quote: what can I do?

"Probably the most commonly asked question of people just arriving at a deep concern for the ecological crisis is, “What can I, as an individual, do to make things better?” The simple answer, which I learned from living among Zapatista villagers, is nothing. Because we have to stop acting as individuals if we are to survive; the Earth won't be affected by our individual actions, only our collective impact.

The Zapatistas’ slogan, "Para todos todo, para nosotros nada" ("Everything for Everyone, Nothing for Us") rang true in the mid-1990s and still rings true today. But this slogan has a certain mystery. The demand “nothing for us” runs so counter to anything any of us — the resource-hungry individuals of the so-called First World — would ever think of demanding. As the saying goes, no one ever rioted for austerity. Yet, without feeling cheated, we need to build our capacity to live by another old saying: Enough is better than a feast..."

--From "What the Zapatistas Can Teach Us About the Climate Crisis", by Jeff Conant. Entire (excellent) article at http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/04-0.

Wow. Surely there are many others who, like me, keep asking "what can I do?", and find their intimidation at the world's state quickly disintegrating into despair. But these words offer something of a new approach to the question. More than that: I think they offer an invitation to a new way of asking the question. I, for one, am in desperate need of an alternative to the futile practice of envisioning how I, personally, can in any way mitigate the actions of BP, the U.S. military, the banking system. I, along with many of willing hearts (but lacking the time and resources to invest in full-time activist work) am in desperate need of something I can do. And in fact, I don't need to protest. I think one thing this world has a surplus of is the stating of the obvious. The NO's seem more than obvious enough already. And the relations between various choirs and preachers already confirmed. What's needed is more room to listen. What's needed is the breathing room in which to begin, at all, to listen to new possibilities.

In this quote I read, not easy answers, but ways to introduce oneself to possibilities. As well as alternate ways to do something in the world. Having enough, and knowing it, is surely something to do in a country whose consumption is so criminally disproportionate to the world's. Accepting nothing, when appropriate -- when, in fact, it liberates -- is doing something profound. (Rioting for austerity, in my personal opinion, could be a beautiful thing, and I like imagining what form that might take). Contributing to a "collective impact" is excellent, and needed where it can be done. But this offers a act preliminary to even that: prior to connecting with the larger network is the upgrading of a personal operating system based on individuality at the expense of all else. Or, to be slightly less critical: individuality, and individual survival, imagined before anything else is imagined.

"Everything for Everyone" doesn't exclude us. It includes us, in a way we've rarely allowed ourselves to imagine. And surely, in a way that our socioeconomic structure, feeding on our sacred life energies as it does, has not permitted us to imagine. What this quote offers to me is an invitation, not to think about invalidating my own wants or needs, but to open up more to the idea of being included. Whatever form, practical or mysterious, that might take in the everyday. I'm not going to specify what that form might be, to myself or to others. Only to pay attention and see what turns up.