I can’t say that I enjoy criticism, but it does tend to nurture deeper reflection. So let’s see where it leads! What follows is my response to a comment on My Little House on the Prairie.
I fail to see how you fulfilling the liberal dream of property ownership makes the world a better place.
You’re right! You can’t see what’s not there. Owning property, in and of itself, certainly does not make the world a better place. What I am hoping is that my house will be part of a positive direction in my life that is equipping me to contribute more effectively to the world. It’s just a thing, so it won’t make me happy or wise or compassionate. But it is one component of a life I am trying to design to help support me in being the most effective human I can be.
I did say that happiness and peace might help me be more effective. I guess that came off as selfish. Maybe it is, I’m not sure. I tend to see happiness more as a means to an end than an end in itself. My goal in life is not to be happy. It’s to try to make the world a better place. But I recognize that I can’t do that effectively without taking care of myself. I’ve experienced being depressed and anxious and fearful, and I can say with certainty that those states make me pretty well totally ineffectual. Hence my interest in experimenting with happiness.
What exactly are you giving back to the world? By producing independent media? By reducing your ecological footprint?
Oh, they’re good questions. I want to make the world so much better than it is, and I wish I could tell you with total confidence that what I’m doing is contributing to that. The process of growing up and discovering that I might not actually be able to fix things has been hard for me to come to terms with. That said, I do believe in what I’m doing. Media plays a crucial role in shaping our culture, and culture plays a crucial role in shaping how we think and act. Media is a hugely powerful thing…and I take creating independent, critical, fearless media very seriously. I think it’s important work.
On the other hand, I’ve been doing the work I do for long enough to know what the consequences of it can be for myself. A while back I burnt out, and in that state I had nothing to contribute to anyone. At that time I mistook “making the world a better place” with driving myself into the ground, racking up unmanageable debt and being totally out of touch with what a sustainable, healthy, feasible life looks and feels like.
Since that happened I’ve worked very hard to change my life and take steps away from what it was like then. But it’s amazing what a number I did on myself—I haven’t regained all my energy and it’s quite possible I never will. I suppose that’s made me protective of myself, and maybe that means that I’m also selfish. If I want to keep doing the work I think is important, then I have to be able to survive it. I have to be able to take care of myself.
The reality of my life is that I choose to work hard for not a lot of money, and for that to be sustainable from financial and energetic perspectives, I have to manage the balance very carefully. Money is part of the world I function in and I have to be smart about it. I’ve been dumb about money before, and recovering from that has been hard. Going down that path again is not an option for me. One part of trying not to is investing in this city and in this house. Which brings me to:
You’ve just bought into the mainstream, you’ve just fulfilled what it is that banks are for, to give us money to buy things so that they can make more money…you’re still complicit in what it seems to me you are trying to challenge.
I vehemently disagree that I just bought into the mainstream! I have two university degrees, I work fulltime, I pay taxes, I own a computer and I indulge in heterosexual sex. I have student loans and lines of credit and the banks have been making good money off me for years. My goodness, I most certainly did not just buy into the mainstream. My whole culture has been edging me into complicity since birth!
I’m not trying to be a brat on purpose. I’m just of the opinion that most all of us in this culture are complicit in the mainstream, and that we’re farther ahead when we acknowledge it. I was complicit before buying my house and I will continue to be. I will always participate in the economy and in capitalism, and when those collapse I will inevitably participate in whatever human inventions replace them. I could choose to reject my complicity more radically, perhaps by renouncing all my possessions and becoming a monk, or by hiking into the arctic and sacrificing myself to underweight polar bears (is it odd that I’ve considered both?). But by choosing to remain in the world and do my work here, I believe it’s my responsibility to accept that I am complicit in what’s wrong in the world. Then it’s my responsibility to question my complicity. And then to rip it up. And then to talk about it. And then to get blasted for it over and over until hopefully, ultimately, I learn something from it that will make a difference.
I had a wonderful prof named Deborah Barndt who taught me to embrace contradictions - not by ignoring them or skimming over them, but by really engaging with them. So I’m reluctant to try to justify buying my house as the right thing to do. I might very well be a giant, useless, selfish hypocrite. But I made the decision based on a real, thoughtful, critical process, and now I get to live with it, for better or for worse.
So what will I do with this cursed blessing? Getting my ass kicked has definitely inspired me to get on with planning for it more actively than I had been. Mostly I’m just excited to join a community that I can become an active participant in. Here are some of the cool things I know about so far:
- Core Community Association. Don’t worry, there are plenty of volunteer opportunities for me, ranging from working with kids to providing food to identifying unsafe living conditions.
- Thomson Community School is right across the street from my house and, as an inner city school, services one of the most diverse student bodies in Regina.
- Chinastreet. I miss the proper Chinatowns of my former big city homes, but I’ll take what I can get, and there is a great Asian grocery just a few blocks from my house. And although the community is conspicuously lacking a big grocery store, there is also a great health food store and a wicked South Asian/Central American grocery within walking distance. There is also a good Korean restaurant and an excellent Ethiopian restaurant, so food will not be a problem. This particular part of Regina is about as multicultural as this small city gets.
So there it is. More than enough reflection for one night. Thanks Kelvin, for making me think hard.
xo n
9 comments
Comments feed for this article
February 21, 2007 at 7:48 am
Kelvin
hmm, fair enough, i didn’t mean to suggest you have a newfound complicity in it all, and i also recognise that we’re all complicit in capitalism, big money, and big everything else, unless we, as you note, sacrifice ourselves to underfed polars in the arctic. but what are you going to do about the inner city school across the street? what are you going to do about the people you and our ilk displace (i wonder about this particularly in the summer here in balconville, when i see the poverty out in the street)? we’re all guilty, we’re all hypocrites, the question is how do we engage, how do we make the world a better place? i’ve learned the same lessons you have, i now know to do my bit, i need to take care of myself. but i guess where my problem lies is in this question of selfishness or self-absorption. by focusing so much on ourselves, are we not just being that, and perhaps telling ourselves we’re making a difference, as a means of assuaging our bourgeois liberal guilt?
February 22, 2007 at 12:18 am
goodgirlculture
I guess I hold out hope for the possibility of a workable middle way - for me that means striving to contribute to my fullest potential in a way that is healthy, fulfilling and sustainable.
For the record, I don’t think shaming ourselves is the answer. Guilt is overrated. It’s one thing for you to think I’m a self-absorbed hypocrite, or for me to acknowledge my own complicity. But it’s another thing altogether to waste time feeling guilty about it. My experience of guilt is that it is paralyzing and that it is not what inspires people to change.
February 22, 2007 at 8:42 am
elitrope
Wow, SubOvCon, I’ve enjoyed reading the great exchange of ideas moving through your post. You and Kelvin bring up concerns that I believe most people who are conscientious and moving toward sustainability, stay up at night worrying about. First off, congrats on the house purchase. I hope it fulfills its role in your life.
That’s really what this is about, fulfilling a need. I just had an incredibly indepth conversation yesterday about this very thing with my professor. As a residential designer, how do I move toward sustainability when I have clients that want 6,ooo sq. ft. homes? Who am I to even say that’s outrageous when my 1,500 sq. ft. house with electricity and plumbing is unfathomable to people of the developing world? How can I advocate to NOT build, when I built my own new home?
Several years ago, as a struggling single parent, I had the opportunity to buy a house that was condemned and therefore extremely cheap. I fixed it up and lived very happily with my small salary and no mortgage. Wanting and needing to be closer to my community, schools and work, I chose to use my house as a step to the next level of “economic success”, by borrowing against it and building new in a different neighborhood. This was a huge step, so I thought at the time, for my daughter and I in terms of quality of life. I went on to continue designing spec. homes and second homes for people and then to invest in more real estate myself (perceived financial security). All the while, I had the nagging suspicion that I was moving further away from the things that are really important to me in this world. I was confusing need for want.
Having read Voluntary Simplicity and Your Money or Your Life before all my house wealth gathering, I began to reflect on the fact that my life was so much easier and more sustainable when I lived in that little bungalow. Heavily laiden in land debt, I miss those mortgage free days and have made it my goal to get back there somehow. This is my greatest challenge, to transform my career into one of promoting living small as a status symbol (since our society seems hell-bent on large as a sign of status); small houses, re-use existing houses, renovate, natural materials, don’t build, etc. The flip side to that is to transform my own abode (shrink my footprint) and lifestyle in the process in order to live in line with my values and in so doing lessen my financial obligations, hence the gain the ability to work on projects that complete this circle. This will undoubtedly create difficult decisions and choices in regards to my home, property and choice of work. It already has.
I believe it does no good to point fingers, not that I’m implying that’s what you and Kelvin were doing, I think your dialogue is healthy issue addressing. Just speaking in general terms, it seems there is so much s*** slinging regarding who’s living greener that people have forgotten that compassion for their fellow man and collaboration is integral in this process. You’re right in that we can’t function to our fullest potential if we are riddled with guilt and imposing guilt on others doesn’t pave the way for positive change.
I wish you well and thanks for sharing your thought provoking posts and comments.
February 22, 2007 at 9:39 am
elitrope
Um, I really went off on a tangent that I hadn’t planned on being so “about me”. I really wanted to sum all that up by saying, as North Americans, I believe we are born with a certain amount of “privilege” and as a result, we will be the ones with the most amount of moral burden and challenge to bring into balance our privileges with the rest of the world. This includes our chosen work and I see around me, individuals waking up to the idea that their chosen work is not seperate from their beliefs about living sustainably. As for social justice, which is an integral part of sustainability, I believe each person will and can provide different solutions for different needs. There will be those that possess the strength to be leaders and those of us that will provide support to the leaders. Not every individual needs to be a leader for all social, economic, and environmental causes out there. We can be supporters and make contributions in our own small way. Most importantly, we need to grant each other the right to take an active leadership role or a supporting role. Our head & hearts will lead us to our place in this world, if we will only listen.
February 22, 2007 at 10:54 pm
goodgirlculture
Elitrope: Thanks so much for sharing some of your own experience. Yours is such an interesting (and inspiring) example of allowing oneself to go through the process of figuring out what works and what doesn’t, and working hard to learn and take meaninful action based on that. Learning is complicated business, that’s for sure.
And Kelvin: I just reread my late-night comment to you again and felt it seemed a little hard and dismissive. To clarify, I don’t feel judged or guilted out by your comments. But I started to feel that our dialogue was going down the “we’re all bad and guilty” path, and that reminded me that I already know that path isn’t a constructive one for me.
February 22, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Kelvin
That’s not quite where I wanted to go, either. Guilt is over-rated. I’m a good Catholic lad, I know from guilt. What I’m more interested in is finding what you call the middle ground here. It has to be there, and I try to find it myself. Going for guilt isn’t constructive for anyone. I have no real judgement for you, other than pithy little bits of pissiness, but I suppose that’s what we’re all guilty of. To be fair and honest, I appreciate your responses to my comments, and I appreciate your blog. This seems to be bringing some good to the world. Anyway, I apologise again, I’m not interested in guilt. I’m interested in a dialogue, and in getting beyond that spot of guilt. Be good.
March 10, 2007 at 11:58 pm
Merry Youle
Nikko,
I appreciate what you have done and are doing, and appreciate that you will take a lot of criticism and flak for this. I hope you continue, wiser but undeterred. As to the rightness or wrongness of buying a house and owning real estate, it seems there is no perfect path. I could enumerate reasons why to own, why not to own. I also see two principles that apply to both paths. One is that it is not simply own or not own, but how you live along the path you have chosen, what you make of it. The other is that there can be no completely right answer within a “wrong” context (community and region). But then in order to create a “right” context, we have to start where we are. You seem to be making your choices consciously and taking responsibility for your actions. That is a step in the right direction.
March 17, 2007 at 10:24 pm
goodgirlculture
thanks for your thoughts and support!
February 20, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Rick
Just read your blog for the first time. I think it is a false argument that you displace anyone when you buy a house except the person who wanted to sell. If someone wanted to sell and no one would buy you would drive down their properties value. That would impoverish them more. As for improving the schools, You just increased the value of the neighborhood buy exchanging money for the opportunity to live there. You added your taxes as well as the taxes of everyone else whose property value was increased by your action. I see that your blog is called Subverting Overconsumption not abject poverty.