September 28th, 1997
WHAT RELATIONSHIP?
By Jackie Giuliano
With resources scarcer and scarcer
I vow with all beings
to consider the law of proportion:
my have is another's have-not.
-- Robert Aitken
We are all aware of environmental and social dilemmas. Some would even call them
catastrophes. The daily newspaper, although a poor way to learn of what is really going on
in the world, is a picture window into those dilemmas. In the paper we can learn about how
our estranged relationship with the natural world has brought us to the brink of
disconnection.
So often, we try to boil down our problems to the need for better standards, better
corporate conscience and responsibility, and better laws. But are these really solutions?
I fear more and more that they might be only distractions from the larger, less tangible
issue of our relationship with our world. Sadly, examples abound.
In the Los Angeles Times on Saturday, September 27, 1997, one of the most horrifying
photos I have ever seen appears. It is a photo of a mountain of trash, the flotsam and
jetsam of our daily routines, caught by a fence at the end of one of the many storm drains
that lead to the ocean in L.A. The first rain in 219 days carried the solid garbage, motor
oil, pesticides, and other toxic substances that lay upon our streets, buildings, parking
lots, cars, and lawns down into the sewers and into the concrete channel of Ballona Creek.
None of this material is captured by any of the wastewater treatment facilities in
Southern California - the storm drain refuse travels untreated into the ocean.
Why should we care about littering a place we have no real relationship with?
A rope net and steel fence has been installed at the end of one of these storm drain
channels. It collects only the solid garbage - the worst substances, the liquid toxics,
travel through to the ocean.
Los Angeles county residents litter the streets with over a million cigarette butts and
900,000 pieces of trash each month. In one year, county workers collect over 2,100 tons of
trash along the beaches. The cleanup effort costs $7.2 million. No one can say how many
tons settles to the bottom of the ocean, but a common sight on our shores is a dead sea
bird or mammal, a ring from a plastic six-pack holder imbedded in the flesh of its neck.
They are strangled, you see, by getting caught in the ring and then growing into it. It is
a slow, painful, horrifying way to die.
Why should be care about an animal when we have such a troubled relationship with our own
bodies?
And while news stories tell us that the major cigarette companies pay hundreds of
thousands of dollars to clubs and bars in Los Angeles and cities around the U.S. to
promote their drugs, 63 residents of a San Fernando Valley convalescent home were told on
Friday that they had to leave immediately. The company that owned the hospital (Phoenix
Health Group of Scottsdale, Arizona) decided to shut it down with no warning, creating a
panic among the families of the many bedridden patients there. One patient, who was being
taken for an outing down the street in her wheelchair, was told she could not re-enter the
building. The money spent on advertising by the cigarette companies each year could
provide health care for every woman, man and child on the planet.
Why should we care about 65 old people - they aren't our family members - when we have no
relationship with our elders?
In the most amazing and clarifying example of our disconnection from our world and from
ourselves, The Boeing Corporation has a 8 by 11 inch ad in the local news section of
Saturday's Los Angeles Times. I have reproduced it in its entirety below. It is a sobering
example of the sadness and sickness of our time:
PROPOSITION 65 WARNING
This warning is given in accordance with Proposition 65 to our neighbors:
- The Boeing facility listed below emits chemicals that are known to the State of
California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.
- Persons living within the approximate area outlined in the map below are exposed to
these substances.
- For further information, write to Boeing at the address listed below.
Below this notice, which is next to an ad for the Health and Fitness Expo at the Pomona
County Fairgrounds and an ad for a closeout sale of an antique pine furniture store, is a
low resolution map of the city of Long Beach with a line drawn around the location of the
Boeing plant.
That's it. That's all they have to do. No solutions offered, no stopping their operations,
no promises to care for the damaged health of its neighbors. No other action is necessary
- the company has carried out its legal obligation under California law enacted by
Proposition 65, passed by the voters a few years ago.
Why should the company have to do anything more when our relationships are discussed in
terms of complying with the letter of a law rather than the crying of our souls?
And in an amazing show of lack of a relationship with anything, President Clinton refused
to sign a treaty that would have banned landmines. Today there are an estimated 110
million landmines in the ground around the world and another 100 million in stockpiles.
Five to ten million more mines are produced each year. Manufacturers of these mines make
$50 million to $180 million annually on these weapons. The U.S. is one of the world's
major manufacturers of landmines.
These mines cost as little as $3 each and each day over 70 people are killed or injured by
them. The Landmine Information Center offers the following grim statistics:
- 1 million people have been killed and maimed by anti-personnel mines.
- 26,000 people year become victims: that's...
- 70 people a day, or around...
- one person every fifteen minutes.
- 300,000 children and counting are severely disabled because of land mines.
Why should we care?
Sadly, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration is ready to approve the horrific drug
Thalidomide because we have no relationship with our past (see Healing Our World article
called "What Could Possibly Be Next!" posted to the on Envirolink on September
8, 1997).
So many of us feel powerless and not responsible for the tragedies unfolding around us.
Yet, we are very powerful and so very responsible. Accepting responsibility may be the
most difficult challenge each one of us faces. And we must accept the fact that we are so
very powerful. I hear complaining all the time (much of it from me!) that it's the awful
corporations that are ruining our world. Well my friends, who is buying all the stuff made
by those corporations, providing them the money and power that they have? We are. Who is
turning media companies into giant, multi-national corporations? You. Me. All of us who
watch TV, pay for cable (that most of us rarely watch), and go to movies (most of which we
don't like). The power we have simply by being responsible for our purchases is huge.
Yet it can be frightening for people who have spent their lifetimes insulating themselves
from full participation in our environmental and social dilemmas to suddenly realize that
they are participants in and contributors to those problems.
For example, when I take my adult students on a tour of the Hyperion Waste Water Treatment
Plant in Los Angeles, a huge facility that processes 500 million gallons of our wastewater
every day, students are shaken by the realization that what they flush down their toilets
really does NOT go "away." Instead, it goes through minimal treatment and is
piped out to the ocean, for people to swim in and get sick from. Without proper attention,
acknowledgment, and processing, this awareness can turn into numbness and cynicism.
Properly addressed, this awareness can turn into a greater sense of connection with the
natural world.
How can we gain awareness, take responsibility, and institute positive change in our
lives? The answer will be different for everyone, but I think that each person's journey
can have some common elements that can stimulate the process of developing those important
relationships with oneself and the natural world. Here are a few thoughts.
- See that others out there are concerned too. Visit bulletin boards in local bookstores
and coffee houses. Go to a meeting or a book discussion or some event that surrounds you
with thoughtful people who are struggling to find a path to change.
- Use the creative arts to help you develop a relationship with yourself and the world
around you. Use of the creative arts can open the mind, heart, and soul and create a
conversation on a level that words cannot. There is no finer way to challenge assumptions
and avoid the pitfalls of language and definitions than to communicate in lines and colors
and shapes. Tapping into one's creativity unleashes energy that allows for the possibility
of developing unexplored relationships in ones universe. Never painted before? Never done
any crafts? It doesn't matter. Buy a drawing pad and some paint from the local art supply
or stationary store and just do it. You will be amazed.
- Our fast-paced society rarely encourages time to pause and reflect, yet this is critical
if we are to redefine our relationships. After everything you do, reflection time should
be allowed. Using combinations of art, meditation, writing, other forms of expression, or
just a few quiet moments, you need time to let new awarenesses sit and settle in to your
being. Be mindful of everything you do, and be mindful of the transitional moments from
one event to another.
- Values are at the heart of our world, not laws or standards or documents. Time must be
allotted in the living process for one to reassess personal, professional, community, and
global values. This is the precursor to action. Give yourself time to think about what is
important to you. What do you want to be remembered for? What are you willing to fight
for? What do you believe in? What do you aspire to believe in?
- Everything we do results in change of some kind. Take time to acknowledge change as a
distinct and integral part of living. Creating changes in one's daily life is the key to
embracing learning and building that new relationship with self and the world.
It's not easy. But it is not hard either. Each day, decide to change
something, no matter how small. Each step is a golden opportunity. And don't forget to
enjoy the beauty of the world as well.
Below is the e-mail message I sent to President Clinton when I learned of his position on
landmines. Who have you e-mailed today? What do you believe in today. Decide.
"Dear Mr. President,
After reading of your refusal to sign the treaty supporting a worldwide ban of land mines,
I am ashamed to be a citizen of the United States. And I am ashamed of your shortsighted
corporate minded decision-making. To ignore the more than 25,000 people per year, mostly
children, that are killed by land minds and the tens of thousands more who are maimed, is
unconscionable. To use excuses like the "safety and security of our men and women in
uniform" is the worst kind of deceit. You have supported the senseless visions of the
Defense Department and told the world that we put the interests of those powerful people
who lead the production of weapons systems ahead of the interests of the majority of the
world's people.
I hope that one day you will travel to a foreign country, ravaged by the intrusions of
nations that think they know better than those who live there, and look a maimed girl or
boy in the eye, telling them why you supported the continued production of the obscene
weapons that ripped his arm or her leg off or took a loved one away. Speak to that child
of lack of support at meetings and going the "extra mile."
You could have made such a difference in office. But every step of the way, you have
chosen a path that keeps the United States a leader in the production of tools that cause
death and destruction throughout the world.
I am very sad today. Sad for you. Sad for the hurt and suffering people in the world. Sad
for the victims of nuclear testing worldwide, sad for those maimed by mines, sad for those
kill with guns you allow to be sold. And I am sad that we have a government ruled by
corporate greed. I am amazed each day when I read of the battle between the government and
the tobacco industry to save lives. What could the problem possibly be except greed?
Tobacco kills, children are being enticed to smoke. The answer is really very simple -
shut down the tobacco industry. Period. You know who they are. You know where their
"drug labs" are. Just shut them down.
We have overcomplicated our decision-making processes. It could really be very simple: If
a practice hurts ANYONE, stop it.
Look to your heart for the answers.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Jackie Alan Giuliano
Professor of Environmental Studies
Antioch University, Los Angeles"
Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let the desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
and the ways you go be the lines on your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
and your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well loved one,
walk mindfully, well loved one,
walk fearlessly, well loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
be always coming home.
-- Ursula K. Le Guin
RESOURCES AND REFERENCES
1. Read the L.A. Times story about the storm drain issue at http://www.latimes.com/sbin/my_iarecord.pl?NS-doc-path=/httpd/docs/HOME/COMM
UN/NEWS/ZONE11A/t00008620899.html&NS-doc-offset=0&NS-collection=DailyNews&NS
-search-set=/var/tmp/342dd/aaaa002gU2ddbbb&
2. Learn more about the land mines issue from the Land Minds Information Network at http://www.care.org/newscenter/landmines/index.html
3. Learn about the international campaign to ban landmines at http://www.vvaf.org/landmine.html/
4. Click on the word "Archive" at the top or bottom of this article for a list
of other Healing Our World articles.
5. E-mail the President of the United States at the White House web site: http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/EOP/html/couples.html
6. Read the words of top visionary people as selected by the Utne Reader magazine at http://www.utne.com/visionaries/95visionall.html
7. Read some thoughts by Fritjof Capra about our relationship to the natural world at http://www.geocities.com/~combusem/CAPRA1.HTM
{Jackie Giuliano can be found trying to take responsibility in Venice, California. He is a
Professor of Environmental Studies for Antioch University, Los Angeles, the University of
Phoenix, and the Union Institute College of Undergraduate Studies. He is also the
Educational Outreach Manager for the Ice and Fire Preprojects, a NASA program at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory to send space probes to Jupiter's moon Europa, the planet Pluto, and
the Sun. Please send your comments, ideas, and visions to him at jackieg@jps.net} |
