Caring About The Individual and the Whole

I mention in the About Me portion of this blog that I'm proud to connect myself to a growing wave of revolutionaries who are asking not only about the toxicity and oppressiveness of their own environments, but about how the choices we make create or contribute to toxic and/or oppressive environments for others. To me a fundamental issue that needs to be examined if we're going to enter into those types of discussions is our perception of the tension between the good of the individual and the good of the whole. In my observation, sometimes that is all it is: a perceived tension rather than an actual one. When the issues are fully examined for both the individual and the whole, usually the good of one is best for the other and vice versa.

Take smoking for example. It's a topic that in recent years especially we've begun to look at how it is neither good for the individual or the whole. Smoking creates toxic environments internally for the individual and externally for the whole and its addictive nature leads to a form of oppression for the individual as well. But to just make that observation without going to the next step of the good of the individual and the good of the whole isn't enough either! I don't hear us doing enough yet to get to the root of why so many in our stress-filled lifestyles would feel a need to escape into something as damaging to the body and to others around them as nicotine is. And I don't hear the important questions being asked yet about how we can find and fund some new George Washington Carvers who will do for the tobacco plant what he did for the peanut and the sweet potato so we don't have to shut down entire industries and bankrupt thousands and disrupt farms and destroy livelihoods in order to fully reform this trend.

I am for both the good of the individual and the good of the whole in all areas--and for the kinds of serious dialogue and discovery that uncover how both can coexist. That's true in the area of transportation as well. We know enough now to know that the ideal probably is to reverse the trail technology has taken us down toward destroying our planet by the way we move about it. But that doesn't mean the good of the whole has to sacrifice the good of the individuals who can't make the same choices as easily as I can for a pedestrian lifestyle. What about large families with several babies and toddlers living out in the middle of rural America? What about the many who cannot find work to support themselves that is anywhere near where they live yet? How do they get from place to place until enough of the revolution has taken place to make pedestrian lifestyles more feasible and rewarding for more people? Or what about those in highly intemperate climates? Or those whose health or age does not allow them to use their feet for transportation?

That's why I get excited about the Alternative Car Expo that Santa Monica hosts free for the public each year. It starts this kind of dialogue going about the options and the possibilities. Fun and creative modes of transportation are showcased for anyone and everyone that do far less harm to the individuals and the whole than the ones we're using now.

They talk about important issues like how more cities can do what New York does in making public transportation convenient and accessible and very much the norm. How we as a country could do more of what works so beautifully in Switzerland and other countries for moving people about from place to place. One option that was showcased at last year's event--www.tritrack.net--did an amazing job of combining the needs of the individual and the needs of the whole, with a model for zipping around in little vehicles that go up onto the rail for mass transit and then down on to streets for individual mobility without harming the environment in the process. I sent the link to my young nephews so they could start their engineering brains going now with ideas like this one for new fun ways to zip about the planet without destroying it in the process.

I'm not suggesting the billions of people on the planet should suddenly adopt a pedestrian lifestyle like my own anymore than I'm suggesting we shut down the tobacco industry overnight. What I do hope is that we open dialogues about what the choices we make are costing us--both individually and as a whole. And that we start working toward solutions. That's how every successful revolution I can think of in history has begun. Small groups of people start gathering together to ask the hard questions. And soon it turns into community meetings. And then into public forums. Until finally enough of an army of revolutionaries has been amassed to actually get something done.

We are living at a time in history where we have the resources to get things done. We can "rally the troops" on these and many other important issues of the quality of our lives and the lives of those generations coming after us. We can start A Walking Revolution.

It takes caring about the individual. And it takes caring about the whole. If you've read some of my earlier entries in this Blog you know from the "Why I Walk" one that I first took to foot for my individual benefit and you know from the "In Memory of..." one that the events of 9-11 caused me to take that decision even more seriously for the good of the whole. It takes both to revolutionize the way we do things.

That's what I hope to plant the seeds of. And if you live in or near the city of Santa Monica, I hope to see you at the free Alt Car Expo next weekend (Sept. 26 and 27) in the Civic Center across the street from the beautiful RAND Corporation I work for part-time asking yourself what you can do for the good of yourself as an individual that will also benefit the whole where moving about the planet on a daily basis is concerned. www.altcarexpo.com