Complicity

I’ve worked many a job where I’ve had to look in the mirror and question my complicity (however innocent) in my employer’s business practices.  It is not an easy question. Whether I am applying pesticides, encouraging people to buy more or directing a helicopter to land on an alpine meadow (to facilitate a paragliding class)… I've played a part in the earth’s degradation. Then again, just by living a western lifestyle I do the same, but let’s just focus on work for now. Sometimes I did these jobs in order to survive, other times, like the latter, I did so out of ignorance (more the shame as I was the employer!).  I know I am not alone in this but the bottom line is that I cannot shy away from asking, each day, if I am in integrity with myself, my community, and the environment. And, if not, what am I going to do about it?

The following story is an excerpt from my book, Notes from the Bottom of the Box. (The “Big Box” in the story refers to a big box hardware store.) The excerpt is an introduction to the dubious pleasure of asking customers to pay five cents for a plastic carry-out  bag. It is also the prelude to several essays (in my book, that is) on complicity. 

For another look at complicit employment/consumerism, go to the latest entry in my other blog The Interdependent Life.

I am often in the lumber yard at the Big Box. I love it there: the physical labour, the view of the North Shore mountains and the dragonflies that dance by in dramatic tango-like pauses. But what really excites me are the trains on the other side of the fence: massive bulwarks of steel and iron driven by stone-faced engineers—indomitable forces impossible to stop even with an abrupt will. Their passionless visages speak volumes: travel at your peril—this track is ours. 

 But then they do stop. Although it’s a slow glide to zero, the coupler slack rebounds with the archetypical horror of battling titans and havoc-wreaking gods. It is the sound of bridges collapsing: a landslide of heavy metal burying a town of iron. The noise fills the air with echoes that reverberate for miles.

The first time I heard it, I stepped into shock. I actually entertained thoughts that the Iron Workers Memorial Bridge had fallen down as it did once before some six decades prior. But time has made the explosive sound familiar, and now the clamour produces but just a minor thrill up my spine. What once scared me barely makes me jump. I have grown accustomed to the trains’ presence.

I pondered my lack of distress after reading a short interview with George Marshall, author of Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change. In it Marshall argues that the reason we treat a threat like ISIS with multinational immediacy and the international calamity of climate change with almost lackadaisical indifference is the nature of the enemy. With ISIS, the combatant is a known group of people who, seemingly, intend harm. With global warming, not only has the “enemy” become like the trains outside the lumberyard—a familiar theme and therefore less scary—but its true nature has been revealed: the enemy called global warming is us. 

And therein lies the problem. Do any of us really mean harm when we fill our gas tanks, turn the heat up or use air conditioning? Do we really have nefarious intent when we build our family home and buy cement (a notorious contributor to greenhouse gases) for the foundation or old-growth timber for the frame? Don't we all just want to have a comfortable life? 

It is hard to fight an enemy who smiles back at you in the mirror. Or, for that matter, one who stands on the other side of your till. …

Stay tuned for more weekly excerpts from Notes from the Bottom of the Box. If you like this blog, please like me on my Modern-DayRenaissance Woman Facepage.  Thanks for the support!