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When we throw things away, where exactly is “away”?
That was the question put to me by one of my intrepid readers, Pasha, in the context of one of my environmental articles. So enthusiastic was I to give my answer, that the thoughts poured and poured without end. What resulted was an unnatural beast that would never be accepted by the other comments in the tribe, and so it was promoted to being the post that scrolls before you now.

Assuming this question is speaking in terms of physical eventualities rather than abstract philosophies, let us plot the course of human detritus when it leaves our homes. Let us suppose we are talking of a specific item, a plastic toy of some sort, maybe a little yellow “rubber” duck. So, we’re talking of a soft plastic toy which has outgrown its welcome.
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At long last it is here, and the waiting is over. Blog Action Day has been on the cards for a while now, and it has grown from strength to strength since it was first introduced to the world. This site has also grown from strength to strength through this event, because I chose to take on the daunting task of writing an entire series of articles on, what I felt were, the failings of the environmental movement, and more specifically, the communications that it engages in. Now I am finally at the end of my journey with this discussion, and I thought it was simply not right to critique without suggesting solutions to the issues I have brought up over the past eight articles. Considering this blog is meant to be a record of my activities in online enterprise, it was only fitting that I tackle what kind of online presence would solve some of the communication shortcomings that are facing the ecological movement.

These are general traits which could very easily be used in any medium, online or off, but the elements that would make for an effective ecological website are:

1. Originality
2. Irreverence
3. Entertainment
4. Recurrence

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Human beings can be very lazy creatures. That fact bears repeating because it is ultimately the core influence behind many of the numerous, seemingly distinct, issues that plague our species and our culture. In fact, we are a strange bunch indeed, as we will often go to any lengths to fulfil our never-ending quest for in-action. So much so, that the things we choose to do to feed our laid-back nature often end up being more arduous and involved than the thing we try to avoid. We can get very serious and single-minded about it, this avoidance of work. And anything we take that seriously must have some significance in the world we build. In this world we build, a lot of the stumbling blocks the environmental movement has to put up with are a result of laziness.

This slothful nature does a lot of harm, and messes up a lot of situations in our world which could have been averted or rectified given a smidgen of attention and a modicum of effort at the right time. But alas, the misdeeds have been done and the monster is out of the bag. The best we can do is to understand this fundamental human behaviour and its causes. The major causes of human laziness are:

1. Laziness
2. Yet more laziness
3. I’m too lazy to come up with a third bullet-point

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Once a school of thought, such as environmentalism, becomes fashionable, the next logical step is for people to impose upon it even more systematic and organisational elements. Very soon the “thought” is far removed from the school and rules and beliefs take over. Who comes up with the rules? Whoever has enough power as the movement congeals into an amorphous mass of people who all believe in, what they think is, a path to enlightenment or meaning of some sort. Beliefs are often open to a little embellishment and a lot of short-hand over time, and the collective faith in the common cause keeps them alive and thriving no matter what their constituent percentage of truth. People accept because they want to belong, to believe, to be part of the club, and they want to be told what to do. This is how schools of thought are slowly transformed into belief systems. Slowly, but surely, the green movement has started down this slippery slope. All the signs exist and all the signature behaviours are rearing their ugly heads. It is only a matter of time before all these human components drive the environmental movement towards its inevitable destiny and it takes its first steps into becoming a religion.

Why am I so sure? Because a lot of the popular following of environmental concerns never troubles itself with such unnecessary luxuries as understanding and factual information. Most of the popular environmental movement is based on hearsay, and if we didn’t live in such a noisy world of information glut, we would probably have had some charismatic environmental messiah appear to seal the deal by now. That’s all that is missing to transform this loose collection of beliefs and mores into a more rigid construct. Every organised religion requires a certain set of behaviours amongst its followers before it can truly be a religion in the traditional organised sense. Remember, I am talking about religion here, not spirituality, or philosophy, or even theology, all of which are very different and less cumbersome beasts. The popular environmental movement has already begun to exhibit some of these proto-religious elements which include:

1. Blind Faith
2. Dogma
3. Ritual
4. Moral Superiority

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It is a very sad day indeed, when a legitimate and serious human issue becomes fashionable. It finds itself in the same un-enviable position as those “significant” books that catch the public imagination in a sudden sweeping wave. You begin to see the book everywhere — people carry it with them to work, they display it proudly on their book shelf, and they make sure they are seen flipping through it in all the most public places. Why would this be a sad situation? Because a trendy book is often mistaken for a popular one. The list of “significant” tomes that were bought by millions, read by some, and understood by few is too long to itemize in this article, and unfortunately the story of popular causes is along the same lines. The environmental movement picked up a lot of steam in the hippy culture of the 60’s. Fortunately, as much as that era might be celebrated in myth, back then “green” was still simply a colour and eco-friendliness was a fringe (if vocal) movement, as were the flower children. Over the successive decades, the changing climate patterns, a renewed interest in spirituality, a hectic data-soaked existence, and a romanticisation of the 60’s to some extent, have resulted in a mass growth of the environmental movement. Now a lot of people who can’t really pronounce “environmentally” know that “green” is the new cool thing to be. At long last the environmental movement has the dubious distinction of being a matter of fashion.

Fashions come in many guises and many sizes. The same has been true for the green movement through the last century, and it continues in present times. The environmental issues, and their popular paraphrased versions that most people hold as true, have birthed many schools of social fashion. They all form the mass of thought that makes ecology a socially acceptable topic of discussion today, but they are also quite distinct from one another. The schools of fashionable thought regarding the environmental movement today can be roughly divided into these:

1. Eco-friendliness is for Losers
2. Eco-friendliness is for Winners
3. My Eco-friendliness is Bigger Than Yours

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Marketing is king. That is the world we have created for ourselves over the past few centuries, and that is the world we live in. The persuasion towards commercial activity is bar none the largest source of human communication in known history. Nothing can compare in sheer volume or variety. The great epics, the brilliant literature, the pulp, none of of those forms of recorded communication can compete with the juggernaut that is modern marketing spiel. It is everywhere you look, and everywhere you turn, and there is nowhere to hide. It is little surprise then that when the environmental movement really became a main-stream entity in the last century, it adopted the language which was the most familiar and the most lucrative in the world: marketing. The lessons of the Earth and nature that had in prior times been imbibed into the human psyche through myth and tale, were now reduced to quick and brutal tag lines and pithy slogans. The environmental awareness movement, which should have stood for education, understanding, and community had been distilled into a concentrated phial of pure hype.

Today, the marketing continues. Our world is now even more inundated with commercial messages, not just because there is more to buy and sell, but also because there are so many more interruptive avenues to communicate your message with. In this purchaser’s paradise that we have built for ourselves, we now find that a new counter movement has begun. Those who prefer to keep their heads and think, on occasion, have realised that all this sales talk is distracting and senseless. They use the much brandished power of “choice”, of which the commercial soothsayers are know to sing praises, and choose to ignore most of this commercially instigated communication. Hence we have a large segment of the population that simply ignore the website banners and skip the commercials.

That leaves the environment movement, with its clever marketing and its intelligent branding, to deal with that mass of people who do look at every ad, and do click on every special offer, and do not think much about any issues beyond consumption. The ecological initiative is losing its most important audience, and this is often because of the methods of communication rather than the content of the messages. Some of the communication methods that often alienate discerning people from the environmental movement are:

1. Hyperbolic Statements
2. Fear Tactics
3. Guilt Trips
4. Sales Pitches

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Cynicism, disbelief, and ignorance plague the progress of the environmental movement, but surely there are a good number of people who do know and do realise that the impending crisis is real. There have been enough advertising dollars spent on the awareness campaigns, and enough beautiful famous people on red carpets have showed their support for the cause — that’s enough for most to accept as the sign of truth. So how can there be this large and visible imbalance between the awareness level and the level of consistent action in the direction of conservation and eco-friendliness amongst the general population? The simplest conclusion we can come to is that in spite of understanding the issues and recognising the dangers, most people are in denial.

“The first stage is denial,” has become something of a cliché. No one quite remembers what it refers to, or in what context that statement was originally framed. To put things back into perspective, the idea of denial being the “first stage” came from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross who described the five stages a person goes through when facing impending death, in her book On Death and Dying. These stages of grief, as they came to be know, were in order: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. While it might be nice and optimistic to think that all is well because we are still in the earliest stage of this process, please remind yourself where this process is meant to lead — a final acceptance of death. I’m not sure that’s very helpful when it comes to the fate of the human race. While we might in some strange way have already skipped a step and jumped into the “bargaining” stage in the environmental movement (that’s for a future article in the series), this state of denial is something to be very worried about.

If we are smart and have any respect for the good old survival instinct that makes us alive rather than a part of scenery, we should be thinking seriously about this mass denial and what can be done about it. Under no circumstances is it in anyone’s interest (except perhaps the Biosphere’s), for the human race to be casually sauntering towards its impending doom. To reverse this disturbing trend we must first endeavour to understand why so many of us are hiding from the truth of the situation. I think you will find that this comes down to combinations and variations of three human complexes:

1. A Fear of Change
2. A Sense of Impotence
3. A Guaranteed Exit Strategy

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