True Change Comes From the Bottom Upward

I think it’s safe to say that we are in need of a serious change in our world. A real, lasting, tangible change.

Our birthright of clean air, clean water, and clean food is rapidly declining in quality, and our children will be the ones to inherit the messes we’ve made.

Many of the articles we publish on Twilight Earth are news items, reporting on environmental victories and failures on a macro level, not necessarily a micro level, and that can be misleading for some people.

Not because the information is wrong, but because it puts the onus, the responsibility, on the bigger players, such as policy makers and politicians and big businesses, not the individual.

That’s where the responsibility really lies. On us. Each one of us.

While the hot news items usually concern the efforts to change our policies surrounding conservation efforts and environmental protection, the biggest impact we can have on the world is through the way that we live our day-to-day lives. Whether or not we support the ‘right’ candidates at the ballots, or sign the ‘right’ petitions on the street corner is really of little importance if our daily actions are at odds with our words.

There’s a great song by Donovan (can’t remember the title – maybe you do?) in which he makes the point that the government is not gonna kill all the snakes for you. I think that’s a profound statement, one that brings personal responsibility to the forefront.

It’s easy to place the blame on someone else. The government, the big corporations, the fat cats, the other guy. It’s hard to take responsibility for our own actions.

My belief is that until we take responsibility for each of our actions, all of our votes and all of the petitions we sign are for naught.

We already have legal and moral codes which define acceptable and unacceptable behavior, yet the news is full of reports of murder and mayhem, theft and greed, adultery, graft, and corruption.

So does more legislation make sense? Will it make a difference?

I have my doubts.

When has more bureaucracy and legislation ever really solved anything? However much I would like to see more buy-in for reducing, reusing, and recycling, I don’t see the value or efficacy of making those actions mandatory.

I still believe that banding together and raising our collective voices through petitions, protests, and other awareness-raising activities is a good thing, and I stand behind anyone who wishes to support those efforts through monetary donations, but I don’t believe that a top-down leadership model is going to save us.

It’s up to us, every single one of us, to take the initiative for change and to run with it.

We have to change our habits.

Not some of us, not just the hippie guy down the street, not the people on the fringes, but all of us.

As long as we continue to support enormous corporations, as long as we continue to eat the junky food sold to us by the enormous agri-business concerns, as long as we continue to drive our massively inefficient vehicles everywhere, as long as we continue to support the military industrial complex, we’re going to get what we’ve always gotten.

The dregs. The leftover pieces of overconsumption and rampant greed. Which is an abomination.

Change starts within us.

When each of us is living in accord with our morals and principles, supporting the businesses and programs and ideas that speak to our highest ideals, then we’ll see change. Not before.

True change starts at the bottom, not at the top. Now that we’ve got that straightened out, let’s begin…

Image: seanmcgrath at Flickr under CC license

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