Global Market and the Apocalypic Tendency.

As I noted in class, on Thursday, there is an alarming tendancy in modern political tactics toward fear-mongering practices. For instance, instead of arguing for quieter, cleaner cars and less of the corrosive pollutants in our air, people instead take the approach of suggesting that the ozone layer is being breached by UV rays and tomorrow we are all going to die, yes? Instead of being straitforward in our approach to Iraq, we were reminded of the dread we all felt on 11 September and rallied to do something about a government which was, at the time, believed to be linked to the event. In Ozeki's All Over Creation, these tactics are repeatedly used by the Seeds in their attempts to draw the attention of people everywhere toward the potential dangers and uncertainties of GMO crops. When talking with older people or people who have more knowledge of the subject, however, they tend to talk in much less fear-oriented language, preferring rational and moral arguments over predictions of ominous doom.

Fear-mongering is a useful practice. It can create in an audience an uncertaintly, a void which may then be filled with reasonable (or possibly unreasonable) solutions to that awareness of discomfort. However, there are certain drawbacks to these methods. One presumes, first of all, that the dire warning is taken seriously. If it is not, then the person is very likely to feel that his intelligence has been insulted, which is rather impolitic a way to convince a person, even an intelligent and discerning person, to join in that particular cause. Yumi, who mistrusted activists and saw through their tactics at once, could not be persuaded to empathise with their cause, though in all likelihood it would not have been a difficult jump for her to have made, had she been approached differently.

Fear-mongering is also disturbing because today it is often created within an environment of widespread cynicism and mistrust. In such environments, this practice may involinarily encourage further feelings of individual ineffecacy, for what single person can stand up to an all-powerful and baneful Doom of the entire world, whether this be global warming or the spread and cultivation of potentially fragile GMO crops?

For that is the situation we face today; rapid globalisation has ensured that whatever affects one of us affects us all, that what one man decides to drive in India may have an effect on the weather in California or New Mexico. Which is a bit daunting, considering how many 'other people' are out there in the rest of the world. It depersonalises the situation enormously to know that not only your choices, but the choices of those other 569,101 Seattlites (as of 2003), will have an immediate effect on the political and economic fabric of your community; nowadays, this number has been extended into any number of places, from Guatemala to China. The sheer awareness of how many people are out there makes it seem impossible to effect any sort of substantial change. Hence so much of the resignation formed around these issues.

If, instead, the focus were perhaps to be moved to community, to making things better on a local scale, with others who are familiar or have a lot in common, the situation suddenly becomes much more optimistic, psychologically. It is easier to plant a few lettuce plants in one's backyard and exchange with your next-door neighbour for tomatoes than to try to reform the entire food production system in the entire area. Industrialism moves on a large-scale basis because that is what it was designed to do. By working to produce goods locally, this process is fundamentally undermined. When dieting (another matter which seems to have an unnecessary amount of anxst surrounding it), start cutting away the snacks and seconds one at a time. Many people cannot quit smoking cold turkey, no matter what they know it might do to them. (Oh, the horror-stories of smoking.) In the case of global warming (a black hole of such overworked anxieties and fears), it is easier to consider buying a Xebra or an electric scooter (both of which, if used in public, are in themselves a public statement) than to try to play hasard with the gas companies on a large-scale basis.

And why advertise these changes as absolutely-necessary-to-survival? He who plants beans and corn and squash in his yard and cares for them once and a while has an abundance of substantially tastier food and moreover does not have to make extra trips at odd hours to the supermarket for these commodities. He who loses excess pounds feels livelier. Xebras are small and quiet, cute and clean. They do not pollute and they do not smell of noisome fumes. (And, for me, they are a very convenient excuse not to drive on the freeway, which is something I avoid at all costs, anyway!) That is reason enough, for me. I am quite content to avoid gasoline cars for these reasons. I do not need scientific evidence to tell me that doing so is going to save the world from utter destruction or whether or not the Dutch will drown. It is enough to know that I am fulfilling my personal responsibility to the world around me in an attractive and (relatively) affordable way (I mean, look at the price of SmartCars). This is what Pollan is talking about when on page 150 he suggests that farmers do not have to know why, precisely, their well-tried practice of encouoraging symbiotic relationships is so productive, so long as they can tell that it is so.

In short, start with the small picture and work one's way up, rather than getting bogged down with the big (and sometimes depressing) picture. Or, as goes the old adage: THINK POSITIVE. This is not a new idea, but it's one of the more effective ones.

On the other hand, what sort of thought process is that encouraging, in the long run? Do we want to appeal to (and thus encourage) short-term thinking about issues like this, or do we want to rise out of that rut? There is a lot at stake at the immediate level on issues like GMO crops or agricultural techniques, and it does need to be discussed in public. And to be frank, I don't think the two contradict one another. In a situation where people are willing to look at their contribution to social change in a positive manner, there can still be open debate about these issues. The difference is that the grossly exaggerated media monstrosities are given less weight in comparison with more immediate socioeconomic and moral concerns -- the factors that do not have to be predigested by scientific researchers.

As a final note, it is probably not in the nature of the media as it exists, today, to address issues in a positive manner. Media is quintessentially present to sell stories, and the best stories are those with plot / conflict. Positive thinking, then, like positive action, has to begin at the local level among people who are familiar with one another, at a scale where positive results can be seen. Immediate positive results were what got us into this mess in the first place, and it is immediate positive results which will relieve us. However, that does not mean that we should lose sight of or place any less interest in the larger picture. Rather, this attitude is an acknowledgement that science has not told and perhaps cannot tell us everything we need to know in order to make an Absolutely informed decision.