Pollan Hits Another Homerun: Why Bother?
Sunday, April 27th, 2008I didn’t see Michael Pollan’s article from last Sunday’s New York Times, Why Bother?, until tonight when I read about it on Stephen Bodio’s blog.
Pollan asks the same kind of question I was trying to ask in my ramble, The Scarcity Mentality. If climate change is inevitable anyway….if changing our own happens feels like a drop in the bucket because others don’t…if we’re not even confident in what choices are the best…well then, why bother? And has he so eloquently puts it:
“A sense of personal virtue, you might suggest, somewhat sheepishly. But what good is that when virtue itself is quickly becoming a term of derision? And not just on the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal or on the lips of the vice president, who famously dismissed energy conservation as a “sign of personal virtue.” No, even in the pages of The New York Times and The New Yorker, it seems the epithet “virtuous,” when applied to an act of personal environmental responsibility, may be used only ironically. Tell me: How did it come to pass that virtue — a quality that for most of history has generally been deemed, well, a virtue — became a mark of liberal softheadedness? How peculiar, that doing the right thing by the environment — buying the hybrid, eating like a locavore — should now set you up for the Ed Begley Jr. treatment.”
Pollan does more than give a succinct description of the problem. He offers some good advice:
“But the act I want to talk about is growing some — even just a little — of your own food. Rip out your lawn, if you have one, and if you don’t — if you live in a high-rise, or have a yard shrouded in shade — look into getting a plot in a community garden. Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do — to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind.”
This resonates so strongly with me! We’ve been doing more of this, by getting some of the garden in (more to come!) and raising chickens for eggs, even composting. I find it immensely satisfying, to have this connection to the cycle of life.
A couple of weeks ago, I sat in our kitchen and ate two eggs, from our hens, with toast from bread I made myself…a simple meal, yet honestly one of the best I’ve ever had. There was so much more to that food than I expected. I wanted to share that experience with others. But I don’t think I could sit someone down and just give them that experience…it’s not only about making the food; it’s not about the molecules of taste or the brain chemistry of attentiveness…it’s something wonderful and I had to go down a long road to reach it.
Part of that road was inspired, in fact, by Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Whether it’s with gardening, raising chickens, or something else, honoring the interconnectedness, with each other and with the earth itself, is the solution out of the scarcity mentality.
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