I'm so glad for the meek

As Michael Stipe sang:

“I can't say that I love Jesus
that would be a hollow claim.
He did make some observations
and I'm quoting them today.”

One quote that stuck with me from childhood was “the meek… shall inherit the Earth”. I seem to remember that this was not a prophecy, as such, in the mind of our teachers. How, they reasoned, would the meek take control if they were, well, meek. The only possible explanation was that old JC didn’t mean it literally, more that they were yet another of the bless-ed crowd.

Meek, after all, means courteous, kind, merciful, indulgent, or not violent or strong, mild. How can these attributes gain you any territory or win you any elections?

Even allowing for mis-translation and shifting meanings, this is only one of His pronouncements that are often sidelined, ignored or re-interpreted. The teachings of Jesus form part of a pan-Eurasian heritage of religious thought that commonly advocates non-violence and fair-to-generous treatment of others.

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” is karmic in its effect. The common Western belief that karma is what ensures that what goes around comes around, is less accurate than the directive that to do right by others is simply the right thing to do.

But the role of the meek is both more complex than “do unto others…” yet more simple than my teachers made out. If anything, it encapsulates everything I’ve been trying to say in this blog in a single phrase. Violence is counter-productive and can only destroy. Those who practice humble non-violence will ultimately triumph. (Triumph isn’t exactly the right word, however, since this is the antithesis of will-to-power.)

It’s my limited belief that it was the co-option of Christianity as a state religion, first by Constantine, and then by other opportunist kings and emperors, that ensured its general decline as a radical force for peace and equality. To align a religion with nationalist sentiment, it must be stripped of anti-authoritarian ideals and skewed to show a preference for one group over another. The course of Christianity has been perverted through Late Roman, Crusading, Conquering and warring times.

The most extreme neutering of the Christian ideal was arguably the silencing and partial co-option of the Catholic Church in Nazi Germany. No religion built on non-conformity and peace could have been cowed in that way.

Incidentally, Gandhi’s opinion on what should be done about the Nazis--that the German people and all those affected should have stood up against them non-violently, both in opposition and to demonstrate how ruthless the Nazis were--is considered one of his most ridiculous ideas. But ridiculous though using non-violence against those capable of genocide might seem, and courageous beyond almost all belief that it would have been, it might have saved the world from the horrors partially covered by war.

With all I’ve said already, I must note that something of the pre-Constantine religion has lived on: in various “heretical” sects; in rebellious priests and preachers; and in groups such as the Quakers and Mennonites.

I can’t say that I love Jesus, but he did make some exceedingly good observations.

The local migrant

Green politics is all about the local. By which, I don’t mean just the pub, but everything that goes into a strong, positive community: from the basics of housing, food and education to the less tangibles of trust, belonging and sharing. In describing these things and how to achieve them, it is often implicit that this is a long-term, geographically rooted programme.

Well, it is. So where do migrants fit in the picture?

Let’s be clear: a migrant is anyone who moves from one local community to another, whether they do that regularly or just once in their lives, and whether they do that across the globe or between neighbouring villages. Not all (maybe hardly any) problems of migration are directly related to international movements, and it makes no difference what the motivations for moving are.

I write this as a migrant myself. I have not worked in my country of birth since I first left university. I have moved about once every two years in the last twenty, usually from one community to another and twice between continents. I did so out of what I would claim was necessity, to work or to affordable accommodation. And I’m far from exceptional.

There are some things we migrants can do easily: we can shop locally and take an interest in local affairs, wherever we are. We can also take over responsibility for our garden, join community groups that we find appealing and volunteer to help in local projects. From the beginning, we can bring an attitude of openness and experience of projects in other locales.

We can be the nomadic local, joining in wherever we go.

I’m not going to discourage anyone from being nomadic. It has its rewards: we understand what we all have in common and what makes one place unique compared to any other. Most positively of all, the local nomads can bring a cosmopolitan open-mindedness with them to counteract any insular tendencies.

Of course, sensitivity isn’t a guaranteed characteristic of the migrant, and I’ve known plenty incomers that have little respect for indigenous culture, import goods rather than try the local alternative, or generally annoy their new neighbours with brashness or insularity.

Then there are the elements of community that nomads can never bring, particularly continuity of experience and long-term commitment. Communities need continuity because there are elements of the community (mainly its spirit) that take time to develop. A place where people are only passing through is never much more than the sum of its parts (although hostellers know that even a little goes a long way).

In other words, a community is more than just a place or a group of people. A “hood” or “manor” has a reputation, its pubs and shops have a reputation and an atmosphere, and it has a direction. Plans for the development of social housing, schools, doctors and dentists take long-term commitment.

Individuals within the community have to invest years, often decades, of their lives to the institutions that reflect community will: teachers, doctors, councillors, police officers, residents’ association officers, etc.

If both migrants and locals have an important part to play in the community, there must be a sensible balance between them. It might be interesting to find indicators of community cohesion and positivity, measure them and compare communities with different amounts of resident “churn”. I suspect that getting a sensible mix is not particularly difficult and that the optimum will depend on many factors, including the cultures involved.

Which leaves us with the extreme communities: entirely local or overwhelmingly migrant. Are mono-cultural communities too slow-changing to be sustainable, and are they inherently xenophobic? And how much migration is too much migration?

These are questions that deserve a large space of their own.

Human nature, part one

David Mamet has decided that he is no longer a “brain-dead liberal” because he no longer believes that “people are basically good at heart”. In other words, there is no point in putting your faith in humanity, so we need a greater degree of authoritarianism. I also infer that Mamet would prefer that the educated (if not the rich) should have a greater say in the running of things.

Reading this made me realise that I haven’t addressed what is the most common objection to idealistic politics: human nature.

The practicalities of winning elections form one barrier, but ultimately it’s human nature that most people believe stands in the way of anything they regard as utopian. We’re violent, greedy, distrustful, racist and lazy. How can we expect humanity to converge on a society, or societies, where we don’t use violence, don’t take more than we need, trust our neighbours (on every level), treat everyone fairly and all contribute to our community?

The question isn’t how we overcome these aspects of ourselves, and I won’t deny a tendency towards most, if not all, of these “sins” in myself, but whether these traits are significantly inherited, or whether they are predominantly learned.

This is (I would say “of course”) almost unknowable, but there are some things we do know make them worse. It could be argued that some are even a creation of society and not individuals. Racism is the obvious example: there is no reason to fear or hate those who are different from ourselves. Racism rises and falls with poverty and unemployment; differences are exaggerated to deflect blame from those in power or as a source of power for others.

The main counter-argument is that some of our less admirable traits have evolved in us, to give us an advantage in surviving and reproducing. Greed drives us to get what we need to feed our family and survive the winter. But that doesn’t explain the laziness. And evolution also seems to have provided us with the altruism that helps communities to stay together and survive.

So, is the balance essentially positive or negative? I’ll give one example of why I believe we are prone to act positively: Hollywood.

As Chomsky, if no-one else, has pointed out: powerful nations are inclined to behave badly. It is not the mix of ethnicities that makes the USA behave as the world’s bully while pretending to be the world’s policeman, it’s the need to consolidate its position as the world’s only superpower. But the American creative media do not, on the whole, reflect this need. American books, music, tv, and most especially movies, take a far more moral stance (on the whole).

Bad behaviour is punished in proportion to the crime. Good behaviour, particularly if it is otherwise motiveless gets rewarded. If not, the viewer is made painfully aware that this is an “unhappy ending”.

So, what motivates the film studios? Their own behaviour does not echo the morality of their movies. They are giving the movie-watching public what they think they want. We are the movie-watching public and most of us want the world of the movies to be good and just.

Don’t try and tell me that we don’t want the same in the real world.

In the end, does it matter what is in our nature? Well, yes. If we are not capable of sustaining a better world of better communities, then there is no point trying for anything better.

Not just trees

I realise I’ve been guilty of overlooking two aspects of sustainability: social and economic.

Economic? I remember when the New Labour definition of sustainability was unveiled in the late 90s. Sustainability had long been a pillar of ecology and ecological politics, but that was explicitly environmental sustainability. The other pillar of ecological politics is social justice, because this is human politics and one without the other is neither sustainable nor just.

It’s worth emphasising this point. Where the rights of the poorest and/or indigenous people have been forgotten, attempts to protect the wildlife of countries like Kenya have led to conflict; the people who need to migrate in and out of National Parks to feed their cattle have been excluded to land that cannot sustain them through drought. Conversely, socialist states that focused on unfettered heavy industry to make the people rich have created little more than wasteland.

Economic growth was added to the official definition, which has since been adopted globally, because it would otherwise conflict with the orthodoxy that wealth creation is what’s needed to improve everyone’s situation while competing with other nations. That was the orthodoxy that green politics set out to oppose in the first place, so the inclusion of economic growth in the definition of sustainability was an un-subtle but successful attempt to subvert the use of the word.

Thankfully, subsequent definitions have been tempered to include “economic development”, which is at least broad enough to encompass more holistic development. But it still leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

So, I have been remiss in not mentioning social justice (or the social dimension to sustainability, if you prefer). But there are as many concepts of social justice as there concepts of liberty invisible to the mind of George W Bush. Our rights, as has often been pointed out, are often in conflict with one another: my right to live as I please conflicts with yours and everyone else’s, not to mention every other creature on Earth.

That’s why it’s “social” justice. Like environmental ecology, human ecology is all about striving for balance. Human ecological systems are societies, communities, families, networks. Starting with the almost infinite number of concepts of social justice, searching for a balanced system in any given social group will only leave a limited set of solutions.

The working solutions for one human eco-system will be similar but different from any other, which is one main reason why we need self-determination. The other main reason being that self-determination is a right in itself.

The fact is, sustainability and social justice are not just two principles in synergy. They are two inseparable parts of the same thing. As such, there is a social element in sustainability. But then, what New Labour really meant was the contradiction of “sustainable development”.

How sustainable?

Time for a bit of self-doubt.

Although I do believe that we can make a reasonable estimate of sustainable levels of resource use and waste production is not only reasonably estimable, and can be made more accurately with time, I sometimes wonder what level of sustainability we’re aiming for.

While sustainability is simple in principle, everything has an almost indefinite impact. At least, anything that hasn’t evolved as part of a self-contained ecosystem. And that doesn’t include us.

The example I gave in my first blog was of a wood being forested. Trees will grow to maturity in a predictable period of time, so you can take a number of trees every year, re-seeding to keep the canopy close to full at all times. But that barely begins to explain a sustainable wood.

Mature trees (even sycamores) play host to a variety of animals, birds, insects and other plant species. Removing mature trees destroys habitat and a portion of the ecosystem. Some species take longer to recover or can withstand less perturbation than others. So, while the trees will manage a replacement rate of, say, one tree per year per hundred, a particular species of moss might only manage to re-grow at 0.1% or 0.01% per year.

Where does that leave our calculations? If we forest this wood with the health of the moss—in other words, its sustainability—in mind, we can only take one tree in every hundred, every ten or one hundred years. I’m serious.

A couple of answers spring to mind.

The deep green response is that we need to follow this process to its natural conclusion: that the human population and the way it exists have to be pared back to a level where no species will be pushed to extinction anywhere in the world by human action.

Is that absurd? Yes and no. It should be possible, with almost the present human population, to live without destroying any more species. It would mean avoiding the most sensitive parts of the globe, in large part. Setting aside the most delicate ecosystems as no-go areas. But we already survive without them.

Which brings me to another solution to the sustainability riddle. We decide on “acceptable” levels of sustainability. As we progress towards total sustainability, we do not simply reduce our impact everywhere and in every way. For one thing, that would be impractical. For another, it would be too crude.

Shutting down coal-fired power stations is all-well-and-good but is unlikely to be matched with a reduction in energy use. The gap between generation and use could be bridged by new renewable sources, but those have an impact too.

The solution has to be a managed transition, sacrificing some ecosystems and risking the loss of some species, relying on the durability of the global ecosystem to withstand a little more pain. What we get in the end is an ecosystem of ecosystems that is going to endure.

Are we happy with that? It could be argued that we should then progress towards ecosystems more like those we had before the rise of humanity. And that would be deepest green.

The non-linearity of money

Everybody knows about economies of scale. Even without sharp practices such as selling basic commodities at unprofitable prices, large corporations have the advantage over small ones.

As a company grows, it can afford more of the trappings of the high-street giants: market-focussed and sophisticated image, consistency of product and services across all outlets, standard operational procedures developed to be easy to learn and be highly time efficient. Uniformity. Reproducibility. Expenditure on advertising is borne by the whole outfit and benefits every element; better brand recognition means more people through the door or finding (and trusting) you online.

But brand strength is only one benefit of being bigger.

Being bigger also means more buying power. Even when you get your supplies in the supermarket, buying a pack of twenty-four toilet rolls is going to be cheaper than six packs of four. Then there’s wholesale. Then there’s contract supply. Then there’s contracts with overseas suppliers and self-shipping. Then there’s ownership of the supply chain. Along the way, profits that were being generated by stores, wholesalers, distributors, and suppliers are absorbed by the parent company.

And the drivers, stock-keepers, farmers and manufacturers have become employees of a much larger company too. Where the people who did unnecessary packaging, shelving and selling have gone is open to speculation.

But buying power isn’t the end of the story. More revenue and profit means a greater ability to manage the cash and assets. Not an magical way with money, simply the purchasing power to get better accountants, investment bankers, and fund managers.

This is where capital is truly non-linear. Like toilet rolls, money is cheaper in larger quantities. It pays to be rich.

Is that right? Since Thatcher brought the highest rate of income tax down to 40% in the Eighties, political consensus in the UK has kept it down, while also keeping the threshold down. In other words, where only 750,000 people were eligible to pay the top rate of tax in 1974, 3.25 million were paying it in 2007. When, as the Times put it, lecturers and nurses are paying the top rate, there is going to be little sympathy for raising the rate.

So whether it’s right or wrong, our current political system is unlikely to provide any compensation.

The situation is so iniquitous that it far outweighs the disconnect and inefficiency of large human organizations. All those operating procedures, folders of standard processes, and networking lunches are an attempt to compensate for poor communications up, down and across a company. Small isn’t just beautiful, it works better.

Can't get there from here

In the autumn edition of the Green Party of England and Wales’ magazine, Green World, there was a decent article about how Stroud had become a Transition Town (http://www.greenworld.org.uk/page55/page72/page59/page59.html). The Transition Town movement is helping local communities to focus on methods of reducing their carbon footprint (http://transitiontowns.org/Main/HomePage). Where there’s a will, the Transition Network will help find a way.

The objectives are almost as imprecise as those of sustainable development, but this is still a large chunk of what I want in a sustainable community. I will do what I can to make Shepherd’s Bush a Transition Town. Ask me what I’ve achieved by Spring 2009.

However, in the next edition of Green World, Councillor Rupert Read is keen to point out that “the Transition Towns movement alone cannot save us” because, he says, if some people reduce their use of fossil fuels, the price will not rise as much and others will not be incentivised to change. How depressing.

Now, I’m not saying that I’ve suddenly decided that Transition Towns are the answer to all our problems, but what does Rupert say we need to balance the equation? Legislation. And how do we get legislation to limit the use of fossil fuels? Through the electoral mechanism.

In getting elected to Norwich City Council, Rupert has been far more successful than me in getting green policies implemented, but the pinnacle of Green electoral success, so far in this world, has been as minority partners in a few national governments. The most high profile of those being in Germany. National, and therefore international, democratic politics swings tightly around a conventional centre. Radicalism is never more than a spice that adds a little flavour to an otherwise bland stew.

In other words, legislative change to implement carbon rationing or something similar will always be too little too late. The first World Climate Conference, established in recognition of the phenomenon of global warming, was held in 1979. Even Margaret Thatcher was convinced of the need for radical action after the second conference in 1990. Yet it is 2008 and we are failing to meet the commitment made in Kyoto in 1997.

Communities have to lead by example. Transition Towns can make a difference.