Seth Huebner, Sustainability, Historical Crisis, and Anxiety

“When each one of us asks himself what he is going to be […] what his life is going to be, he has no choice but to face the problem of man’s being” --José Ortega y Gasset, Man and Crisis, 23

The purpose of this paper is to argue that cultural and spiritual anxiety is one of the primary, underlying factors that will lead to the sustainable revolution[1].  My thesis is that anxiety is an essential motivational force toward attaining sustainability, since cultural anxiety, or alienation has been a necessary catalyst to historical crises (Man and Crisis, 101).  The reason, so I believe, why the sustainable revolution will result from our current historical crisis, or Turning Point (Fritjof Capra’s term) is largely because there is an identity crisis occurring throughout some of Western society in opposition to the mainstream culture.  My thesis on anxiety is not meant to apply to all of society in unison.  Yet, I do contend that anxiety is a primary and necessary force for fueling the sustainable revolution. 

Illustrating personal identity

First, I will attempt to sketch out a connection between the personal identities of environmentalists, and the reasons why environmentalists are motivated to act on behalf of nature beyond the cultural norm.  My purpose is to show that personal identity provides the motivation for attaining sustainability (the same motivation that environmental education is supposed to create).  To me, truly sustainable mentalities are equal to sustainable identities.  This is to say that people who consciously strive toward sustainability have adopted (or, are adopting) a personal identity distinct from that of mainstream society, call it a sustainable identity.  This, I believe, is why environmentalists will pursue their cause so whole heartedly, because the cause is not only an ideological argument, but it is above all personal – true environmentalists live their ideology. 

Now I have to illustrate some set of principles, or distinctions, which separate the mainstream from the sustainable identity.  The principles I choose must represent, to use the words of José Ortega y Gasset, “ideological” and “technical” differences between the aforementioned cultural identities[2] (Man and Crisis, 27).  The difference between mainstream and sustainable culture is evinced by Deep Ecology, which expresses a shift in the above named principles.  Deep ecology requires “Going beyond a narrowly materialist scientific understanding of reality, [to where] the spiritual and the material aspects of reality fuse together” (Devall & Sessions, 243).  The “ideological” difference in the above quotation is represented by the spiritual reality of the deep ecologist, for whom there can be “no ontological divide in the field of existence (243).  The “technical” difference lies in the rejection of “materialist” reality (also an ideological difference).  A comparable spiritual outlook is characteristic of the sustainable mentality in general.  For instance, Charlene Spretnak wrote a book on the spirituality inherent in sustainable thinking – “The Spiritual Dimension of Green Politics.”  Also, “the spiritual essence of the deep ecological vision seems to find an ideal expression in […] feminist spirituality [which] is grounded in the experience of the oneness of all living forms” (Capra, 21).  Warwick Fox even refers to the norm of “Self- realization” in deep ecology as “transpersonal ecology;” thus, blending transpersonal psychology with deep ecology, because they both “broaden” and “deepen” our sense of self (240).

According to Fritjof Capra, the commonalities between the above named movements represent the basis of the “rising culture” (24); that is, the culture that will potentially embrace a sustainable way of life.  Each of these movements explicitly requires an identity shift; though, they vary in approach.  For instance, one of the “ultimate norms” of deep ecology is “Self-realization,” the realization of one’s self in relation to “organic wholeness,” everything (Devall and Sessions, 243-44).  Also, ecofeminism requires “a new cultural consciousness that would support relations of mutuality, rather than competitive power” (Ruether, 323) (italics mine).
 

Identity and motivation:

Since it is clear that the personal identities of environmentalists are fundamentally linked to sustainability, I will proceed to address my claim that identity is a motivational force.  By “motivation” I mean the impetus to live wholly by the principles of sustainability, or a new culture in general.  For instance, a park ranger who chose to be a ranger because she enjoys nature, and thinks national parks should be preserved, but does not feel a vital need to live by the principles of the sustainable personality mentioned above, does not express the sustainable mentality.  She falls into the category of “mass” by Ortega’s thesis in The Revolt of the Masses, because she has few real “opinions” (See pp. 128-29), and she has “inherited” her identity.  Such a person is not necessarily a sustainable personality even though she is a “preservationist.”  And, concerning anxiety, this is a key point to consider: the park ranger embodies the mainstream cultural identity, regardless of the fact that she feels strongly about nature.  However, the ranger is not a sustainable personality because her identity was molded within the mainstream of society, not in her own alienation from society.  Literally, the ranger’s identity does not manifest the ideological difference between two clashing cultures – the sustainable and the modern mainstream.  In Ortega’s terms, the ranger does not represent a person who wishes to discover a new, “genuine” culture (Man and Crisis, 100), for she does not feel that being “herself” has become a “terrible problem” (101).  As humans we are always, everywhere engaged in identity forming; to reiterate Ortega’s statement, to live is to discover the “self” of “one’s own being,” and to actively “interpret” the world (24).  So, because the ranger is not creating (or, has not inherited the fundamentals of) an identity apart from mainstream culture, she is not forming the sustainable identity, which is necessary for our historical crisis to end in sustainability.  The authentic sustainable identity is necessary, because mainstream society can be overcome “only by men and women who have torn aside the technological and ideological veil which conceals what is going on” (Marcuse, 131) (emphasis mine).  This, our ranger has not done.

All I have said in the previous paragraph is that in every society there is a portion of the population that actively changes culture, and there is another portion of the society that inevitably goes along with the changes.  This is a central fact of Ortega’s The Revolt of the Masses, where the “aristocracy” guides society (20), and the “mass” merely follows[3], since it has no genuine “ideas.” (See pp. 14 and 71.)  A contemporary example of this situation is evident in The Cultural Creatives, by Ray and Anderson, who feel that 26% of American society is embracing a new culture (4).  I contend that this “26%” represents personalities for whom “being one’s self” has become a “terrible problem,” since they often feel like “strangers” in their own families (102), and society.  These “Cultural Creatives” are concerned with forming a new synthesis of “values” and “meaning” apart from mainstream culture (20), and with finding a “new path” – i.e. worldview (82).  In effect, Cultural Creatives are people who are (often unknowingly) creating a new culture in opposition the mainstream (93), and, thus, new personal identities as well. (44-56.) 

An example of a person who is not creating a new identity is the park ranger of whom I spoke.  The implication is that there are currently environmental educators and environmentalists who do not represent true sustainable identities as well.  For, such people have not begun in the “naked depths of [their] own personal” selves, they have not found themselves “smothered by [their] cultural environment” (Man and Crisis, 100), and they have not crossed the boundary between the old and the “rising culture” for themselves (Capra’s term, 24).  This personality type will not feel the sort of cultural anxiety that produces historical crises.  And, in the case of environmental educators, or environmentalists who are not sustainable personalities, they have “inherited” their identities and “opinions” from those persons who previously created such ideas. (See pp. 128-29 in Revolt of Masses.)  Sustainability must be felt as a “vital” need, and it will result from the lived reality of people in today’s historical crisis.
 

Anxiety and the Sustainable Identity

Effectively, the existence of two opposing cultural identities manifests as an ideological clash between an old and a new culture.  In fact, by my analysis of Ortega, a shift in culture fundamentally requires a rejection of the old cultural identity, which is the reason why historical crises occur, because the culture has become a “falsification” of one’s “life” (Man and Crisis, 99).  “Man’s genuine self is swallowed up by his cultured, conventional, social self,” and socialization “is the maximum degree of man’s alienation or otherness” (99).  Thus, man “has no course other than to rise up against that culture, to shake himself free of it” (101). 

I must now attempt to connect anxiety to cultural change and sustainability.  My purpose is to show that anxiety will inevitably lead to sustainability through identity – a necessary component of historical crises.  So, I shall proceed to highlight anxiety as a motivational force.  I have already tried to show that the sustainable identity is embodied by a myriad of personality types; not only by environmentalists, and that having the sustainable identity is motivation itself to pursue sustainability as a cultural revolution.  However, I believe anxiety naturally fuels the creation of new sustainable identities (unless those identities are inherited, in which case anxiety is probably not a noteworthy influence), because the sustainable identity is the only comprehensive alternative identity to that of the mainstream.  Also, the eventual rise of the sustainable identity seems to be historically logical by Ortega’s conclusion that the end of a culture is signified with a “‘return to nature,’ that is to say, to what is natural in man” (Man and Crisis, 101).  The connection between sustainability and a “return to nature” is obvious; though, “return” does not imply a regression, a “going back” to some simpler way of life.

The type of anxiety I mentioned above is cultural and spiritual, but such a characterization is misleading, since I consider the true source of such anxiety to stem from our unconscious preoccupation with our own being.  And, with regard to “being,” let it be agreed that human life is “fundamentally insecure” (Man and Crisis, 34).  Thus, it is no surprise that spirituality is so wholly tied to sustainability, and to the ensuing cultural crisis in the West.  Because, spirituality is a direct manifestation of our interpretation of our own “being” (Eliade, 210), and spirituality largely determines our identities. (See Revolt of the Masses, pp. 128-29.)  This is why Charlene Spretnak found that “many critics of modernity [. . .] conclude that the transformation of modern society is ‘going to have something to do with religion’” (Spretnak, 30).   In fact, the argument I have made that identity is a necessary component to sustainability, and that identity change can bring about sustainability naturally, is only to state that sustainability is the result of our preoccupation with “being” in light of the particular problems of the modern world.  We are in the midst of an historical crisis period, and the anxiety we may, or may not perceive stems from numerous sources, both personal and social.  However, that anxiety is also universal, since it properly revolves around the problem of our own being – what we should “be” in our lives.

Thus the truly sustainable person is one for whom the question of what it means to “be” in the world has taken on a new meaning, whether consciously, or unconsciously.  The sustainable person is, by nature (identity), living life in fundamental contradiction to modern culture.  But, this is no surprise.  Deep ecologists, ecofeminists, and transpersonal psychologists are explicitly involved in redefining our relationship to the world, either through exploring interrelatedness, patriarchal/dominance relationships, or the relationship of “consciousness” to the cosmos (Laszlo, 35).  These three movements are among the principal advocates of sustainability, and it is no mere coincidence that they all necessitate a redefining of our cultural identities.  I think spiritual anxiety is paramount among the causes behind our historical identity shift and sustainability.  What we believe largely determines who we are, it unifies cultures, and spirituality is fundamental to the human condition (Eliade, 23).  In the words of Mircea Eliade, even the non-religious person “continues to be haunted by the realities that he has refused and denied” (emphasis mine) – those “realities” of the spiritual life.  Those realities are “sill emotionally present” to the agnostic and the atheist alike, and they are “ready to be reactualized in his deepest being” (204).  What Eliade means is that almost no one is free from the religious tendency, the pull of the spiritual.  No doubt William Hubben would concur with Eliade’s points here, since Hubben himself wrote the following:

André Malraux has asked the question whether man in the twentieth century can survive after God has died in the nineteenth century.  His question has become mankind’s greatest anxiety at a time when the genius for fission is our outstanding trait. (174)

The reference to the “death of God” in this quotation is an allusion to the existentialist philosopher Nietzsche, who famously proclaimed that “God is dead” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  What Nietzsche meant was (historically speaking) that God is no longer present in the “depths of the European’s soul” (Barrett, 13).  Hence, there does exist anxiety over God’s disappearance.  To find such anxiety one need look no farther than the philosophy of existentialism, which portrays philosophy coming “face to face with historical crisis; with time, death, and personal anxiety” (Barrett, 14).  I am not saying that anxiety will motivate all people toward sustainability, for some will be motivated to resist sustainable thinking, and others will simply follow along, or inherit their identities from the growing culture.

But, let me argue no more, I have an example.  I am presently writing these words in a coffee shop.  Over the past two hours a group of high school students across from me have been arguing about the place of religion in their lives.  With regard to my thesis, I have no doubt that the problems of anxiety and identity have fueled these students’ conversation.  My question is this:  To what degree do the students understand the problems of our society?  And, how have those problems contributed to the students’ identities?  Because, if these students are free thinkers, and they have enough worldly knowledge, then the sustainable identity should already be part of them (or, if they inherited that identity, the result is the same).  Their lives, then, should consist of living out the vital needs they feel, which will lead them to contribute toward sustainability.  Sustainability will not be an “effort” they make, it will be the lives they live.

Works Cited

Barrett, William.  Irrational Man.  Garden City, New York:  Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958.

Capra, Fritjof.  “Deep Ecology:  A New Paradigm.”  Deep Ecology for the 21^st Century: Readings on the Philosophy and Practice of the new Environmentalism.  Ed.  Sessions, George.  Boston:  Shambhala Publications Inc., 1995.

Devall, Bill, and George Sessions.  “Deep Ecology:  Living as if Nature Mattered.”  Paths Beyond Ego.  Ed.  Walsh, Roger and Frances Vaughan.  New York:  Penguin Putnam Inc., 1993.

Eliade, Mircea.  The Sacred and the Profane.  New York:  Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1959.

Fox, Warwick.  “Transpersonal Ecology.”  Paths Beyond Ego.  Ed.  Walsh, Roger and Frances Vaughan.  New York:  Penguin Putnam Inc., 1993.

Ruether, Rosemary Radford.  “Ecofeminism:  Symbolic and Social Connections of the Oppression of Women and the Domination of Nature.”  This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment.  Ed.  Gottlieb, Roger S.  New York: Routledge, 1996.

Hubben, William.  Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Kafka.  New York:  Simon and Schuster, 1997.

Laszlo, Ervin, ed.  The Consciousness Revolution: A Transatlantic Dialogue:  Two Days with Ervin Laszlo, Stanislav Grof, and Peter Russell.  Las Vegas:  Elf Rock Productions, 1999.

Marcuse, Herbert.  Counter-Revolution and Revolt.  Boston:  Beacon Press, 1972. 

Ortega y Gasset, José.  Man and Crisis.  New York:  W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1958. 

---.  The Revolt of the Masses.  New York:  W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1932.

Ray, Paul, and Sherry Ruth Slater.  The Cultural Creatives.  New York:  Three Rivers Press, 2000.

Spretnak, Charlene.  The Spiritual Dimension of Green Politics.  Santa Fe:  Bear & Company, 1986. 
 

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