The Nature of College. James J. Farrell
Unfortunately this defense can be counterproductive because it kills the good bacteria, leaving a body susceptible to hardier bacteria that develop resistances to our common pharmaceuticals.24
The natural body also absorbs the chemical elements of our culture. If we could look into the body, we’d see stuff we don’t imagine when we look in the mirror. In “The Pollution Within,” National Geographic writer David Duncan recounts the chemicals that tests found in his body in 2006—polybrominated diphenyl ethers (used in flame retardants and implicated in thyroid disruptions and neurological problems in mice); DDT (used as a pesticide until it was banned in 1973); the insecticides chlordane and heptachlor; PCBs (banned in 1976); Bisphenol A (used in hard plastics like Nalgene bottles and safety goggles); phthalates (used in shampoos, car dashboards, and plastic food wrap); perfluorinated carboxylic acids (PFCAs); dioxins (used in making paper); and mercury (from coal-fueled power plants). Like most Americans, including Jo and Joe College, Duncan is poisoned by the stuff our culture uses to free us from our natural limitations: gasoline, plastics, and fossil fuels. Like it or not, the environmental impact of American culture ends up in our bodies and blood. What goes around comes around, and the outside environment comes in.25
We miss a lot in the mirror, but some of what we do see is also deeply related to basic biology. The culture of cosmetics, for example, may be related to our natural need for healthy mates. Many sociobiologists contend that when we’re thinking about appearances we’re often thinking about the appearance of health—especially the appearance of people who look healthy enough to reproduce productively. Teeth are a sign of health, so we brace them and brush them to make them more attractive. Lustrous hair is another indicator of natural health, so we shampoo, condition, and color it. Some go even further. Nature doesn’t call Jo College to cosmetics, for example, but cosmetics can imitate the signs of nature. Although college girls seldom think of cosmetics in terms of evolutionary biology, they often involve biomimicry: a youthful look, with smooth skin and full lips, makes the face appear healthier to prospective suitors. In the twentieth century, a tan also became an indication of healthy outdoor activity, so many of us get tanned, if only from a bottle or a booth. We want to look well—or, as Carl Elliott says, “better than well”—and that’s natural. But how we get that look is decidedly not.26
Right now, when Joe and Jo College look in the mirror, they’re hoping to see someone beautiful or handsome looking back, because they’re trying to meet social expectations. They could look for a sense of beauty that’s more than skin deep, a sense of beauty that meets ecological expectations by connecting them to the biotic community. When Aldo Leopold articulated his land ethic, beauty was one of his criteria for when “a thing is right.” But he clearly didn’t mean scenic beauty, since he derides the shallowness of people who only like the landscapes of nature. For Leopold, beauty wasn’t just what you could see, but how you might relate—beauty was functional, harmonious, whole. What if we tried to arrange our lives so that when we looked in the mirror, we would see the loveliness (and lovingness) of people who harmonized with nature? Wouldn’t that be beautiful?
Waking Up to Responsibility
At college, when we wake up, we do what comes naturally, even though most of it is what comes culturally. American culture works hard to distance us from our environmental impacts and our ecological consciousness so that even though we wake up every day in nature, we don’t generally wake up to nature. Our morning routine offers all sorts of cultural cues about time, busy-ness, and convenience, but very few clues about the natural world in which our harried activity occurs. We receive constant commercial messages about cleanliness and looking good, but we don’t read or receive many of nature’s messages—the ones sent as news about gas prices and oil wars, global weirding and habitat loss, disease and extinctions, or the simple and beautiful seasonal cycles of our campus habitat. As a result, we don’t see or feel ourselves as environmental actors, participating wisely or wantonly in the rhythms and cycles of a living Earth.
When we wake up, some of us are conscious, but few of us are conscientious. Despite that fact, we all participate fully in the moral ecology of everyday life, making at least five ethical choices before breakfast. But we don’t feel like ethical actors because we’re just doing what comes culturally. We’ve made these choices not by our active options but by our passive participation in systems of choice. As this suggests, one of the most powerful things we do in life is to define normality for each other. If it’s normal to flip on the lights in the bathroom, we normally think it’s okay. But it might be more complicated than that. For example, when Joe and Jo College think they are just lighting a room, they’re also generating greenhouse gases. If they thought about it, they might think that this is “no big deal”—and that would be true, if they only lived for a day. But Americans live a long time, so all of our “no big deals” add up to major environmental impacts. As Eric Sorensen points out in his Seven Wonders for a Cool Planet, “If the average North American life expectancy holds at seventy-eight years, each person can expect to produce 1,630 tons of carbon dioxide over his or her lifetime.” The everyday actions of students are choices camouflaged as routines, but each of these habits is, in fact, a moral choice.27
Cartoon by Tom Toles. Reproduced by permission of Andrews McMeel Publishing.
Because what we do matters, we might want to wake up to more than the mere routines of the day. Mindful of the social construction of college culture and the busy-ness of campus life, we might try to set aside time for some big questions—ones having to do with the goodness of the good life or the health of the ecosystem services that we depend on. Mindful of the life-giving properties of water, we might try to conserve it for future generations. Mindful of our animal nature, we might try to be creatures who enhance habitats, instead of despoiling them. Mindful of the complexities of the human body and the other bodies that support it, we might nurture a sense of wonder for the natural world that includes us so generously.
Mindfulness: The quality of attention and care that keeps Earth in mind, so that we can mind our own social and environmental behavior. Antonym: mindlessness.
We might also begin to imagine and invent tools that literally remind us of our responsibilities for the life of the planet. Most current technologies are designed to be easy to use, and “easy” is sadly often just a synonym for “careless.” The thermostat maintains the temperature in our room; the TV stands ready for instantaneous power-up; the car starts with the turn of a key. Nothing reminds us that ambient temperatures, instantaneous electronics, and automotive travel are environmental issues. Nothing tells us about the implicit choices embedded in our machines. But we can remind ourselves of our environmental impacts—and change them—by designing machines for ethical impact as well as aesthetic appeal. In Sustainability by Design, for example, John Ehrenfeld suggests that a dual-flush toilet disrupts the normal flow of life just enough to make us mindful of our choices. Instead of just flushing, we have to make a choice about how much water to use—and if we know anything at all, we know the choice is both environmental and ethical. Eventually, this water-saving option might become second nature to us, and we might finally establish a mindless habit that actually conserves habitats.28
We might also consider reinventing the habits that threaten the planet’s natural (and cultural) habitats, so that our habits teach the people around us about the routines of a regenerative life. Unlike most humans in most of history, Joe and Jo College live in a segregated society, having separated themselves from the reflective experience of the natural world. Americans value “getting back to nature” on vacation, but that common phrase illustrates just how far we’ve removed ourselves from nature in our everyday lives. Instead of just living on the Earth, therefore, we might begin to live in the Earth’s cycles and rhythms, not just as consumers of ecosystem