Julie Clawson

So I had an interesting conversation last night on the nature of social change. We were lamenting how so much of the injustices in the world are perpetrated and sustained by untouchable major corporations – systems that control our society so subtly that most of us aren’t even aware of their influence on our lives. It is easy to despair in light of such systems – they have the money to control the opinions of the world and the power to sue you into oblivion if you stand up against them.

It was brought up that often for real social change to occur a dramatic and generally violent event must take place. A bomb must be dropped, the nation decimated by war, a terrorist must strike, a president assassinated, a space shuttle explode… Events that shock us enough to make changes. That change may be immediate – slavery will end, a nation gains independence, people relinquish their civil liberties. Or that change may just subtly change the outlook of a generation – we lose our faith in science to dominate the world. Even the “non-violent” revolutions are long drawn out ordeals that capture the attention of the nation/world before they affect change. Gandhi’s hunger strikes or march to the sea, Rosa Parks on the bus, the “I have a Dream” speech in Washington, or even the decades of marches by women seeking the right to vote. Big events capture attention and our collective imaginations. We are then shocked or scared or passionately motivated into change.

But what is so disturbing about most systems of injustice is that they aren’t dramatic. Take the issues with the environment. There was never any big campaign where the world decided to start destroying the environment. No tragic event that left us convinced we need to trash the earth. But even so, our ancestors of just 100-150 years ago would be horrified at the wasteful and disrespectful habits of our disposable culture. So what happened? One answer is to point to the 100+ years of advertising (by the major corporations) bent on convincing us to adapt a lifestyle most people don’t believe in or need. We were told that if we wanted to be sanitary we needed to buy paper towels, if we wanted to appear educated and upper-class we women needed to use disposable sanitary pads, and if we wanted to be modern and not confined to our grandmother’s kitchen we needed to use foil and plastic wrap. And of course we agreed and bought into the lifestyle of “use it once then throw it away” with little regard to what that would do to our world. We didn’t think about where all that trash would go, the forests that would be destroyed and the dioxins produced to make the paper towels, the diseases the sanitary pads would cause, the oil used for the plastics, and the strip mining for the foil. We just choose step by step, product by product to adopt a disposable lifestyle. Today such philosophy is so ingrained in our cultural psyche that most respond “gross” to the idea that the parchment paper wrapping butter originally had to be marketed as “re-usable” because consumers thought it was wasteful and expensive to throw away perfectly good parchment paper.

The messages we have been fed over the last century or so have done more to completely alter the social habits of our world than any drastic or violent event. There is no date one can point to, or singular event to be blamed, or even a particular person who can be held accountable. We let ourselves walk down the very path – often going quite willingly – that many of now are attempting to change. So while some are asking what sort of drastic event will force us to change our wasteful ways – (the melting ice caps, the extinction of polar bears, $6 a gallon gas prices???), others are simply trying to undo slowly the monster that was slowly created. Sure my decision to alter my shopping habits, or to recycle, or reduce my carbon footprint may not make a huge dent in the problem, but I am taking steps toward change and sending subversive messages. I am letting forces and ideas bigger than major corporations desperate for profit no matter the cost shape who I am. And I believe that a culture that has been shaped to believe in the message of destruction has the potential to be shaped into conscientious stewards as well. Sure those of us who care for creation and its inhabitants don’t have the money or the power to reach masses, but that should never stop us from sending out alternative messages. We may be labeled as extreme or ridiculed, but I take heart in the fact that the first public paper cup drinking fountain was attacked by a group of soldiers convinced that it represented a threat to society. Swaying popular opinion takes time, but lies can be unraveled and better choices can be made.

Social change can take many forms. Dramatic events make the history books, but the slow subtle capturing of the cultural imagination may have the most profound long term effects. The real question is – how can we be agents of this sort of change?