January 9th, 1998
VALUE
By Jackie Giuliano
What will we choose to value in this new year? What will we choose to celebrate?
Kirkpatrick Sale in his book, Dwellers In The Land, says that in our world, we celebrate
"the mechanical, the tangible, the quantifiable, the utilitarian, the linear, and the
divisible." We suspect "the organic, the spiritual, the incalculable, the
mysterious, the circular, and the holistic." The end result of virtually any endeavor
is to sell something. If it doesn't have a price, there must be something wrong with it.
We only value something if it has resale potential.
 Look at this image of the nutritional "facts" panel from
a container of bottled water. Our bodies are 50-65% water. The Earth is 71% water. Water
sculpts the surface of the Earth, moderates climate, and dilutes pollutants. In living
organisms, including us, it carries dissolved nutrients into tissues, and flushes out
waste products. It is the substance from which all life springs, yet the way our culture
measures value, it comes up a big zero! Look at the label. If you go by the data presented
on this label, water has no nutritional value! This is evidence of a powerful and
significant breakdown in the way we measure the value of the resources that are vital to
our very survival.
How has this concept of value further distanced us from the natural world - and each
other?
If society is going to base its foundational principles on placing a price on everything,
then the only way to progress is through exploitation, increased productivity, and
expansive growth. But this definition of progress may have resulted in every environmental
and social dilemma we have.
Our language is riddled with the obstacles that insist we undervalue the natural world. We
call a plot of land that has no structure on it "undeveloped" and give it a
minimal value, unless it happens to be located in an area where it would be desirable to
own it to build something on it.
Looking at a plot of land in a warm temperate forest, some would see either an income
potential or worthlessness. Yet that one-acre of land may contain 50,000 vertebrates,
662,000 ants, 372,000 spiders, 90,000 earthworms, 45,000 termites, 19,000 snails, 89
million mites, 28 million collembola, and some 5,000 pounds of plant life divided into at
least 2,000 species. What value can we place on the complex interactions that make this
community an "ecosystem?"
Sale tells us that this community is not merely an abstract elaboration concocted by
biologists or imposed by ecologists - it is the observable reality of a place. The
interaction of this multitude of creatures, their connectedness, their communal
interdependence is as real as if it were indelibly codified and enforced. It is, after
all, how they live, no more, no less.
Isn't the wealth in nature wealth for all? Doesn't it feel like that is the way it should
be? Then how is it possible, Sale asks, the we are able to 'own' the land, or its ores, or
its trees, any more than we can own the sky and its clouds? Whatever is taken from Gaia's
realm is not to be hoarded and used for personal glory but distributed and used for
regional benefit.
We who have lost our sense and our senses;
Our touch, our smell, our vision of who we are;
we who frantically force and press all things,
without rest for body or spirit,
hurting our Earth and injuring ourselves; We call a halt.
We want to rest.
We need to rest and allow the Earth to rest.
We need to reflect and to rediscover the mystery that lives in us,
that is the ground of every unique expression of life,
the source of the fascination that calls all things to communion.
We declare an Earth Holy Day, a space of quiet:
for simple being and letting be;
for recovering the great forgotten truths.
-- Daniel Martin
During the last week of 1997, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce dramatically cut the fishing
limits on many species of bottom dwelling Pacific Ocean fish. Allowable catches will now
have to be reduced by as much as 65% for some species due to the relentless, high-tech
fishing that has been going on for the last 20 years. Fish such as cod, ocean perch,
lingcod, dover sole, and others were deemed "valuable" by the consumer who
wanted them on the dinner table. Young fish were reclassified as valuable by entrepreneurs
who caught them for the many trendy live tanks in restaurants around the country, where
patrons pick the fish they wish to eat. Many fish were taken before they had the chance to
reproduce.
But in our culture, overfishing is part of the ethic. We place tremendous value on
exceeding limits, on pushing the envelope and seeing how far we can go. Is this courage
and fortitude or a reckless disregard for the cycles of nature and the natural limits that
exist in the web of life? What about learning to live within the envelope for a change,
learning to live with limits on our consuming, our spending, our lives?
We haven't been taught to place much value on a full, rich sensory experience in the
world. We roll up the windows of our cars to control the climate inside. We protect
ourselves from the elements so effectively that our homes are now great sources of toxic
indoor air pollution. Even when we take the time to go out into the natural world, maybe
during a vacation to a national park, we avidly take photographs, as if nature were an
image to be captured and taken home. We seem to value the land for what we can extract
from it rather from what it can give us.
This new year provides us with a wonderful opportunity to examine our values and what we
have placed value on. It can be a joyous time of house cleaning and soul cleaning, a time
when we embrace nature's limits and see value in unexpected places.
The time for healing of the wounds has come.
The time to build is upon us...
We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people
from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation,
suffering, gender and other discrimination...
There is no easy road to freedom...
None of us acting alone can achieve success.
We must therefore act together as a united people,
for reconciliation, for nation building,
for the birth of a new world.
-- Nelson Mandela
Lily Pond by Jackie Giuliano (c 1997)
RESOURCES
1. Key references that will help you re-value your relationships include:
- Sale, Kirkpatrick. Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision. Santa Cruz: New Society
Publishers, 1991.
- Miller, G. Tyler, Jr. Living in the Environment. Sixth ed. Belmont, California:
Wadsworth, 1996.
- Shiva, Vandana. Biopiracy: the plunder of nature and knowledge. Boston: South End Press,
1997.
You can find them at http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/track.pl/Welcome-80.html?id=863287309-5&
2. Visit the Center for Creative Non-Cooperation for many diverse perspectives at http://krypton.mankato.msus.edu/~spirit/web/welcome.html
3. Explore how to reduce your consuming through the Media Foundation at http://www.adbusters.org./main.html
and at http://www.hooked.net:80/users/verdant/index.htm
4. Learn more about bioregionalism, the valuing the land and developing a relationship
with it, at http://www.bioneers.org/1997/home.htm
5. Explore socially responsible investing through at http://www.coopamerica.org/Default.htm
6. Explore ecopsychology as a means to reconnect with the world around you at http://www.csuhayward.edu/ALSS/ECO/1097/index.htm
{Jackie Giuliano can be found trying to understand what is really of value in his life in
Venice, California. He is a Professor of Environmental Studies for Antioch University, Los
Angeles, and the University of Phoenix Southern California Campuses. 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 thoughts, comments, and visions to him at jackieg@jps.net} |
