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October 4, 2002 ~ You Can't Make a Difference
Friday.
(Note: I started writing this entry a week ago, then abandoned it. Picked it back up again today. Today, it wasn't raining, by the way.)
I apologize ahead of time for any unfinished thoughts, unclarified sentences, misused words, or other unpleasantries. This is going to be a huge chunk of unedited thought, because I am tired of holding it all in. I'm sitting next to the open window; the rain is pouring down as it has been for hours now, pouring down in one huge, angry torrent, with dark angry clouds overhead.
That's what I am. Angry. Not angry in a hurtful, explosive way, but angry in a quiet, healthy way, like the dark clouds--they have something important to spill. With this water, things will grow. This anger motivates, urges me to be honest, frank, straightforward. I'm both angry with myself and angry with others. And I'm starting to realize that this positive anger will turn into negative anger if I don't channel it into something cathartic and useful. So be it.
Several weeks ago, a little girl at Quaker Meeting--she was probably about nine years old--stood up with an announcement after meeting. She wanted to tell the group about something wonderful that she had learned about that week. With eager excitement, she told us all about Biodiesel, a new kind of fuel that is made entirely out of vegetable oil, that will run perfectly in regular diesel vehicles, without any modifications to the engine at all. You pump it in like normal, and the vehicle will run like normal. Biodiesel has from seventy to one hundred percent less of each of the various emissions that normal diesel releases into our air. It is bio-degradable, so spills will not pollute the water and kill wildlife. It only costs a few cents more per gallon. It is made right here in the United States, so we would not have to rely on imports from the Middle East to use it. She talked about how an entire school district in Arizona has switched over to using Biodiesel in their school busses, since diesel emissions are most harmful to children.
I was inspired. Here was a little girl telling me about a great solution to a major problem in the world. It was perfect. People wouldn't have to buy new vehicles to make it work. It would be a simple, inexpensive solution to a major problem. I went home and immediately started researching Biodiesel online. I found several articles. Everything that the little girl had said seemed to be true.
An idea started to form in my mind. Diesel emissions are a major problem in this country, far more harmful than other vehicle emissions, and not nearly as regulated. Imagine, for a moment, if every company that uses diesel-fueled vehicles in this country were to switch to Biodiesel, and if Biodiesel was offered at every gas station. Imagine how much of a difference that would make in the quality of our air, in the cleanliness of our water, and in our reliance on oil imports. Think of it, all farm equipment, the entire trucking industry, construction companies, landscaping equipment, city busses, school busses, privately owned diesel trucks, the diesel-run back-up power generators used at most hospitals and other places that cannot have power outages, fire engines, garbage and recycling trucks... the list goes on and on. What else runs on diesel? I'm sure there is plenty more. We use so much diesel. Just imagine if all of those things were run on mere vegetable oil! We would see so many amazing improvements to our health, to our skies, to our water, to our national economy. Heck, since Pokey is dying, I would buy a diesel vehicle if it meant that I could run it on this amazing stuff. It would pollute less than Pokey or anything else on the market, including the hybrids, that much is for sure.
The thought floored me. So I decided that I would continue to research Biodiesel. There were so many things that I didn't know. How does one buy it? What exactly, are the precise facts on its emissions? What, exactly, are the precise facts on the environmental and health damages caused by regular diesel? Could enough money be earned through donations to both convince gas stations to start selling it and to start a major advertising campaign to alert the diesel consumers to its existence? What are the exact facts about how Biodiesel runs in an engine and how its performance compares to regular diesel? Is the company that makes it willing to expand to supply a larger customer base?
I would need to know all of the details. And then I was going to start a letter-writing campaign to all sorts of companies that could use it, once I knew everything that there was to know about it. First, though, I needed to write a letter to the company that produces Biodiesel, requesting any and all information that they could give me. Once I had all the facts, could a major environmental organization be convinced to take up the cause and start a fund? (Starting a non-profit is far too difficult for little-old-me to take on, but if an already existing one were to do it...) I could build a website all about it, with letter templates for people to download and send to companies. Maybe I could even start the process of getting some government grants involved. This would be positive environmental action. I was tired of hearing about interesting and amazing solutions to environmental problems and then just telling a few people and figuring that the authorities would take care of it. No, this time I was going to act in as many ways as I could.
So the next day, on the way to work, I told Morgan about it. He was impressed. He thought that Biodiesel was a wonderful thing. Then I told him about how I was planning to start an environmental movement for it. I talked about writing to trucking companies and the like.
"Just imagine, if all of the trucks on our highways were using this stuff!"
He let out a big sigh.
"What?" I asked.
"Go ahead, but it won't do a bit of good. I'd be surprised if they even read your letters. Nobody will buy it. Nothing will change. You can't make a difference, not against the entire trucking industry."
I'm sure my expression looked pretty crushed. "Don't ever say that again," I said quietly. "Don't ever say that to anyone again."
"Oh, I'm sorry, Melissa... I just don't want you to be to surprised and disappointed when nothing happens, okay?"
"If I can convince just one company to switch, won't that be worth it?"
"Well, yes, but I don't think--"
"--Well then, it's worth it. I'm going to do it. Don't shoot me down before I've even tried."
But you know what? After that conversation, I stopped researching Biodiesel. I did not look into anything else relating to it. I put what I had found into a folder and set it to the side. I have not touched it since.
And I am very pissed off with myself for giving up. For letting Morgan's little "you can't make a difference" get to me so much. For even thinking that, yes, the world sure is too big for me to change.
Because it is not. I do not buy that crap. That is the stuff that apathy and helplessness and decay is made of. "I can't make a difference" is what you say when you want an excuse to sit on your butt and not do a damn thing, when you want to ignore your responsibilities, when you are too damn lazy to care about a single thing outside of your own greed. That attitude is denying that you have any connection to the rest of the planet. And it is complete horse crap. It is a lie. We are, each of us, so connected to each other and dirt beneath our feet and the air we breath and each and every animal and plant and, yes, even the CEOs running AOL. Or Coca-Cola. Or Sprint. Or Nike. Each thing we do matters, matters in ways that we may never understand or know. The fact that I gave up and put all of that information aside into a folder matters. It was wrong for me to do that. And I am angry with myself for it.
It's not just the whole Biodiesel situation, though. I see this mind-numbing, action-crushing, heart-stomping, responsibility-diffusing, apathy-ridden attitude everywhere, and sometimes it is perpetrated by even the most motivated people out there.
And it's not just environmentalism.
With human rights issues, for example, the overwhelming attitude seems to be a throwing up of ones hands and a lament about how the problems in the world are so huge and widespread that no one can possibly make a dent in them. There will always be hunger, there will always be poverty, there will always be injustice, there will always be sweatshops, there will always be rape, there will always be child labor, so why do anything about it? One cannot stop it from happening for all eternity. Once, someone had the nerve to tell me that the fact that I occasionally work in homeless shelters, soup kitchens, and food banks personally offended him because, he said, it doesn't actually do any good, that there will always be hungry people.
Two close pacifist friends of mine and one pacifist acquaintance recently joined the Army. Pacifists joining the army. The acquaintance said that it was because he wanted an easy way to pay for college; he was tired of working his way through and amassing loan debts. When questioned about his pacifism, he said that just one more soldier wouldn't make a difference, and he wasn't a very vocal pacifist anyway. One friend said that it wouldn't actually be her choice if she killed anyone or participated in an unjust cause, it would be the orders of her superiors and ultimately her government, so she was still a pacifist at heart. (What?!) The other friend has decided that war will always be our society's way of settling problems and that it is pointless to try to change that.
The most common response to my pacifism is actually agreement. Most people say pacifism is a good attitude to have, that it is a great idea, that they themselves would even be pacifists, if only it were possible in our world. When I ask them why they think that it is not possible, they usually say something vague, "Oh, it just wouldn't work. Nobody would ever go along with it." What I want to know is, why is everyone so sure that something that our society has yet to try on a large scale will not work? I refuse to give up an idea, to abandon an approach as impossible, when we haven't even tried it yet. Especially when it has actually worked well for other people. It worked on a smaller (but very significant) scale for Martin Luther King Jr. It worked on a massive scale, though a different culture, for Gandhi. And something tells me that King or Gandhi wouldn't have given in to a few protests of "Oh, it will never work; you might as well not even try it." In fact, saying such a thing to someone like King or Gandhi is a rather preposterous idea. So why is it the automatic reaction of someone talking to me? Or any other every day person? Gandhi was an everyday person. So was Martin Luther King.
Another issue for me, of course, is veganism, a diet that I have adopted mainly for animal rights and environmental reasons. I'm not vocal about it, but some people, at the mere sight of tofu, will start ranting about how my diet is stupid and pointless and isn't doing a thing in the world. Honestly, I'm usually too polite to say anything. But maybe I should. Speaking in terms of comparing my diet to the average American meat eater's diet, statistically, my one little personal decision will make a significant difference. Because I, personally, am a vegan, I will use 1/14 as much land to support my food than a meat-eater will to support his or her food. Because I, personally, am a vegan, every single pound of my food will use 2,475 less gallons of water than every pound of food for a meat-eater. The numbers for pollution don't break down to a personal level, but, as a vegan, I will be responsible for a great deal less water and air pollution than the average meat eater. I will save at least one acre of rainforest because it will not be burned down to graze cattle for my consumption (as the majority of American beef comes from former rainforest plots). But, most importantly, I will not create the demand for 11 cows, 4 veal calves, 3 lambs, 43 pigs, 1,107 chickens, 45 turkeys, and 861 fish to be killed, which is the average consumption of an American meat eater in his or her lifetime. And that last fact makes all the rest of it worth it for me. Granted, I will in not be stopping the meat industry. I would never expect that. But I am doing my part to give it less business, and that is significant enough for me.
There are, of course, plenty of other causes that get a similar response of "a single person working for that can't make a difference," but I think I've made my point.
"As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world... as in being able to remake ourselves," said Gandhi. And that is what I am doing. Remaking myself. Doing exactly what I think is right in the world, standing for it, and backing it up, even in the little things. "Let your life speak" is a common Quaker saying. It means many things, but mainly that phrase is in support of being your beliefs, rather than evangelizing. I must modify my behavior to parallel my ideas and my view of the world that I want to bring about. Gandhi also said, "Be the change that you wish to see in the world." I cannot stress how important that way of life is. "We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop," said Mother Teresa. Or, worse, you could be actively taking drops out of the ocean by not only giving up on working for what you believe in but going even one step further in the negative "you can't make a difference" cycle and joining the other side, those who work against that which you believe in. For instance, my pacifist friends who still believed in pacifism yet joined the army. Or my vegan friends who have gone back to meat. Or my environmentalist friends who buy environmentally unfriendly products "because it's easier."
From this point on, I refuse to give in to anyone who tells me that my choices, my actions, or my ideas aren't even worth trying. I refuse to give in to anyone who tries to convince me that I am not changing the world. I refuse to give in to the temptation of stagnancy and apathy. I refuse to not even try. I refuse to put an idea aside just because it's not conventional or hasn't been tried before. It stops here. I will never again let a "you can't make a difference" stop me. I will politely listen; I will let them say their piece, I will even learn from their warnings and cautions in order to see any flaws in my plans, but I will not give up. I'm sick of it.
Now, if you will excuse me, I have some research on Biodiesel to do.
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