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Less

Posted By Scott Warnock On In environment & nature,virtual children by Scott Warnock | 4 Comments

The Gulf full of oil. Radiation seepage in Japan. War in petroleum-rich countries. Mines collapsing. And the incessant, blow-by-blow, steady-drip news about all of it.

This little piece of writing is not a sweeping criticism of our consumer ways, nor is it a green screed about sustainability. I’m down with those views, but I like my stuff too — I mean, I write for a Website and I teach online, which means I have access to all kinds of technology goodies. Every CTRL+S costs a little coal, a splash of oil, a blip of manufactured radiance.

This is about a helplessness unique to our age, a time in which we are exposed to more information than we can possibly handle, than perhaps we are hard-wired to digest. It is about how tough it is to know about so much woe and be able to do so little about it. And, yes, this short commentary is also about how much of this barrage of bad news is concerned with our pursuit of energy.

McLuhan said, of course, “the medium is the message [1]“: “This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium — that is, of any extension of ourselves — result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.” The message now, as one big medium chunk called capital N “news”: You can do nothing about the world, and you cannot evade knowledge of this primary fact.

Adults can find it difficult, if not impossible, to come to peace with each day’s news. But what about kids, who have a less-developed frame for processing and articulating their helplessness? What goes through their heads?

The media can give us a sense of despair — perhaps that’s why people who consume too much media have been shown to have such feelings of defeat about the world [2] — not just because of the volume of news but the granular level of coverage. We watched oil pour from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, almost drop by drop. It was excruciating. We wanted Aquaman [3]to go down and stick a cork in it — anything. The Japanese reactors sit there, smoking ominously, while commentators tell us about radioactive spinach. This isn’t Godzilla [4]stomping around, but an invisible, creeping menace whose effects won’t be felt until that tumor sprouts years from now, maybe in our children.

Kids are resilient, and our screenagers [5]have come of age with information, but when the big news hits them, doesn’t a troubled shadow pass behind their eyes, because they want to do something?

I’ve been trying this lately: When they speak up and wonder what they can do, I say they can do a little less.

That’s all. Provide a sense of control by using a little less, re-affirming some old messages of walking instead of driving or turning the heat down or even the outlandish idea of flipping off a light switch once in a while — my kids need an artificially illuminated path to go anywhere in our house at any time of day.

Again, I like my devices. I don’t begrudge us our usage. Like most, I am hungry for more energy because of the things I have and, more importantly, the things that technology enables me to do: to travel and communicate and be entertained.

We’re not going back to torches and horses. We will keep searching, exhaustively, for energy sources. We will continue to disrupt the world in all ways, and we will continue to receive a steady stream of information about these disruptions.

But maybe when kids look at the world and feel malaise because of those monstrous forces moving beyond their scope, that old message of using a little less will give them a semblance of control.

Many movements are grounded on the idea of making grand changes by everyone doing a little at a time (see Democracy [6]). The real positive effect of such strategies may not be the tangible cumulative results of many small hands at work, but the psychological peace people can achieve by taking action when faced with information about a massive, uncontrollable world. We are a peculiar species in that we want to do something. Doing helps us move forward.

So telling kids to do less isn’t so much about the change itself as it is of giving them a way of handling big problems. And perhaps with this little touch of empowerment, through some miracle, one day they will remember to turn off the lights when they leave a room.

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Scott Warnock [10]

Scott Warnock is a writer and teacher who lives in South Jersey. He is a professor of English at Drexel University, where he is also the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education in the College of Arts and Sciences. Father of three and husband of one, Scott is president of a local high school education foundation and spent many years coaching youth sports.
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