The New York Times has a story today about fired-up college students who practice asceticism and live by an ethic of conservation and stewardship. Who are these young conservatives?
Liberals at Oberlin College (well, given that Oberlin is one of the most culturally liberal colleges in the country, one has to assume that they're liberals). From the story:
The mission is serious and yet, like life at the Oberlin house, it blends idealism, hands-on practicality, laid-back community and fun.“It’s not about telling people, ‘You have to do this, you have to do that,’ ” Mr. Brown said. “It’s about fitting sustainability into our own lives.” And hoping, he added, “that a friend will come over, recognize that it’s fun, start doing it, and then a friend of theirs will start doing it.”
With their professors as collaborators, and with their own technological and political savvy, students are persuading administrators to switch to fossil-free fuel on campus — Middlebury is building an $11 million wood-chip-powered plant, part of its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2016 — serve locally grown food in dining halls and make hybrid cars available for shared transportation when, say, the distance is too far to bike and there is no bus. Students are planting organic gardens and competing in dorm energy-use Olympics. At Oberlin last year, some students in the winning dorm did not shower for two weeks, officials said.
“This is a generation that is watching the world come undone,” said David Orr, a professor of environmental studies at Oberlin. Projects like the Oberlin house, he said, are “helping them understand how to stitch the world together again.”
Good for those kids. Now, your typical conservative will note that the winners of that contest didn't take showers for two weeks, sneer, "Ugh, dirty hippies," and move on. The real story here is how a particular kind of asceticism is being incorporated as a social ideal by these students, and lived out not with eat-your-peas grimness, but with pleasure, even joy. They are doing something through creative renunciation to rebuild what decadence helped destroy.
Where are conservatives in this? This idealistic project is fundamentally conservative. No conservative politician has any idea how to relate to what these kids are doing. Aside from some Evangelical churches, I'm not aware of any politically or culturally conservative institution or group that can speak to this kind of idealism.
If they could, they could ally with liberals to stitch the world back together in terms of the natural environment, but also discover, and teach, how to stitch families and communities back together, according to traditional wisdom. (As ever, Wendell Berry is the one to read; the title essay of Berry's "Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community" examines how a totally privatized view of both the economy and sexuality harms the community and inhibits true human flourishing).
There is a natural connection between stewardship of the earth and stewardship of the self, the family and the community. Taking care of the environment is only a partial truth -- but it's one too many conservatives reject or ignore. As I wrote in "Crunchy Cons," a proper environmentalism is entirely consistent with true conservatism. The next generation of conservative leaders will understand this. They'll have to. A conservatism that doesn't speak honestly to this rising idealism will be moribund.
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The "lifestyle" these neo-hippies are practicing is all well and good, as far as it goes, but I'd be a lot more impressed if they were doing this under somewhat different circumstances. If they were doing this five years after graduation while they were: a) working at private-sector jobs; b) paying off their student loans without help from Mommy and Daddy; and c) married (each to one person of the opposite sex, please !) and actually trying to raise children, I'd be a lot more inclined to take them seriously.
How many neo-hippies do you know personally? Why would being 'married' to someone of the same sex make conserving easier? What if you found a young gay (either sex), professional couple paying off student debt (5 years after graduation no less), conserving resources, and adopting kids; so it misses one of your criteria, what then?
aaron @ 1:11 PM writes:
"How many neo-hippies do you know personally?"
Several dozen; my more rural clientele does tend to run to the longhair crowd. I've even had clients ask me to consider investing in various enterprises involving hemp production.
"Why would being 'married' to someone of the same sex make conserving easier?"
Do go back and re-read what I posted earlier. Being married--to someone of the opposite sex--makes conserving easier, for the simple reason that two adults living in a house can do so more cheaply than one. Also, a second adult can make life much easier when children are involved---and children are the primary purpose of the marriage relationship.
"What if you found a young gay (either sex), professional couple paying off student debt (5 years after graduation no less), conserving resources, and adopting kids; so it misses one of your criteria, what then?"
They would become front-runners for my Close-But-No-Cigar Award. As I've written on other threads, marriage is ideally all about preserving the species through the bearing and raising of children. Homosexuals are incapable of doing so without artificial assistance; therefore they cannot participate fully in this project. They can certainly contribute to society in other ways, using such talents and skills as they may have. Some of them may well, in fact, have much to contribute, and in many areas. That's where the "Close" comes in.
As far as adopting children is concerned, Human children remain Human children no matter who adopts them. They are possibly better off in adoptive homes than in foster care---and please notice I say POSSIBLY; I've seen long-term foster homes that are very fine and adoptive homes that are nearly Dickensian in their squalor and cruelty---but children need both masculine and feminine role models to develop optimally. A homosexual couple cannot provide both. They can love and care for a child, certainly, but we're talking about providing an OPTIMAL environment for child-rearing. Does a child deserve less than that ?
I see no reason to send children to sub-optimal settings when better ones are clearly available. So give them a No-Prize and tell them better luck next life.
I trust this answers your questions. I remain, as always,
Your servant,
Lord Karth
But the fact is that the dominant ideological value shared by all Americans is the quite unconservative idea of unlimited freedom, and our furious political antagonisms revolve largely over the question of which aspects of life such unlimited freedom is to obtain (whether one should apply it to the economy or one's personal life). We are in need of an abstinence movement whose slogan would be "true prosperity waits," complete with bracelets and t-shirts celebrating the treasure that waits in heaven. It would be more accountable and measurable than the "true love waits" campaign.
Well said. I just wanted to repeat it.
Rod,
A few years back there was a story, it even made the NYTimes, about how recycling paper was actually worse for the environment because when everything was tallied, such as chemicals to bleach the old paper, it turned out that chopping down new trees was better for the planet (I think it became efficient, but now with global warming added to the calculation, cutting down old trees and planting new ones is once again better because old trees don't absorb CO2). What's your stance on issues like that? Do you prefer people "do something" if the intention is good, even if it is worse for the planet?
I admit I'm biased against stories like these because I've challenged many environmentalists on similar issues and I always get a blank stare or an irrational response. The co-founder of Greenpeace is pro-nuclear power and pro-logging, both positive for the environment, but he is a voice in the wilderness. Conservatives cite him to bash liberals, but they still view environmentalism as the domain of crack-pot hippies. Liberals don't like him because he takes a rational approach, rather than a religious one.
A few years back there was a story, it even made the NYTimes, about how recycling paper was actually worse for the environment because when everything was tallied, such as chemicals to bleach the old paper, it turned out that chopping down new trees was better for the planet
The environmental thing to ask would be "do we really need paper THAT bleached?"
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