of having a process of public discourse in which we open mindedly inquire into whatever concerns people in our society may have. My guess is that type of approach would be more conducive to environmentalism, in the long run, than investing our energies into selectively presenting information in attempts to win PR battles.

I am trying to get past having a cliquish or cultish approach to addressing ecological issues.

I have wondered how it can be that I and various other people are concerned about ecological issues while it seems that the majority of people in this society and many other societies , if I am not mistaken, do not share our concerns.

There are people who are intelligent and otherwise very capable and accomplished people who do not seem to be concerned about ecological issues. I am not inclined to dismiss such people as lacking the intelligence to care, or as being part of some sinister plan to promote greater suffering throughout the world.

I don’t necessarily expect people to agree with me as soon as they genuinely consider my ideas, or ever, for that matter.

But, I ask whether it’s maybe not ludicrous to think that in a situation in which population continues to increase while per capita consumption of resources and per capita production of pollution increases, sooner or later, something has to give.

As I first thought about this approach of sharing my ideas with people who are not as of yet concerned about ecological issues, I thought that my approach is perhaps too mild, and that maybe I would be trying too hard to accommodate my would-be detractors.

But I am envisioning something of great intensity and magnitude, not something half-hearted. Perhaps it would not be inaccurate to use the term ‘renaissance,’ to denote a state of affairs in which politicians, academics, elementary school teachers, students, construction workers, farmers, theologians, convicts, and social workers are talking about, reading about, and writing about, and, trying out in the laboratory of life, all sorts of ideas for addressing our ecological challenges.

As I imagine it, this sort of renaissance would be so diverse and have such mass participation that it would defy centralization and cooptation, while also leaving the mass media and political and cultural elites with no choice but to participate in the process, without being able to dominate its terms.

Of course, I am not just simply advocating that there be lots of talk and no action. Instead, I am advocating a brainstorming process on a mass scale of various sorts of collaboration.

But contrast that to what seems to be the current situation : no where near the human ingenuity potential of this or other societies is being brought to bear upon the task of at least inquiring into our ecological issues; and the task of having public discourse aimed at considering whether environmentalists’ concerns are worthy of detailed, mass attention.

I imagine practically all of us applying our ingenuity to addressing ecological questions in universities, in churches, at family dinners, in backyards, front yards, high-rise balconies, prisons, military bases, restaurants, town meetings, board-rooms, massage parlors and attics.

I like the term ‘renaissance’ because in my mind it denotes a process of drastically intensified development of and application of human ingenuity. Some people use the term ‘green revolution’.

Maybe some people use that term to allude to the Industrial Revolution. Some people, including myself, seem to suspect that the changes that addressing ecological issues requires of society would be at least as great as those that the Industrial Revolution involved.

Further, some people, including myself, think that great change will occur due to our natural resource limits, one way or another, whether humankind voluntarily comes to terms with them or whether Mother Nature forces that reality upon us. My guess would be that some combination of those scenarios will occur. Also, any talk about humankind doing this or doing that seems bound to be tangled up in over-generalizations.

But, to get back to the idea of a renaissance, I am more inclined to use that term when talking about addressing ecological issues than I am inclined to use the term ‘revolution.’ Correct me by leaving a comment, but in my mind, the term ‘revolution’ denotes a process of violent change.

I am not so naïve as to claim that ecological challenges will not increase, in at least some cases, the likelihood of violence and other forms of conflict, though many of the participants in those conflicts may not be thinking about ecological problems.

My guess is that ecological constraints such as Peak Oil, water scarcity or food shortages will put pressures on societies that increase the likelihood of conflict involving issues of race, class, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, political ideology, and other bases of affiliation.

Further, I admit that, in at least some cases, violence is necessary, and that an adherence to nonviolence, in some cases, is, in effect, an indirect form of violence.

Further still, it

is within the scope of environmentalism to address the issue of how best to defend oneself, one’s family, one’s community, and one’s country, regarding the possibility, if not likelihood, that ecological problems will cause civil and international strife.

However, I don’t feel inclined to envision and promote violent means of making changes to our society and to world affairs. Perhaps that’s not my forte.

But about promoting dialogue instead of preaching to people, I wonder what the non-environmentalists are concerned about and how they intend to address those issues. I invite everyone to contact me about their ideas.

My guess is that for at least some of the people who generally dismiss ecological concerns, fixing the economy, fixing our healthcare system or preventing another 9/11-style attack on our nation may be a priority.

It’s reasonable for me to assume that people who are not concerned about environmental issues, are at least concerned about what they regard as other issues.
Sure, some people may occasionally get in a mood in which he or she doesn’t seem to care about anything beyond the immediate moment or anything beyond what they would refer to as ‘the basics’ such as having a place to stay and food to eat.

In fact, on several occasions people have ended my attempts to engage them in a discussion about public issues by saying to me “ I just care about taking care of myself and my family.”

Yes, it’s good to prioritize and it’s good to take care of our loved ones, but taking care of our loved ones, in some ways at least, requires us to take an interest in things beyond our circle of friends and family and beyond the scope of our occupational experiences.

At least to some extent, the actions of public officials and other powerful people affect us and our loved ones. Maybe paying some attention to public affairs is as important as, for example, planning a vacation or making sure we don’t miss our favorite sit-com.

But I’ll pull myself away from going off on that judgmental tangent. I, myself, of course, sometimes get in those moods in which the scope of my interests become very narrow. Not only that, but now that I think about it, I have experienced prolonged periods of not caring about much beyond the very basic parts of my life. I was in that state of mind for so long that it became a character trait for me.

Having said this though, my guess is that many of the people who don’t regard themselves as environmentalists and/or oppose various goals that some environmentalists have, do so not because they care about nothing and no one.

Instead, my guess is that they think and act in opposition to environmentalism because they think that doing so is a part of them attending to their own sets of priorities.

For example, my guess is that people who oppose that they consider to be environmentalism do so, not because they want to breathe air or drink water that is carcinogenic, and not because they want to gamble with our food supply, and not because they are malevolent toward future generations.

Rather, they do so because they believe that the threats that environmentalists claim to exist are not real or are far less important than other issues. They may think that environmentalism results from people going off on a tangent and pursuing self-aggrandizing schemes that take away people’s jobs and damage our national security.

My hunch is that many people who say that they are not environmentalists do so based on associating the term ‘environmentalist’ with a variety of negative ideas. I imagine myself talking to someone about organic and local foods or about the benefits of public transportation or the economic opportunities from wind or solar. I imagine some people saying ” sure those are good things. I’m for that, but I don’t like those crazy environmentalists.”

I venture that non-environmentalists are concerned about all sorts of issues. Maybe some people think that a loss of traditional Christian values is causing our civilization to collapse. That narrative differs somewhat from the apocalyptic narrative of many environmentalists, but there may be shared features.

Maybe I can talk about that some other time.

But I don’t think having other concerns is the only reason why more people are not avid environmentalists. Thinking about ecological issues can be overwhelming in the sense of a person wondering whether the problems can be solved.

Also, people who are enjoying or otherwise psychologically invested in the consumerist and materialistic rewards of our society or some other society, may not be receptive to the non-materialistic values of some aspects of environmentalism, nor to other aspects of environmentalism which call into question commonly accepted definitions for success, the American Dream and the good life.

The general public’s lack of concern about environmental issues may be what aggravates or even enrages some environmentalists. I can relate to how a person who studies ecological issues avidly and who has made lifestyle changes, may be frustrated by the slow pace of change.

I myself have thought that our nation and other nations in the world seem to be taking baby steps to address ecological issues when we, collectively, should be sprinting, so to speak, as if our quality of life, if not our lives, depended on it.

My own inclination and maybe that of others also has at times been , out of exasperation, to speak, and write in shrill tones, and to otherwise allow a sort of fight or flight response to detract from my problem-solving abilities.

I have also allowed my frustration to detract from my ability to consider the ideas of people who seem to me to be hostile to or indifferent to environmentalism.

But I don’t think that acting in accordance with that frustration will help. As of yet, I am not convinced that setting myself on fire in a public place to draw attention to our ecological problems would be the best approach. Doing that would emit C02 into the atmosphere.

I am trying to not be frustrated in the first place. But if I am frustrated, I want to channel it in such a way that I enhance my problem-solving abilities. I want to have a sense of urgency, but I want to do so without panicking and without embracing, as a result of desperation, false solutions, and without becoming strident, self-righteous, or intolerant of people who disagree with me.

Not only this, but I don’t want to become so overwhelmed about my concerns about ecological issues that I can no longer enjoy life. If that happens, you might wonder then what’s the sense of caring about myself, my loved ones and the world general in the first place.

I am convinced that addressing ecological issues can be done in such a way that does not turn our lives into a sort of living death. I, myself, have had at least some degree of success at turning my attention to ecological issues, while sharing with others the joy of living and celebrating the mystery and wonder of life (as I say in my website greeting).

Perhaps the essence or part of the essence to living is that sort of sharing. In that spirit of sharing, I intend to engage people in dialogue via various types of public discourse, genuinely taking an interest in what it is that other people are concerned about, while, at some point in the process of the discourse, expressing, to those who seem receptive, what it is that I am concerned about.

Well, regarding sharing my ecological concerns with people, I sometimes think that what I would say is a message that likely would depress them. I venture that some people may dismiss the information.

Some of them may go through their own stages of fear, denial, guilt, dread, despair, and, at some point, adopt a sense of hope that is somehow based on an honest attempt to come to terms with reality as that

person understands it.

I keep thinking that if the details of these issues got into more newspapers, more TV and radio programs, more blogs, chat rooms, and more sermons, then society could progress significantly toward at least genuinely thinking about ecological issues.

I don’t expect it to necessarily lead to people agreeing with me or to lead to people agreeing with other environmentalists who may or may not agree with me.

But I would like people to at least think about these issues, or to at least inquire into defining what problems society faces–ecological and otherwise– and inquire into how to address them, as opposed to settling for what this or that charismatic talking head, politician, writer, or activist has to say about it.

To do that though, my guess would be that we have to get more involved in our communities and more involved in our nation’s political process. Also, my guess is that to do that, our process for forming our opinions has to involve reading and doing our own types of research, as opposed to just relying upon what we hear someone say on TV or on the radio.

Getting this mass dialogue started and maintaining it so as to create actions, shouldn’t be a process of repressive ‘political correctness’ or a process involving some other propagandistic approach.

Some of the people within the environmentalist crowd have accused people in the coal, nuclear, and oil industries of deliberately seeking to misinform the public. I would like environmentalist groups to strive to avoid such dishonesty.

I suggest that, to do that, people concerned about ecological issues may want to think of environmentalism as a part of a larger process of people working together to address common goals; and to try to discover the truth involved with environmental and other issues, as opposed to trying to win short term and narrowly defined PR battles, based on special interest politics.

Given what I regard as the complexity and magnitude of our environmental problems, I would expect a wide diversity of ideas, coming from most, if not all, ‘demographic sectors’. Of course, at some point, communities and society in general would have to sort through all of that in order to make major changes to many aspects of our way of life.

But that process of intense public discourse has yet to begin. Based on what I have gleaned from headlines on the internet, mainstream public discourse that does justice to the complexity and magnitude of our environmental issues has yet to occur.

I don’t think it’s naïve of me to try to promote such public discourse, using our mainstream media. Obviously, such media has its faults, but, in terms of sheer numbers of media product consumers, the corporate, mass media may involve for activists, opportunities that shouldn’t be ignored.

To me it seems that maybe some environmental and social justice groups have taken the sort of virtue of thinking and acting locally and perhaps have inadvertently made it into a vice. I say that because, in my opinion, our environmental issues require large-scale efforts, in addition to small and local efforts.

Sure, at some point in the years ahead, as some people have said, large-scale networks for communications, energy, finance, and government may be much less viable, due to ecological constraints and their possible social consequences.

Assuming such global systems collapse into something that is smaller in scale and broken apart, it may be the case that, while communications networks still exist on a national and global scale, we should put them to use in terms of addressing ecological and social justice issues.

I imagine that a challenge for using mainstream media involves what I think is a key aspect to addressing environmental issues: getting people involved in the political process so as to counter the excessive influence that giant corporations have in terms of decisions about what resources to use and how to use them.

The mass media is itself part of the establishment that many activists seek to significantly change. So, that’s a challenge no doubt.