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  Not as bad as you think (I think)

  This story brings together two things I've read that are important to me. One is a comment by Daniel Quinn (who is, I recognize, somewhat polarizing on this site) in which he suggests that no amount of new policies or policy changes will ever change the world. What changes the world is changed minds. Once minds are changed policies literally can't keep up.

  The other is from Michael Pollen's "The Omnivore's Dilemma." Pollen quotes Gene Kahn, the founder of Cascadian Farms (for those who don't know, think industrial organic), as claiming that everything new in the world eventually reverts back to (or is absorbed by) the way things have always been. He's basically justifying the mixed benefits of industrial organic farming by saying if organic farming hadn't incorporated standard industrial agriculture practices it would have died out.

  I think Quinn is right and therefore Kahn is right most of the time, too (although I also think Kahn is a post-hippie, rich, cynic). In other words, in the absence of changed minds, even great ideas eventually come to resemble everything that's come before. But sometimes things come along, changing so many minds, that the extant paradigm fails and something wholly new comes into being. Between occasional spells of despair, confusion, and hopelessness (which I ponder on public transportation) I'm hopeful that enough minds are changing that we're nearing a paradigm shift. And maybe "Light Green" is one part of changing minds. Each of us changing one thing is good. Especially when you consider that a great many of us will change a great many things. There is no one solution to the problem of climate change. And my guess is that changing one thing builds the momentum for making more changes. I couldn't name two songs by John Mayer but his thoughts, directed at an apatheic audience (i.e. not Gristmilligans), are not as bad as you think (I think). On From pop star John Mayer posted 2 years, 7 months ago 31 Responses