I went to the Green Festival today. I’ve been meaning to check it out for a couple of years now and i was able to drop some honey off with a friend while i was there. Since i didn’t want to spend too much time, i simply decided to walk through the exhibitor hall. I felt overwhelmed by the amount of stuff and people! I’ve been carrying a fork & spoon wrapped in a cloth napkin with me for a while now but apparently i should’ve bought these bamboo things in a carrying bag. And everyone tries to hand me flyers. Yes, i was excited to see Occupy SF and Transition Towns but i also felt deeply disturbed by the consumerism. Sure, the fork & spoon might be a bit heavier than the bamboo but i already have them. I don’t need to buy books on green living – i can borrow them from the library. Making companies viable within a green economy still follows the model that is pushing us to the ecological and economic brink: Growth over everything. Going to the festival reinforced for me that we need a new system. Patching up the current system with compostable, organic bandages isn’t enough.

And i also understood something from a book on Burdened Virtues by Lisa Tessman. Virtues are burdened when the agent who tries to live ethically only has painful choices. Within an oppressive system (read our society), it is not possible to live fully virtuously – all choices we make are compromises with a moral remainder. It is very difficult within the current economic system to live honoring our interconnectedness. The choices i make are not “perfect” (whatever that might mean…). I did buy some chocolate at the festival. True, it’s fair trade but cocoa production requires a lot of water and the cocoa is transported using energy that wouldn’t be used if i were satisfied with some locally grown fruit.

The spoon, fork, and chocolate are examples to highlight how our simple choices have impacts that go way beyond what is obvious. If we stop being indifferent, if we start paying attention, we quickly feel the pain of the limited impact of our choices – we’re trapped between indifference and anguish, as Lisa Tessman puts it. Overall, we need to rethink how we live, we need to figure out how to enable new choices – choices that move us beyond consumerism and the (false) idolatry of growth. Only if we step out of the current system can we heal ourselves and the planet. And that stepping out is also probably a choice that is ethically burdened…

Here is an article that covers similar ideas in more detail than this note. Hat tip to Ian.