It is February 16th and Bend just emerged from a long-overdue snowstorm that felled powerlines and dumped 6-10 inches of wet, heavy snow on the city. With the road up to campus being what it is, a steep climb up Awbrey Butte, campus was closed for the day and all classes were cancelled. I took the opportunity to spend the day with my family, unplugged as it were, and enjoy the forced serenity. As avid backpackers in our pre-child lives my wife and I are quite accustomed to providing for ourselves, so we ran down a primitive checklist to adjust for our loss of power.
Woodstove--check
Oil lamps, candles and headlamps--check
Alternative refrigeration (snow)--check
Water (faucet and or snow)--check
We thoroughly enjoyed our day together. Snowball fights and sledding in the morning, in for a lunch break with soup warmed on the woodstove, back out for some ski touring in the afternoon. When we returned home to find the power still off we gathered our various light sources and got to the business of cleaning up after a day of play (sponge baths using water heated on the woodstove) and preparing dinner. We enjoyed a meal by candle light, after which my son and I checked on all the neighbors to ensure they would be warm enough for the cold night ahead. Then it was back to the house where we snuggled up next to the stove for bedtime stories illuminated by the soft glow of the oil lamp.
After tucking our son into bed I took a quick walk around the block to see how folks were fairing. As I walked through darkened streets I was struck by the tranquility, the peace of the situation. Freshly fallen snow, houses darkened to one or two rooms warmly lit by candles, and no spastic radiance of images exploding from television screens. Families and housemates huddled together telling stories, playing games, and reading; experiencing each other and existing firmly in the moment. I've never seen my neighborhood more beautiful.
At some point in the night I awoke to an orange glow in the hallway and jumped out of bed thinking I had overstuffed the woodstove and inadvertently set the living room on fire. Instead I found that electricity had been restored to several lamps we'd turned on the previous morning. With wits fully gathered I had the strange sensation that the lights were harshly invading my previously idyllic evening.
The most poignant moment came the next morning as we arose for breakfast. The custom in our house is for my son to climb into our bed for a brief snuggle before dragging me out to get breakfast started. We trudge down the hallway together, check the woodstove for live coals and flip on the kitchen lights. When the light came on my son looked shocked, and he was visibly upset that we weren't using the candles and lanterns from the night before. Rather than get into a senseless debate with him I lit some candles and doused the lights.
His protest marked an important distinction. We don't often turn on the lights because we need the harsh electric light they provide, we turn them on because they are a more convenient alternative to other sources of light. That convenience comes at a price, however, for the simplicity, warmth and kinship other choices allow. These same issues apply to many of the choices we make as a modern society, where we often equate convenience to progress. In my view this is a poor calculation.
Beyond the obvious (and oft cited) natural resource and economic tradeoffs, we make significant human concessions in our obsession with convenience and speed. I was more in touch with my fellow neighbors during this experience precisely because some things we take for granted were no longer available. We shared smiles and laughter about our predicament, excitement about the prospects and a common bond through offers of assistance. We all emerged from it nonetheworse for wear, and I'll bet many of my neighbors felt the same mix of relief and disappointment I did when power was restored.
All of this is to say that moving forward to a sustainable future will most likely involve slowing down, and may involve looking backward to a time when simplicity and function were more important than expediency and convenience. Doing so may provide us with extraordinary opportunities to reconnect with ourselves, our loved ones and our communities; to build a sense of common purpose and unity of spirit. Our society lacks these characteristics today, and whether or not we achieve them will largely depend on our ability to learn from fleeting moments of perceived crisis and seeing the world with the same innocence, creativity and exhuberance as our children do.
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I too, had a wonderful experience as the power was shut off for 12 hours. I have always felt that I do a pretty good job of controlling my carbon footprint; however, when I started my Sustainable Communities class, I realized I create as big of a dent in the environment as some people who don't care at all. When the power was out, I joked with my roommate about "how we are saving the planet" and "how we are essentially not using natural resources." My roommate proceeded to say "the worlds resources are endless, my money is not." This is the mindset of many people and it is going to be a long hard road to change the views of the majority. I suppose there is no real moral of this story, but I feel like there is a lot we can do as responsible citizens to help this problem dissipate.
ReplyDeleteI am Business Major, and I did a study on motivation. There are two types of motivation: Intrinsic and Extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is a process of arousal and satisfaction in which the rewards come from carrying out a task rather from a result of the task. There are a couple different layers that come from this type of internal drive that one has. There is a surface layer that comes from the creativity and openness that one has towards new situations, as long as it does not conflict with their culture. As you go deeper, an intrinsically motivated person is working and learning tasks and making choices where the reward is the task itself rather than just getting the task done.
Conversely extrinsic motivation is a process of arousal and satisfaction that comes from outside an individual. The motivating factors are external in the form of rewards, such as money or benefits. The need for such tangible rewards, tend to decrease a person’s motivation and turn a task that was once desirable into just work. Extrinsic rewards have been proven to be very effective in the short-term for the use of getting the undesirable tasks done or tasks that require just a bit more effort.
Does this help? Probably not; however, we do know that people are motivated it two ways and maybe we should focus on shifting people's motivations from extrinsic to intrinsic. Perhaps we should create extrinsic motivations to help jump start the intrinsic motivations. Like the living building challenge, we could create challenges that would say "use no power in your house for (X) time period." Would this be a long term solution? No, but like we talk about in sustainable courses, a movement towards an end product is the beginning of a long process. Someone has to do it.
Thank you for listening to my short rant, ms's story just got me thinking. I'm sure someone will likely blow me up :)
Good thoughts Kevin. This is why the sustainable communities course emphasizes the behavior change element of sustainability. Moving towards a sustainable society will fundamentally require two things: 1) that we address individual behaviors; and 2) that we help other individuals adopt a sustainable paradigm. The former will be far easier than the latter because the latter will challenge fundamental beliefs, like your roommates unfounded perception that the world's resources are endless.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you are thinking about it.