Let me start by saying, I am eager to hear people’s responses to this final chapter. I have so enjoyed getting to know you all over the course of the semester and the thought provoking dialogues we’ve had. I will miss it.
This particular chapter brought up a lot for me because one of the reasons I decided to come back to school, at almost thirty, was because I truly want to make the world a better place. I had some ideas about how I might do that but through the course of this semester I found those ideas consistently coming up short. Namely they lacked a how and a to what end. Being a musical theatre performer by training I knew I wanted to break into a wider identity as an artist and use that art to talk about causes that matter to me, environmental and climate justice among them. However as time has worn on and my knowledge of this subject matter has deepened, I have felt incredibly hopeless and that hopelessness has made me question not only my artistic motivations but also the goal of that art. Is the aim to wake people to the damage of climate change? And then what do they do with that information? Do I address the impacts it has on the entire eco-system, human animals included? Do I jump to a possible future if nothing changes and paint that picture, again to what end? Ultimately I have just felt overwhelmed and lacking any direction on what to do next.
The idea of bioregionalism has been the most enticing as realm to explore, picture me clinging to a life raft, because it seems to be honest in reflecting the inevitable change we will see as a result of climate change, and yet it finds space for some hope. I feel in many ways that I have been walking around wringing my hands, realizing we can’t save what was, we are past that. This has led me to feel stuck, not in despair, but in terror and grief. It has also made me unable to act, not in the dramatic sense, but act in reaction to this information in a meaningful way. I talk about the topic endlessly, yet I find it difficult to enact anything resembling productive action in the face of my terrorized grief.
I tell you this because the idea behind bioregionalism posed in this book has given me some sort of hope back. I don’t think a solution for stopping climate change will happen, but I certainly don’t think solutions will happen by people trying to act globally. I think that the concepts are too large and we did not evolve to consider people outside our bands of 50 or so members, let alone the global or planetary repercussions of our actions. However, it is easier to see, and arguably easier to get things done, when you see things broken in your own corner of the world. I think focusing on building the relationships between our multi-species communities in our corner of the world is far more likely to have traction. Indigenous traditions are known for this hyper awareness of place and traditions around specific places and natural processes. The authors write, “Perhaps a modest hope can be found learning from such traditions about how to be in a particular place, seeking not to save the entire world but instead to learn how to live in one specific part of it.”
I think the only hope I can find, and perhaps the only work worth doing for me, is one that looks at how to make things better for the plants, animals and people in my corner of the world and encourage others to do the same. Perhaps even use art to draw attention to the real harm we do when we think about trying to save a dying way of life and instead perhaps we should look to do better by all our community members and shape a new reality that is more holistic and mindful in it’s approach to living.
I lack a lot of hope these days and it literally pains me. Perhaps this idea of bioregionalism can give my passionate grief an outlet of some use. Here’s hoping.
…last note, can we also just take a moment to appreciate that the intelligent people who crafted this book ended it with a sentence that included the word bummer. I am going to try and take some of their humor and lightness into my approach because, come on, that’s funny.