At work the other day, I overheard a colleague say: “I’m a pragmatist.” Something about that word “pragmatism” resonated for me, so I googled it.
This led me into quite the rabbit hole. First, I listened to two podcasts about this philosophy. Then, I took a deep dive into pragmatism, listening to the book “Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James can save your life” by philosopher John Kaag.
But what does this have to do with the theme of this newsletter — environ/mental health?
Well, in his 20s, William James was deeply depressed. He created an entire philosophy to save his life from despair and nihilism. This philosophy, called pragmatism, is well…practical. I think it can be applied not just to personal despair, but to our collective despair about environmental degradation.
Pragmatism gives us two helpful perspectives that can be applied to environmental problems: meliorism and pluralism.
Meliorism
Meliorism is the view that we can make things a little bit better every day. Meliorism stands between optimism (the belief that things will be better) and pessimism (the belief that things will be worse). Meliorism doesn’t need to know anything at all about the future.
Similar to Stoicism, Meliorism focuses on what we can control: our actions and, to some extent, our thoughts.
Meliorism gives us the responsibility and the power to make things “a little better.” From the perspective of meliorism, I don’t have to wallow in:
my past environmental sins, or
the predictions of us all being doomed
Instead, I can think about ways that I’ll help the planet, and take small, practical, actions.
Pluralism
Pluralism is the idea that there is no way to know the absolute, Capital T Truth. All we can hope for is pursuing a small t truth, today. As William James put it:
We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.
What is the best way to help the environment? Is it this or that technology? Is it bioregionalism or electric cars or education for women? I don’t know. We don’t know. There is no best way; there are a million good ways.
We can pursue different truths, different ecologically-beneficial visions, in parallel. The same good intention of health for both the environment and our species can lead to a great diversity of specific actions. We can each follow our stoke about the environment, and see where it leads.
As the educator John Taylor Gatto said, “There isn't a right way to become educated; there are as many ways as there are fingerprints.” Similarly, there isn’t one right way to help the environment, but billions of ways as unique as people on this planet.
The books Drawdown and Regeneration are examples of pluralism. Within their pages lie not just one idea for helping the environment, but hundreds.
An experimental approach
Work a little harder, work another way —Modest Mouse
Pluralism and meliorism are inter-related. Just as there is not one best way out of depression, there is not one best way to get out of this environmental mess we’re in. For example, next year, I’m going to try living on an eco-village called Dancing Rabbit for two weeks.
“Is this really the best use of my time?” asks the voice of doubt in my head. “Isn’t this a useless experiment in utopianism?”
Well, maybe.
But I know that I feel excited, and have felt excited for a long time, about exploring eco-villages. So I’m doing it.
When I spoke with a staff member at Dancing Rabbit, she said “I sometimes get down on myself for not doing enough, but then I remind myself: we’re an experimental eco-village.”
This experimental attitude is at the heart of pragmatism. We need to experiment to see what works, what sticks to the wall. We need to iterate the truths of today, to come to the truths of tomorrow.
Experience and experiment have common roots: ex = “out of” and per = “to try, to risk.”
I like that. Experiments are born from risk. They might not pan out. But in the risking, there is the living.
Writing group — a one year anniversary!
Today marked the anniversary of an environmental writing group that a friend and I started, a year ago. We’ve been meeting on zoom every month, encouraging each other in our endeavors.
Today I asked the group, “What gives you hope?”
Someone shared that she’s noticing that existential and environmental conversations are becoming more mainstream. I showed a bunch of TIME magazine covers from the past year, many of which are about environmental problems.
We remarked on how awesome it is that these discussions are more in the open now, and that it’s likely that real change will follow.
Despite this, my friend in the group mentioned that he often feels hopeless. I told him that while there’s a lot of bad news out there, one year ago, our writing group didn’t exist, and now it does. From the perspective of meliorism, this is a win. We are doing the best we can to make things a little bit better.
I hope that this newsletter has been useful to you in your environ/mental health journey. I’m curious: What kind of themes would you want me to explore in the next year? In what ways can I be of service?
An offering: on January 3rd 2023, my friend and I will be co-hosting the first writing group of the new year at this link.
The group is free and we will start off discussing what gives us hope, and then will do some co-writing. Hope to see some of you there!