somewhere over arkansas.
They stood on the corner with their signs. Poster board and permanent marker. They had gone to no particular effort to make their statement. However, what they were after couldn’t be missed. They proclaimed in capitals, “IMPEACH CHENEY.†They seemed happy enough, standing in the rain, hoods pulled tightly around their faces, proclaiming their gospel on a busy corner.
I can’t say that I understood the point. They were in no center of power — not Washington, DC, not New York, not even Los Angeles. They were on a corner in Lexington, Kentucky, begging us to indict a politician who lives and works thousands of miles away. I wondered what they hoped to accomplish. Did they believe that they would ignite a grassroots campaign that would result in the impeachment of a vice president? Did they believe that they would somehow bolster the courage of the faithful and that their solidarity would cause them to rise up and seize the reins of power from the current administration? Did they hope to change the hearts and minds of all of those in the state who had, without doubt, voted in support of the current executive?
I can’t say that I ever figured it out. I would’ve like to stop my car and ask them, but it was raining, and I am terribly lazy. Instead, I did something that I don’t do nearly enough — I started to think. (I hate to use the name “Wendell Berry†like some sort of sledgehammer, but all of this is directly influenced by him, and I would feel terrible if I didn’t give the man credit.) I started to wonder about the notion of place, and I thought about displaced these hooded protesters must have been. They believed that the source of their problems was in Washington, and that in Lexington, they could somehow have an impact on what was happening in Washington, and they could have that effect simply by screaming really loudly. Not only were they misplaced, but they were woefully misguided.
Who knows why they were so upset with Dick Cheney? Foreign policy, domestic policy, energy policy, wasteful spending, bad aim? It could have been anything. Whatever it was, they were convinced, as I often am, that change happens from the top down. Change at the top of pile, they though, must roll downhill, and change has they power to achieve whatever objectives they are seeking.
The problem with such thinking is that it is dependent. While thoughtful citizens might work hard to have their voices hard, achieving their desires is essentially dependent upon someone else’s decisions. No matter what happens, my hooded friends are held at someone else’s behest. The names may change through the years, but the game remains the same.
What we need is to be independent. In our current system, we depend on forces outside of our control for any number of things. The way we consume ensures that we are dependent. If the structures on which we depend break down, we are unable to subsist. We do not gather food on our own. We do not secure shelter, warmth, or water on our own. We do not dispose of our own wastes. We may do one of those things for someone else, but rarely do we do them for ourselves. We have lost the ability to subsist independently.
That inability for independent subsistence has alienated us. It has alienated us from each other. It has alienated from the places from which we have come and the places in which we live. This alienation from places alienates from the consequences of our actions. Because we are placeless people, we are completely unaware of the consequences of our decisions on these places and on the people that inhabit those places.
We are unaware of how our food is produced. (Though, thankfully, that awareness is increasing.) We are unaware what sorts of lives our cheeseburgers lead before we devour them. We are unaware what it looks like to make that cheeseburger become our ninety-nine cent dinner. We have no idea how a cow smells, what it takes to make a cow fat enough to eat, what the cows do to the land on which they live. Our dependency has made us ignorant. This is true of any number of issues. We are completely alienated from the processes and the impact of our consumption. (Sidenote: this is why I love “Dirty Jobs.†Whether it’s the goal or not, it often brings to light some of the things of which we’re completely unaware.)
The solution is to arrive at some sort of independence. That does not mean that everyone should be a subsistence farmer. (It does mean that more people should be subsistence farmers) It means that those who are not subsistence farmers should be acutely aware of their place, and how they affect that place. They should be aware that local farms are good. They should know that subsistence farms are essential because they ensure the future of the land. A subsistence farmer is dependent upon his or her land, and he must maintain the good health of that land to live and thrive. That is, without a doubt, a good thing.
We must become independent of national and global systems and become parts of local systems, able to subsist by work and cooperation inside of the communities where we live. Only by such a connection to a specific places will properly care for the place.
There is no doubt that places need to be cared for. The way that we consumed absolutely cannot be sustained by the world around us. If we will not change the patterns of consumption voluntarily, we will be forced to changed them by crisis. By the time that crisis occurs, our situation may be too dire for our own salvation.
The question of how to become more connected to a place is as broad as are its answers. Some are simple enough — consume less, and consume locally. Buy used things from local people. Work close to where you live. Those are all helpful solutions. However, on their own, they will fail. The only way to become more connected to a place is to become genuinely invested in that place. The analogy of investment may be entirely too weak. Wendell Berry uses marriage as more appropriate metaphor. For Berry, it works well. He has an understanding of marriage (rooted in his own marriage) that allows the metaphor to work. The metaphor of marriage is one of absolute commitment, the inextricable tying of one’s future to some particular thing, be that person, place, or idea.
That binding is the only way that we can possibly find our proper relation to a place. When our fate is utterly tied to the fate in which we live, we will practice a proper kind of husbandry (to use Mr. Berry’s word). When our fate is tied to the fate of the land, we will treat the land as it should be treated. However, more than land, the marriage will change the way we treat the people around us. We will be aware that all the work we must do cannot be done by ourselves, and that we are tied to the people around us as much as we are tied to the land on which we’re living. It is the most appropriate, tangible living out of Jesus’ command to love our neighbors like our own selves. If we marry ourselves to some place, we will not be able to help it. The future of our self and the future of neighbors will be so tied that we will be unable to understand ourselves apart from the place and the people that we have married ourselves to. The cultivation of those relationships will be essential to our future.
To do this is a decided step away from the way that we are told that life should be done. It is a deliberate step to radically alter our consumption. It is a step to fight the seductive forces of advertising that beguile us and convince us of our unworthiness to ensure that the patterns of our consumption continues. It is a step that will subject itself to ridicule. It is difficult. It seems to be without reward. It is the slow work rather than the quick solution. It is radically countercultural. It requires imagination to even know where to begin. It requires creativity to live inside a system and counter its goals, aims, and methods. It requires the support from the community in which we have chosen to invest ourselves. It is an ongoing conversation that we have only just begun.