The solutions to the world’s problems are known. This struck me recently when I was reading a scathing article on the folly of our collective inaction in the face of environmental destruction in Harper’s:

The general reaction to the apparent end of the era of cheap fossil fuel, as to other readily foreseeable curtailments, has been to delay any sort of reckoning. The strategies of delay, so far, have been a sort of willed oblivion. The dominant response, in short, is a dogged belief that what we call the American Way of Life will prove somehow indestructible. We will keep on consuming, spending, wasting, and driving, as before, at any cost to anything and everybody but ourselves. This belief was always indefensible—the real names of global warming are Waste and Greed—and by now it is manifestly foolish. But foolishness on this scale looks disturbingly like a sort of national insanity. We seem to have come to a collective delusion of grandeur, insisting that all of us are “free” to be as conspicuously greedy and wasteful as the most corrupt of kings and queens.

It’s no mystery that the degradation of the environment requires a massive realignment of our ways of consumption. We have to consume far less, waste far less, pollute far less. And to resist inequality and greed we have to also consume less, to turn over less of our money to the corporations that are perpetrating wholesale injustices. And we need to seek out and put into practice ways to function equitably and sustainably. Yes, of course governments and corporations are at fault, and the possibility of swaying them can seem like applying pressure to immovable objects, but that’s no reason not to try. The powerful bullies of the world hold most of the strings, but not only is there a lack of broad popular commitment to changing the fundamental conditions through grassroots mobilizing, but basic conservation and measures to foster equality are not widely acted on by even most individuals, in the spheres within which we each have direct control.

There’s a wide range of possible action and degrees of commitment. Shopping at eco-boutiques or buying only fair trade is well and good, but for most of us it’s not a useful option. We can’t afford it, and buying a few trinkets here and there is not much of an answer. A much more radical transformation of how we think and live is going to yield the most results.

But even for those who are not radicalized and don’t want to see ourselves as living an alternative way of life, there are possibilities for transformation, both big and small. Many will say that the public has given up, that we see ourselves as so powerless we’ve all just collectively thrown in the towel. That’s why we don’t vote, don’t show up for protests or community events, don’t even try to make our voices heard or alter how we live. Yet we make choices every day, and those choices have both harmful and useful consequences, and when multiplied by the hundreds of millions, even only counting those of us in America, they form the fabric of our world.

Given even the dismaying choices of voting for an awful or a more awful candidate, tens of millions go out to the polls to specifically choose the more awful option. And in our own lives? Why was the average home size in the United States 2,330 square feet in 2004, up from 1,400 square feet in 1970? A larger home is less affordable and consumes more energy, so why the folly of choosing to live in one? Of all the various types of available automobiles, why does anyone buy anything other than the cheapest or most efficient (which often go hand in hand)? Sure, there are many variables. A given community that is seen as the safest and offering the best schools may only have expensive housing. But then why do we not question the fear that leads us to assume that slums should be left to the desperate and poor and that those who can afford it, even if only just barely, should ensconce themselves in sheltered and sanitized communities?

I can see the furrowed brows of those who will say that the victims of the powerful ruling elites are not the culprits. Yes, those of us toward the bottom — or even middle, with the exception of only a few at the very top — of the economic ladder didn’t create the conditions that all of us are forced to exist under, yet just by looking around, there doesn’t seem to be any collective or individual will to change even what conditions are within our control. If you think environmental degradation is worrying, then conserve. If you deplore inequality and human suffering, then don’t support the companies that perpetuate both. Or withdraw your support to the extent that is feasible for you.

The ugly truth is that we are all complicit, unless we are at least trying. It’s important to care and to become informed, indeed those are necessary steps, but the next step, it seems to me, starts with the most basic: transforming our day-to-day.

MickeyZ writes, in No Innocent Bystanders: Riding Shotgun in the Land of Denial:

Their participation in the two party farce and their acceptance of lesser evilism, however, are not seen as the problem by those in the know. It’s all Bush’s fault. There are no innocent bystanders when our money and/or rhetoric support the world’s most powerful military and the corporate status quo. But if we just keep telling ourselves it’s all Bush’s fault, we can sleep better, our innocence wrapped around us like a big white SUV.

The heady promise of liberation of our very thoughts and assumptions, and the means to turn those thoughts into actions, is real and accessible. These perhaps controversial — a bit too dramatic? too optimistic? — quotes below are from Crimethinc. How to put them into practice is left up to us, but certainly we can each see a vision of ourselves that includes choosing to live, at the very least, with much less waste and material consumption, but without taking on the notion of giving something up or forgoing what we care about and love:

Look at the world around us; it is a world that we have created. We transformed the old world into this one—but why this one? Is this the world we would have chosen, if we had considered in advance the question of what the best of all possible worlds might be? But before you despair, think—we created this world, it is we who make it up. Could we not make another world out of it, then, if we chose?

But this is how the revolution begins: a few of us start chasing our dreams, breaking our old patterns, embracing what we love, daydreaming, questioning, acting outside the boundaries of routine and regularity. Once enough people embrace this new way of living, a point of critical mass is finally reached, and society itself begins to change. From that moment, the world will start to undergo a transformation: from the frightening, alien place that it is, into a place ripe with possibility, where our lives are in our own hands and any dream can come true.