Ask Rockridge: How Can We Make 'Green' an Identity?
There is a lot going on in the 'green' debate. People have been hesitant to identify with the environmental movement because of stories that paint environmentalists in a negative light. We can change this by promoting stories with 'green' characters people want to identify with. Along the way, we should be wary of how polls are interpreted when dealing with moral issues.
A survey was done to see what issues would be a deal breaker for voters: if a voter disagreed with a candidate on an issue, would the voter withdraw support for that candidate.
The order of deal breakers were: gay marriage, abortion, illegal immigration, social security, taxes, gun ownership, the environment. This is a general poll of Americans. If we think about this-- none of these issues affect the general population of America on the scale that destruction of the environment does.
Where you stand on abortion-gay-marriage-guns-taxes-immigration is an identity linking you to a large social group. How can we better frame green--and all that it entails--as identity in the same way that a person's stance on abortion-gay-marriage-taxes-gun-ownership is an identity?
Rockridge Nation member DavidP
Hi DavidP,
The question you raise about identity is very important in politics. Before discussing how political identities emerge and strategies for promoting the development of 'green' identity, I would like to comment on the limitations of polls as they are currently done.
A common misunderstanding about polls is that they measure public opinion as it exists in the world. This requires two assumptions that are false. The first is that opinions objectively exist in the world. The second is that they can be measured in their singular form in a reliable manner. Current polling methods do not adequately take into account the existence of frames, metaphors, contested concepts, or narratives. They are based on a faulty understanding of rationality that presumes knowledge to be an object that resides in the mind and each object of knowledge can be inspected by the person to see what it is.
For example, if I were to ask you if you preferred apples to oranges, you might tell me that you prefer apples. As a pollster, I would take this to mean that you have numerical values for the desirability of each fruit existing objectively in your head and that you simply compared these numbers to supply an accurate response.
A more realistic description of the mind shows this to be flatly wrong. Knowledge is constructed in the moment through various interpretive schemes that make use of past experience, cultural narratives, moral worldviews, and computational guidelines that allow knowledge to be built quickly "on the fly."
Two very different interpretive schemes can be seen with respect to the outcomes of polls. Many conservatives who see the poll results you mention may respond with something like "We need to get our message out better to change public opinion." This implies the meaning of polls to be an assessment of success at advocating your views to the populace. Contrast this with a (sadly) typical progressive interpretation that says "We need to compromise on these issues to mirror public opinion." This implies the meaning of polls to be an assessment of the objective (and unchanging) views of people.
A critical concept in the poll you reference is the idea of a deal breaker. What does it mean for an issue to be a deal breaker? As it turns out, there are (at least) two competing meanings to consider. The first is that the person will not vote for a candidate unless they share the same position. This is a typical progressive interpretation (that we hope to change), leading to the campaign strategy that the candidate should steer clear of discussions of moral values because some voters might disagree with them.
The second meaning of deal breaker is that the person will not vote for the candidate unless they share the same values. This leads to the strategy that Rockridge advocates, which is to authentically express moral values so people know where you stand morally and can identify with you as worthy of trust.
Now we can talk about identity in politics.
In Chapter 4 of Thinking Points, there is a brief discussion of identity issues on pp. 63-64. Here is a snippet of what it says:
"Imagine that you are a pure conservative and your worldview is shaped by the strict father model applied to every aspect of your life. It defines your very identity: your notion of right and wrong, of God, of what makes a good parent, and of how to run a successful business. It even defines your maleness or femaleness, your sexual identity."
This is why gay marriage is an identity issue. It challenges the strict father notion of a gendered family structure (with a man and woman as the parents). To legitimize a gay or lesbian family by default delegitimizes the strict father model – calling into question the self-defining roles of people who identify with it.
Of course, there is more to it than moral worldview. Dan McAdams, a narrative psychologist at Northwestern University, studies the personal life stories of people. His research shows that our personal identities do not come from personality traits or the issues that concern us at any particular time in our lives. Our identities come from the stories we tell (often unconsciously) that bring the episodes of life together into a coherent unity. These stories incorporate our concerns and express our interpretations of inherited dispositions (e.g. outgoing and sociable), but do not become an identity until they are brought together into a narrative.
This is where we can begin to think about the cultivation of 'green' identity. It has to do with the stories we tell ourselves about how we relate to our communities, purchases, nature, and so on.
A major obstacle to the environmental movement has been the use of stories to discredit environmental concerns. A heavily funded series of campaigns have been waged to paint environmentalists with negative stereotypes. Examples include:
Ascetic Life
In order to protect the environment, you must give up the comforts of the modern world and live with the bare minimum of resources. The role-model for this story is the self-sacrificing individual who seeks a spiritual path of simplicity. This makes people feel like they have to give up pleasures in life – not something most of us feel compelled to identify with.
Chicken Little
The sky is falling! Our civilization is on the verge of collapse. Doomsday is nigh. The role-model for this story is an alarmist who wakes up the village in the middle of the night to warn everyone about imminent disaster.
Spoiled Child
Some people want to have their cake and eat it too. They don't realize that in the "real world" it is necessary to make sacrifices to get what you want. People who call for protection of the environment are naive and spoiled, trying to make everyone else give up comfort (through job losses and other economic harms) to protect plants and animals.
None of these stories is true, but campaigns have been waged to hardwire these stories into the brains of people. We need different stories. Here are a few examples of positive green identities:
Cleaning Up Our Mess
As a society, we have really dirtied things up. As responsible adults, we recognize that it is our mess and we need to clean it up. This is what good parents do. It is what good citizens do.
Make the Polluter Pay
Freeloaders have been using our common wealth (the air, water, land, etc.) without paying for it. Not only are they using it, but they are damaging it with pollution. As promoters of fairness, we work to make these people pay us for our losses – or at least get them to stop causing harm.
Providing a Safe World for Our Children
We care about our children and want them to be safe and healthy. From a very early age, we recognize ways that we can make their environment safer. By keeping things clean, we protect them from illness. By protecting our natural places, we provide them with places to explore that inspire them to care about the world they will inherit.
Each of these stories provides a positive role for the environmentalist. It also implicitly makes anyone who opposes these roles fall into a negative role. No one wants to be the irresponsible mess maker, freeloader, or a person who endangers the lives of children.
Other stories can be used as well. The environmental movement can be reframed with positive stories that people want to identify with.
If you use a web bookmarking service, you can share this entry.
Narratives are the key
I think this is a really great start: narratives and values.
As I was reading your post I thought of a conservative friend of mine. (An aside, he is not up on politics at all-- he knew Fox news was the controversial chanel, but thought it was the liberal chanel). He talked about wanting to buy a car that was good for his wallet and his family-- economics and family value frames. He also does not support affirmative action or gay marriage--which fall into identity politics, again values.
And what I was thinking about in my original post is how do we really tie green to values and then to identity. I used to think that economics was they key frame to argue around. I think this is left over from Marxist influences on the left. While I do think econmics is a major factor in determing one's life and lifestyle, I have come to think that values and indentity determine their voting and political views on life.
I think the goal with these narratives is then to illuminate the moral nature of green and the immoral nature of not-green (ha ha what a great pun on nature).
Not-green is an attack on children.
Not-green is an attack on civilization and culture as we know it.
Not-green is buying an SUV because you want to look cool on the road, pollution
victims and global warming victims be damned.
Also- I think people are coming around more to the idea of everything being connected. We see it in films, we see it in TV shows, we see in our conversation about business and travel.
If we can hammer home that an SUV is partly responsible for the etreme weather patterns in Darfur (global warming) and thus for the political turmoil there, and the massacres, we can hammer home that an SUV is a value noice, a not-green value choice.
I don't know maybe I am just rambling at this point.
thank you Rockridge
that was an amazing post, possible your best one ever.
thank you so much staff at Rockridge.
A line I always find works well on biconceptuals on this issue that I've heard other people use is
"we have a responsibility to our children to pass on a planet that is at least in as good a condition as what we inherited".
We do what we can...
Hopefully, we can get these ideas out there far and wide in the days ahead. Your compliments are a source of inspiration for me. I have struggled long and hard with environmental philosophy. My hope is that dialogues like this will keep popping up so we can all share the insights we've found in our own journeys toward a better world.
All the best,
Joe
seeing the connections
- First off, let me add my thanks for this contribution. This is good stuff, and it's important.
Encouraging more people to "think green" - to think green by seeing connections -- has been my personal project for the last five years or so. I encountered Lakoff and frames in a Sierra Club magazine interview a couple of years ago. Reading that article was really a light-bulb-over-the-head Aha! moment for me. I'm pleased to see that theme continue at Rockridge.
I'm also pleased by DavidP's report that more people seem to see the ways our lives and our activities are interconnected. It's been my experience that seeing those connections is a key step in thinking green and thinking progressively. It's been difficult for me to gauge whether more people understand interconnections; I'm too close to the work and too deeply immersed in it to observe from afar. So I'm pleased that someone sees progress in that regard.
A few thoughts about the frames mentioned so far:
I've seen some well-meaning folks reinforce the Chicken Little frame by trying to negate it: "I'm not Chicken Little! I'm not saying the sky is falling! How could anyone think I'm like Chicken Little saying the sky is falling?" Ouch.
I find the Safe World for Our Children frame is a relatively "safe" starting point. It's safe in that it seems to work with many audiences even if I don't know their background and world view. It can be a starting point for conversation with less chance of immediate backlash. Of course, the details of what we mean by "safe world" seem contested. These days the words "safe world" sometimes seem to evoke a war-against-terrorism reaction.
Perhaps there's another description of the concept of a safe world with some different words?
It's been my experience that "cleaning up our mess" and "polluter pays" work best with folks who already acknowledge the mess of pollution. I encounter considerable resistance to these two frames from folks who are not ready to see the connections, who are not ready to see any mess. Not wanting to be associated with a mess seems to give many folks reason for denial.
I find that the "polluter pays" frame requires some extra effort to make it work. We need to be prepared to follow it up with potentially difficult thoughts about who the polluters are, and what else we want to happen when polluters do pay. Because if folks do begin to see the connections, they quickly say, "Hey, wait a minute, that's my employer. Hey, wait a minute, that's my job. Hey, wait a minute, that's me!"
It's been my experience that "polluter pays" can evoke blame and punishment reactions from a conservative frame. Since nobody wants to be blamed and nobody wants to be punished, there's considerable incentive for strict father folks to try to shout this one down and try to make it go away. I think we need to make sure this one is very closely coupled with "We're all in this together."
Hmmm... how about: We're all in this together, to create the best possible world for our children. (?)
--
etbnc
http://mybluepuzzlepiece.bl[…]n-despite-bad-outcomes.html
Original Link
Hello All,
Interesting comments I hope to join in soon. I have been without a computer for the last few days. But I wanted to add the link to the original article which I think I might've not included in my post.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/08/americans_care.php
Also Daily Kos is talking about this subject and frames here...
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/9/10/125236/842
Back soon.
Mother Nuture vs. Strict Father
The other part of this I think, which takes us a step back are some of the deep frames and narratives related to the environment.
We think of nature as mother earth and feminine; we think of nuturing as feminine (when I say we I am using that as a generalized we, the dominant American culture- not me, probably not us here).
We think of nature as something to be tamed, ruled, controlled. We think about progress, westward ho and manifest destiny as a powerful masculine concept.
So in the way that many Americans think of nature we have a binary at work in some of our deepest frames.
Mother Vs. Father
Nuture Vs. Control
Nature Vs. Progress/power
Wild Vs. Civilization
These of course play into our identity, but also our culture as well.
I really do like the idea of responsible parents to children and responsible parents to the Earth. I am reminded of a Hawaiian word, kuleana, which means ownership and responsibility.
Where we have two words and the ideas are separate, they have one word with one meaning. And any who knows about the history of Hawaii knows the Native Hawaiians were far better caretakers than we are.
DP
Green Identity
- This is SUCH an important subject!
A picture followed by useful words:
The Picture
Chris Hoffman, ecologist, poet, and human resources counselor, has reversed the approach to this pressing issue. Rather than give humans a green identity, he has created an extraordinary graphic in which the Earth is given a human identity, “The Earth-as-a-Person.” (Go to: www.hoopandtree.org.)
I suggest we set as an objective to saturate our environment with this image such that it is as ubiquitous as the yellow smiley face, starting with Rockridge calling on ALL Progressive websites to post it and respond, in one unified web-event. We could reach the ‘tipping point’ of awareness very swiftly through this strategic action.
The Words
Re: “We’re all in this together.” (Long)
From my perspective as a dramatist, the “this” of “we’re all in this together” is Tragedy, capital T, the archetypal dramatic form.
“Tragedy” is virtually the opposite of tragedy, little t, the stuff of headlines.
Aristotle defines Tragedy (Poetics) as a “pattern in action and life” (i.e., not a product of the human imagination, but an observable pattern in life itself).
The Tragedic pattern is “a former source of human happiness/human flourishing suddenly dramatically reverses into its opposite.”
In Tragedy, the universal human desire for ‘the motion of our lives toward happiness,’ as the Dalai Lama puts it, flips into the proliferation of misery; the quest for human flourishing flips into imminent human extinction, and the pursuit of ‘the good life’ flips into the worst possible version of life there is – the possible end of human life altogether.
This Tragedic “Flipping Pattern” in life is, for me, the most powerful explanatory concept for our times. The industrial age has Flipped into the pollution age. Einstein’s scientific genius Flipped into weapons of mass destruction. Fossil fuel discovered in a shale in Pennsylvania in 1849 Flips into global fever and climate chaos in 2007. The deeply held American value of independent individualism Flips into blindness and paralysis around our interdependent ecological reality.
Put another way, Tragedy is when “unintended consequences” reach the extreme of opposite outcomes. Our environmental situation is, in effect, a human problem of chronic opposite outcome syndrome. Modern social science has identified a ‘tipping point;’ the ancients identified a tragic flipping pattern or opposite outcome syndrome – and that, I think, is the “this” we are “in.”
A “global crisis in human flourishing” is, I think, sufficiently simple, focused and inclusive to address the interconnectedness at the heart of our situation, and is a gender-neutral frame for speaking to the vital issue of what humans need to flourish: care. (“Take care of yourself buddy” works great for snakes.) To state the obvious, no one can be happy on a planet that's as sick as ours is.
The frame for green just changed this past week in a way that further resonates with Tragedy and, I think, will determine the direction all our framing will start to go.
Scientists are now saying that the impact of global warming is identical to nuclear war. (Go to http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/12/3791/.) Modern theatre scholars sometimes refer to Tragedy as the drama of “cosmic death,” and certainly nuclear warfare qualifies as such a drama.
The way one brings the tragic drama of cosmic death to an end (rather than the cosmos and human beings to an end) is when those in power tumble to the (mightily inconvenient) truth that a radical change in how one pursues or enacts one’s cultural ideals of happiness/flourishing is called for. This tumble to the truth is otherwise known as the ‘tragic fall.’
If and only if one finds the moral courage (Gore) to face that whole scale eudaimonic change is necessary, then and only then you get out of the tragic flipping pattern into – you guessed it, - the comedic flipping pattern.
In terms of outcomes, Comedy is that blessed pattern in life (again) in which an even better outcome than one intended fortuitously happens; not just you, but everyone lives happily ever after.
All over the global commons, global citizens are forming ensembles of renewal (see Paul Hawken, Blessed Unrest; Bill McKibben, Deep Economy; David Korten, The Great Turning). One could characterize this movement as the great global revival, deliberately striking a note of religion but not with an ecological twist, revitalization. These champions of human renewal (my proposed frame for the emerging “next wave” of green and green human identity) are doing what, once upon a time, the U.S. Framers did, insisting that the human desire for happiness is inalienable, and nothing on Earth – not even a whole scale, global crisis in human flourishing as devastating as nuclear war – has the power to alienate any human being from the pursuit of a just and joyous world.
To summarize:
1) “Earth as a Person” may be more effective than person as earth;
2) We are all caught up in the tragic flipping pattern of opposite outcome syndrome, resulting in a global crisis in human flourishing;
3) Champions of Human Renewal are pointing the way out of the syndrome, forming ensembles committed to salutary transformational impact in the great global revival;
6) They are the new We, the Humans, that leadership needs to take its cue from so that the United States, of all nations, does not do to the peoples of the world what the U.S. Framers insisted no government could do, alienate human beings from their god-given right to happiness.
Shortest possible version:
Conservatives: God, Guns, Gays.
Progressives: Freedom, Flourishing and a Future for All.
Thank you for your patience with this long posting. I hope it is helpful.
MimiK
Everything's Connected
I am so grateful to have found this post and this thread. I'm an experienced technical writer new to conservation writing, and I have been thinking of my new work as "there's this big gap between what scientists know and what people hear and are able to act on, and I want to get busy on that." In other words, the Rationalist Trap. Even while getting fired up about recasting important research in clear and understandable terms I knew there was more to it than that, which is why I've also been consulting books like Robin Hood Marketing by Katya Andresen.
Recently I read a book called Saving Puget Sound by John Lombard (see the web site of the same name). It's one of the most carefully and completely researched explorations of the "develop the cities, save the rural areas" idea I've ever run across. I plan to contact Mr. Lombard tomorrow and talk to him about how to frame his important work, which is very detailed and sometimes difficult to follow. I might suggest he say something like this:
"I've enjoyed introducing my children to wildlife and native plants in our back yard. As a responsible parent, I want to make sure the natural world is still here for their children, and future generations. However, I am also a responsible citizen of my neighborhood, city, region, and country. I realize that the population will double in this area, possibly in 50 years. The good news is, I think we can accommodate growth and actually improve the state of our rural areas at the same time. And we can do this by expanding on ideas already in place at the state and local levels. It will be hard work. But to honor my responsibility to both my children's future and the healthy growth of my community--it will be worth it."
Of course, the major surgery he proposes on Washington State's Growth Management Act (for example) is a bit more radical than "expanding on ideas already in place," but those details are best left for later.
I work so much better when I have a conceptual framework, a set of organizing principles, to guide my writing, and help me choose what kind of contracts to take. Much gratitude to Rockridge and this community for supplying an important part of that.
Regards,
Patrick Kelley
pkwrite.com/blog
New! Living Beyond Green
Hi David,
Another thing to think about is the limitations of talking about "going green." The environmental movement started with women who noticed patterns of illness in their communities (they were mostly housewives who chatted with neighbors throughout the day about family matters). It was a health concern.
Now there is a "professionalized" expert class of people and organizations devoted to "environmental issues" that displaced the grassroots movement. Wonkish jargon, a very strict father meritocracy, and military metaphors for organizational management and communications strategies have all infiltrated what started out as a grassroots movement of women concerned about their families.
Joni Seager, a feminist scholar, critiqued the environmental movement in her book "Earth Follies: Coming to Feminist Terms with the Global Environmental Crisis." She explored the value-systems inherent in many parts of the environmental infrastructure and found that they were overwhelmingly patriarchal. She hadn't read Lakoff and didn't know that the devastating patriarchal value-system she revealed corresponds closely with what we call strict father morality. There is much we can do to change the environmental movement - or at least its institutional nature - that will make it more effective and progressive.
Another big challenge we need to overcome is the issue silo (or collection of silos) that "environmental issues" has become. Our concerns about health, well-being, flourishing life, and the common wealth provided by the natural world (of which we are a part) don't fit into boxes. They cannot - and should not - be talked about merely in technical terms.
Perhaps we can explore this in greater depth as we continue our dialog...not only on this thread of comments, but over time as we explore more ideas together.
Best,
Joe