For those who are interested in Global Hive (Weltenwunder Bienenstock)
I have published a chapter from the book that is not only of interest to those
who care for bees, but for everyone who wishes to gain a fresh perspective on
current calamities and how they can be solved. My aim with this book was
to think outside the bee-box, to apply a different, wider and more imaginative
approach that avoids the kind of thinking that has led to the bee-crises and
other ecological disasters. Incidentally this is also the chapter that has
given the book its name:
22 Global Hive
The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything. Albert Einstein
One can feel powerless confronted with
colony collapse. Economic pressures and pervasive paradigms conspire against the
survival of the bee. Political action does not match the speed of decline. My
only hope is in the imagination that mobilises the global economist in each of
us, the bold, marginalised thinker we all harbour inside ourselves and the
undiscovered politicians that we inevitably are.
In Switzerland recently I was impressed by
the high level of direct democracy. There are voting booths everywhere and
everyone is ready to participate in public affairs. The alpine republic
exemplifies civil rule. Minor matters and major affairs are decided upon by a
population prepared to shape its own future. Laws are made by the people for
the people. Regulations are localised to suit the situation at hand.
I would like to see a voting booth for
global concerns such as the protection of our environment, the salvation of the
bee: a means to directly participate in decisions relevant to us all. The
environmental crisis is a global concern demanding global action: deforestation
of one part of the world affects all others and rising sea levels encroach on
all coasts. Pollution is never just local and climate change is ubiquitous. As
problems cross borders our national structures are powerless. A worldwide
crisis demands worldwide eco-democracy. A global voting booth for planetary
concerns would provide the means to engage the economist, politician and
visionary in every one of us.
To the intellectual mindset this might
seem impossible on logistic and political grounds. There is no infrastructure
in place to deal with the administrative complexities, nor is there a unified
political body to implement the results. But what seems utopian to the
intellect is well within reach for the imagination. To the imaginal mind
eco-democracy is not only possible, it is already established. The global
voting booths are already there. The infrastructure is in place and well
equipped to accommodate all levels of civil participation. I am talking about
the most widespread, effective, sophisticated and powerful of all voting booths:
the cash register. This is the global voting booth: an unequalled tool to take
responsibility and vote for the better or worse of this planet.
Here our daily choices have immediate
effect. Every one of our decisions subtly alters the world. We can buy coffee
or fair-trade coffee, or coffee that is fair-trade and organic or even
biodynamic. Every purchase is a vote. Our dollar is our most political tool.
What we spend flows back to the product’s origins, and contributes to the
proper or improper treatment of land, of workers, farmers, societies. With our
daily decisions we endorse better or worse ways of transport, more or less
trustworthy companies, wholesalers, retailers. We say yes or no to artificial
fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides. We prevent or promote sustainable farming,
support or neglect fair returns. We have a hand in what happens to the land,
the seas, the air: we put our ten cents worth of opinion on one side or another
of the global scale.
The cashier registers our global care. It
is our thermostat of environmental awareness. Compared to this our political
choices leave us powerless because they hand responsibility to parties,
politicians and governments. The true political arena is the global voting
booth. In the parliament of dollars our opinions are registered and put into
action. Here every one of our choices changes the world: we join the battle
against economics without care, and commerce without conscience.
As consumers we are intimately connected
to the world. This tin made in Poland contains sardines from Norway, olive oil
from Italy, garlic from Spain and spices from all over the world. Every week
our shopping trolleys fill with olives from Portugal, cheeses from Holland,
sugar from Brazil, butter from New Zealand, tea from Taiwan and rice from
India. What we purchase in Perth today becomes reality in Indonesia tomorrow.
Every shopping trip is a tour around the world, every meal a culinary
circumnavigation of the earth. It is the same with all products. Wool from Australia
may be spun in England, dyed in Italy and manufactured in China. Complexity
increases when we step from simple products to elaborate machinery. Everything
comes from everywhere. Every car is an assembly of the world. ‘Made in China’
is a partial truth, ‘Made on Earth’ the complete reality.
This makes conscious consumption a
worldwide feedback loop, while thoughtless consumption tightens a noose around
the neck of this earth. Whatever we choose, we support. A conventional product
may be farmed without regard for the earth: it may deplete the topsoil, spoil
the water, pollute the air, diminish biodiversity, impact on forests. It may
have travelled halfway around the world, acccumulated unenecessary food-miles,
wasted fuel and lost much of its freshness. When we buy a burger from a food
chain we salivate on unsavoury practices, social exploitation, monoculture,
artificial fertilisers and pesticides that burden our stomach as they burden
the earth.
Through every financial transaction we become
poison or nutrient for the earth, engage ourselves in monoculture or diversity,
suppression or liberation. We need to ask the compassionate questions. Is this
a spoonful of honey poison for the world? Does this jar seal the destiny of
bees? Will saving this forty cents pollute a river? Will this additional cost
sustain topsoil, this cheque save a forest, this transaction counter climate
change?
The answer to these questions must not
remain abstract. Knowledge may stir our conscience but not alter our action.
The mindset that allows beekeepers who love their bees to treat them cruelly
will likely encourage us to continue with consumption without care. What is
needed is economic imagination. The more accurately we imagine pesticides
penetrating the soil, polluting the groundwater and entering plants, bugs,
bees, birds and beasts, the more we feel responsible. The moment I imagine in
detail, I am connected. And the moment I feel connected I care: the possibility
of conscience turns into actual compassion and compassion into action.
This picture can be developed further: we
can picture the circulation of goods as an exterior circulation of our blood.
In this picture we become the perceptive heart mediating between what we take
and what we give. Products lose abstraction if we can see, feel and sense them
all the way back to their origin. We need to imagine the money for a bottle of
milk flowing back to the udder of the cow, to the farmer and the land he cares
for, the soil he treats, the landscape he maintains, the culture he upholds.
And we need to feel ourselves as part of this money flow and all its effects.
The taste on our tongue is the lesser part of our transaction. What matters is
how our actions taste to the world. While it is important to buy healthy food
for our well-being, it is more important to buy it for the benefit of the
earth. When we consider the latter we become the heart of the global economic
circulation, the sense organ that maintains the world.
This awareness is the morality we need to
maintain our planet. In the Middle Ages morality centred around synagogues,
mosques, churches. There were few choices and everyone lived, worked, prayed
and died inside a close circle of circumstance. The world is local no more.
Every one of our actions has worldwide effects. Morality is in the market
place. The department store is the cathedral and the shopping mall the
congregation hall.
Without imagination, consumption is
ignorant egoism, a selfish and ultimately destructive cult. With imagination
the necessity of self-care becomes the opportunity to care for the world, and
the shopping mall of consumption transforms into a global hive.
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