The Nature of College. James J. Farrell
get to compare their expressed values and their operative values, and decide if they’re leading a good life after all.
4) Institutionalizing Environmentalism
Americans focus so much on individuals and “individual choice” that we sometimes forget the ways that systems structure choices for us. Even though we live in a world of systems—social, economic, political, intellectual, and natural—we often only respond to their symptoms. The price of gas, for example, is a symptom of overlapping economic, political, international, military, intellectual, and natural systems, but we usually only pay attention to the numbers on the pump. In a system that encourages externalities—the natural and social costs of production and distribution that aren’t factored into the price tag—the bill for our fuel obscures deep flaws in the system that creates it.2
Systems structure our choices, but institutions structure our systems. Institutions are communities defined by hope and habit, stories and symbols, patterns and privileges, rules and regulations. A community—or an institution—is a way of saying “we, the people” in different settings. The family is one example of “we, the people.” A church is another example, but so are colleges, corporations, media companies, and government bureaucracies. When it comes to environmentalism, college students and other Americans think that individual people choose to live “environmentally” or not. What they often forget is that institutions structure all of their individual choices. When values are institutionalized, they show up as habits, routines, peer pressure, and “common sense”—the standard operating procedures of everyday life. To most Americans, institutions are almost invisible, but their effects are profound.3
No matter how powerful institutions might seem, exploring their effects, including the influence they have over our hearts, can be empowering. In the 1930s, social activist Peter Maurin contended that institutions should be designed to make it easier for people to be good, and as American history repeatedly has shown, institutions can be changed. In this book, then, we’ll consider how human systems and institutions change natural systems, and how we might change them for the better. To that end, we’ ll examine the inputs and outputs of natural and cultural systems and examine feedback loops in nature and culture. In the process, we can study the science and art of ecological design—the alignment of human systems and institutions with the cycles of nature—and think about perspectives and practices that make it easier for people to be good.
5) The Nature of Hope
College is not always a hopeful place. Fear of failing often animates more student activity than hope does. Fear of failing academically keeps students working on reading and research and class work, while fear of failing socially keeps students going along to get along, for fear that other students will make fun of them for their ideas and ideals. The unfortunate result is what anthropologist Michael Moffatt calls “undergraduate cynical,” a way of talking tough that hides the sensitivity that could make a person vulnerable or compassionate. Such a social construction of conversation reduces the unique space a college provides for “going deep”—for thinking unconventionally about the unconventional issues of our day.4
If we seriously contemplate the nature of hope, however, we can replace our coping mechanisms with hoping mechanisms. Histories of hope offer a usable past for environmental activists, and stories of new hope emerging in America (often on campuses) remind us that change is possible and that our beliefs and behaviors do matter.5
6) Words and Worlds
Words structure our worlds. When we talk about a “good job” instead of “good work,” for example, it changes the nature of the conversation and sometimes it changes nature itself. Words like “profit,” “progress,” “success,” “cheap,” and “cool”—words we don’t even think of as environmental—have a lot to do with the way we treat the natural world. Paying attention, then, to how we talk about our lives, how rhetoric and persuasion work, gives us the opportunity both to understand the worlds we create through our words and how to tell the truth so that people listen. Looking deeply at language also invites us to think about new words and hybrids because, as Michael Pollan says, “names have a way of making visible [the] things we don’t easily see.”6
One such word is “ecologician,” connecting ecological perspectives with the magic that can happen once we see our world clearly. And scattered throughout the text are entries from an ecologician’s dictionary, defining words so that they make visible the real complexities in the moral ecology of our everyday lives.7
Ecologician: 1) A student of ecology, including the moral ecology of everyday life; 2) a person who practices the magical arts of regenerative design.
Wor(l)dplay: The art of using words to challenge worldviews and change the world.
The essay is a standard literary form, a useful way of arranging words to make meaning. In college, the most common kind of essay is the expository essay, a persuasive argument supported by reason and evidence. This book has many features of the expository essay—ideas, evidence, facts, endnotes—but it’s ultimately exploratory. The expository essay tries to prove all of its contentions, while the exploratory essay prefers to probe connections. Exploring links between personal life, cultural patterns, and the natural world, this essay leaves space for readers to reflect on their own experience, and invites them into a conversation about the meanings of college, and the personal and institutional possibilities of a culture of permanence.
Words structure our worlds but they can also change the world. In Teaching as a Subversive Activity, Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner suggest, “We act on the basis of what we see. If we see things one way, we act accordingly. If we see them in another, we act differently. The ability to learn turns out to be a function of the extent to which one is capable of perception change. If a student goes through four years of school and comes out ‘seeing’ things in the way he did when he started, he will act the same. Which means he learned nothing. If he does not act the same, it means he changed his way of talking. It’s as complicated as that.” With any luck, the words in this book will help to change ways of seeing, ways of talking, and ways of acting.8
A Final Note: “Us” and “Them”
For several reasons, I’ve resisted writing The Nature of College about “them”—a group of alien beings called college students—and tried as often as possible to write about “us,” learners struggling to learn how the world works so that we can make the world better. I do this, first, because even though I’m an aging college professor, I still consider myself a college student, learning from professors I know, from the students in my classes, and from the books I read and love. Second, I believe in empathy as a way of knowing, and in this book I’ve tried to imagine, from the inside out, what it feels like to be a college student in America today. Third, I want to invite students to take this text personally, to think deeply and carefully about their assumptions and intentions, their institutions and cultural patterns. And finally, many Americans (myself included) share many of the ideas and ideals of today’s college students, and many of the environmental impacts as well. Still, there are times when, because of generational or historical differences, it would simply be ridiculous for me to group myself with college students. It is my great hope, however, that even when I refer to students as “they,” you’ll understand that we are all in this together. Of course, in all cases, you’ll need to decide for yourself if you’re a part of the “we” I’m describing.