Or is it?
When I was a kid, all the way through high school, I had teachers in different classes do projects and tell the class that we need to conserve water.
I remember my German language teacher in high school, Frau Brown, said “If you take a shower that’s longer than five minutes, you’re wasting water.”
In elementary school, it was even worse (or better?). This was in 1978, just asfter the gas crisis, just after the hippie revolution. Earth Day was started as an annual event just 8 years before. Everyone was very Earth-conscious.
We had projects on how to read electric meters, and what kWh meant. We were told to turn off the water while brushing our teeth, and to turn off lights when leaving a room.
All of that still remains with me. I still go around my apartment turning off lights in areas where no one needs them on (my roommates leave their lights on sometimes). It borders on compulsive.
The other day, I worked out really really hard. I was beat. I got home and thought “a nice hot shower will help me.” So I took one. And it went on for more than five minutes.
It dawned on me suddenly, as I was standing under the hot water, feeling my muscles relax. I became a little anxious. What was I doing, wasting all of this water?!!!
Then another thought popped into my head.
I’m not the only consumer of water, I mused. In fact, individuals probably aren’t even the biggest consumers of water.
What about all of those factories out there? So I started to dig around a bit.
To quote one article:
“USGS hydrologist Molly Maupin says, “We know that petroleum refineries and paper and pulp mills, as well as steel manufacturing facilities, are known to use an awful lot of water.” But even more significant, in many cases, is the effect on underground aquifers, lakes, or rivers that aren’t directly used in the manufacturing. Effluent and wastewater discharged from industries and mining operations — or leaking from inadequate waste and industrial storage facilities — can contaminate large amounts of groundwater or surface water.”
Basically, was I destroying the planet, and its fresh water stores, with my longer-than-five-minutes bath, or was there a bigger picture to consider?
Once I began to read more about this issue, it became very clear that our Subject/Object worldview had struck again. The message of water conservation had naturally become neatly packaged into a “personal responsibility” issue – as all issues do in our culture.
Take, for instance, the recent change from corporate-funded retirement programs to “individually-funded” programs like 401k. Now it is the individual’s responsibility to prepare for their future.
Or, we can begin a similar debate about oil/fuel consumption – are private individuals really the biggest consumers of oil/fuel? I don’t think so:
“Yes, the US military is completely addicted to oil. Unsurprisingly, its oil consumption for aircraft, ships, ground vehicles and facilities makes the Pentagon the single largest oil consumer in the world. By the way, according to the 2006 CIA World Factbook rankings there are only 35 countries (out of 210) in the world that consume more oil per day than the Pentagon.” (for this great article, click here).
To use an old idiom – our society is talking out of both sides of its mouth.
Telling the consumer that they need to purchase hybrid vehicles, when the factories that produce those vehicles run on and use petroleum and petroleum-based products is ludicrous.
Telling people that we need to go to the Middle East to “defend freedom” and secure the world’s oil supply for the good of all men, women, and children, is similarly ridiculous.
Telling individuals that they need to conserve water, while factories churn through it at rates far exceeding that of any individual or group of individuals is in this same category.
Not to mention the types of compounds that are being flushed out as waste from factories, versus from private dwellings. The only thing going down my drain is soap and dirt. What’s coming out of the effluent pipes on a factory?
Now, this is not to say that the individual “consumer” doesn’t have an impact on water usage. For one, you shouldn’t use or take more than you need. It just doesn’t make sense, for you or for the entire world of which you are a small, continuous, part. For another, you decide consumption of things by your choices…or “buy” your choices…you decide how many factories continue to run on a daily basis.
All of this goes back to culture, though.
The accepted mode is to buy things. I’ve been stunned going into local stores (even the grocery store) in the past week. They’re all packed. At first, I didn’t know what was going on. I thought maybe there was some sort of emergency I hadn’t heard about. Then someone told me they were going “Christmas shopping” and I realized what was up.
The thrust of our society is a Production/Consumption cycle. This production/consumption cycle is built over an underlying dichotomy of Self/Other, or Subject/Object. We base everything of “value” on this framework, and within that context, over the framework. If something doesn’t fit into this, it is rejected outright.
And the Vox Popularis always wins.
But what about fitness, isn’t this a fitness blog?!
Well, ok, if I must. But if you haven’t realized it by now, the definition of “fitness” as something separate from the environment you live in – the context or habitat you inhabit, as separate from the Earth, the Land, and the rest of the beings on it – is something I’m trying to explicate on this blog.
Fitness is similarly subject to this dialectic – Self/Other, Produce/Consume. Fitness in our culture is about oneself. About the way one looks, or how much one can bench press – as compared to an (idealized) external Other.
It leads to bizarre notions of “fitness,” and more bizarre products and practices that create a rift between individuals, and between those individuals and their environment.
Put yourself back into context – back into the cycle of things. You were never separate from it, you just had blinders on.
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