Viridianism's last note: surround yourself with beautiful, excellent things and get rid of all else
Some nine years ago, I had my mind blown by Bruce Sterling's Viridian Manifesto, a call-to-arms that held:
1. That the world was under serious threat due to anthropogenic global warming, and
2. That the answer wasn't to live simply, but rather to use better technology to help us make better choices and conduct our lives in a better way
These two ideas are incredibly inspiring, and have served as a powerful antidote against the Three Stupidities of Global Warming:
1. There is no global warming, or if there is, it's natural
2. The only answer to global warming is to live in log cabins, unplug your fridge and never get on another airplane
3. Global warming is inevitable, so let's go buy some more Hummers and pass the spotted owl omelette, wouldya?
The Stupidities are, at root, counsels of despair. They rely on denialism, or hold humanity to an impossible standard (witness the goofball commenters to my post about entertaining your children with a single bucket of water on a hot day who immediately leapt in to characterize this as a sin against the very planet, since water is precious and shouldn't be wasted by splashing around in the summer), or throw up their hands and give up.
For this entire century, Viridianism has provided a critical, design-based, technological, optimistic, and humane approach to the immense problem of global warming.
Now, Bruce has wound up his movement, writing a final brilliant essay filled with advice for the future of material culture. In the Last Viridian Note, Bruce issues a kind of high-tech Arts and Crafts Movement manifesto to surround yourself with great things -- things that are great for you, great for your community and planet and species, and to approach the world as a problem to be solved, and to solve it. Reading Bruce in this mode is inspiring, makes me want to stand up and salute.
I've just given away fifty boxes' worth of junk and shut down my Toronto storage locker. My London locker is gone. My LA locker is next. I won't get down to Thoreau's axe-head and pen, but I'll be pretty close: a few good pieces of furniture, some books I love, some art, a laptop and assorted life-support, and well-made, comfortable clothes that look good and last. Oh, and a multitool, natch.
What is "sustainability?" Sustainable practices navigate successfully through time and space, while others crack up and vanish. So basically, the sustainable is about time -- time and space. You need to re-think your relationship to material possessions in terms of things that occupy your time. The things that are physically closest to you. Time and space.In earlier, less technically advanced eras, this approach would have been far-fetched. Material goods were inherently difficult to produce, find, and ship. They were rare and precious. They were closely associated with social prestige. Without important material signifiers such as wedding china, family silver, portraits, a coach-house, a trousseau and so forth, you were advertising your lack of substance to your neighbors. If you failed to surround yourself with a thick material barrier, you were inviting social abuse and possible police suspicion. So it made pragmatic sense to cling to heirlooms, renew all major purchases promptly, and visibly keep up with the Joneses.
That era is dying. It's not only dying, but the assumptions behind that form of material culture are very dangerous. These objects can no longer protect you from want, from humiliation -- in fact they are *causes* of humiliation, as anyone with a McMansion crammed with Chinese-made goods and an unsellable SUV has now learned at great cost.
Furthermore, many of these objects can damage you personally. The hours you waste stumbling over your piled debris, picking, washing, storing, re-storing, those are hours and spaces that you will never get back in a mortal lifetime. Basically, you have to curate these goods: heat them, cool them, protect them from humidity and vermin. Every moment you devote to them is lost to your children, your friends, your society, yourself.
It's not bad to own fine things that you like. What you need are things that you GENUINELY like. Things that you cherish, that enhance your existence in the world. The rest is dross.
Do not "economize." Please. That is not the point. The economy is clearly insane. Even its champions are terrified by it now. It's melting the North Pole. So "economization" is not your friend. Cheapness can be value-less. Voluntary simplicity is, furthermore, boring. Less can become too much work.
The items that you use incessantly, the items you employ every day, the normal, boring goods that don't seem luxurious or romantic: these are the critical ones. They are truly central. The everyday object is the monarch of all objects. It's in your time most, it's in your space most. It is "where it is at," and it is "what is going on."
It takes a while to get this through your head, because it's the opposite of the legendry of shopping. However: the things that you use every day should be the best-designed things you can get. For instance, you cannot possibly spend too much money on a bed -- (assuming you have a regular bed, which in point of fact I do not). You're spending a third of your lifetime in a bed. Your bed might be sagging, ugly, groaning and infested with dust mites, because you are used to that situation and cannot see it. That calamity might escape your conscious notice. See it. Replace it.
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