Turn the Principles Upside Down
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One night before going to bed a farmer was standing a few steps in front of his house, meditating over the many troubles that had beset his livestock. “I cannot imagine why the cattle do not get better,” said he out loud to himself. “I will tell you,” said a squeaky little voice close by him. The farmer turned in the direction of the sound and saw a tiny little man, looking very angrily at him. “It is,” continued the wee man, “because your family keeps on annoying mine so much.” “How is that?” asked the farmer, surprised and puzzled. “You are always throwing the slops from your house down the chimney of my house,” said the little man.
“That cannot be,” retorted the farmer. “There is no house within a mile of mine.” “Put your foot on my foot,” said the small stranger, “and you will see that what I say is true.” The farmer complied, putting his foot on the other’s foot, and he could suddenly and clearly see that the slops thrown out of his house did indeed go down the chimney of the other’s house, which stood far below in a street he had never seen before. As soon as he took his foot off the little man’s, however, there was no sign of house or chimney. “I’ve been pouring my slops down your chimney! Well, indeed, I am very sorry,” said the farmer. “What can I do to make up for the annoyance which my family has caused you?”
The tiny little man was satisfied by the farmer’s apology, and he said: “You had better wall up the door on this side of your house and make another in the other side. If you do that, your slops will no longer be a nuisance to my family and myself.” Having said this he vanished in the dusk of the night.
The farmer obeyed, and his cattle recovered. Ever after he was a most prosperous man, and nobody was as successful as he in rearing stock in all the land. And unless they have pulled it down to build a new one, you can still see his house with the front door in the back.
—A Welsh Tale: “Why Deunant Has the Front Door in the Back”
The farmer in the story doesn’t set out to inconvenience anyone. He’s simply minding his own business and taking care of his farm with the minimum amount of effort and fuss. He is, in fact, completely unaware of his neighbors. Now, of course, the neighbors in the story are “wee folk,” whose households and economies are invisible to the man even when he is told where to look. In fact, without special assistance, the farmer cannot see either the little man’s village or the mess his “slops” have made!
In a similar way it has been common practice in the dominant western culture to not see the homes or life-ways of the poor, of people of color, of first nation’s peoples or even of native plant and animal ecologies for that matter—freeing us to blithely dump our slops over the wall into the “weeds.” For many of us, as part of this culture, our focus has been on ourselves and our convenience, and we have demonstrated an amazing inability even to see certain others.
In the opening pages of his book, Deep Economy, Bill McKibben writes: “For most of human history, the two birds More and Better roosted on the same branch. You could toss one stone and hope to hit them both.” More food, more shelter, more stuff, more mobility—these without a doubt made life better for millions of people, and since More is easier to quantify than Better, and since More initially leads to Better (as in better health and better standards of living), governments and cultures started to focus on More.
Unfortunately, one of the side effects of this focus is that more for some often means less for others. And if the “others” are invisible—well, that’s fewer folks with whom we have to share, so the better for us.
But, McKibbon tells us, “Better no longer roosts on the same branch as More.” All over the world, it seems that once basic needs—food, clothing, housing, education, health care—are met, any additional happiness is far more closely correlated to intangibles than it is to money or stuff. After those needs are satisfied, our lives become appreciably better not when we have more stuff, but rather when we have deeper connections, stronger relationships, a more vibrant commons, a cleaner environment, more culture, more meaning.
It turns out that our individualistic pursuit of More—more money, more stuff, more convenience—ends up consuming a lot of the time and energy that could lead to Better. This also creates a lot of slops and the need to find places to put them.
You have probably heard of “Peak Oil”—that moment when our fossil fuel consumption peaks and the oil reserves of our planet are half depleted. Well, I am anxiously awaiting the moment of “Peak Stuff”—the time when our throwaway material culture begins to reverse itself. I am looking forward to the moment we cease to see those slops as waste to be dumped over the wall and start to see them as resources to be composted for the garden.
I look forward to the time when we will stop buying things to be used and thrown away and instead start investing our time, creativity and energy to help create durable objects, healthier ecologies and stronger, more resilient relationships and communities. What we need is a shift in how we view the world, one that will, in turn, shift how we organize our actions.
When an artist wants to critique a composition that has grown too familiar he or she will often look at a piece of art in the mirror or turn it upside down, to gain a different perspective. Moving our intention from a world where More is the goal to a world that is looking for Better is one way to shift the focus. Reading our UU Principles from bottom to top is another.
What happens when we turn our Principles upside down?
On one level, nothing changes. All the same words are there. But something is different when we affirm and promote: “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part” as the first thing on our list and leave celebrating the inherent worth and dignity of every person until the end—along with its implied parenthetical conclusion: (especially me).
I’m intrigued by this reversal because I think we get stuck in that first principle rather often. In our voluntary associations we often come and go based on whether we feel like our inherent worth and dignity—or our perspective and opinion—is accorded its full due. I suspect (although I haven’t a smattering of proof) that if we start reading and living our principles beginning with the communal disciplines and ending with the more personal ones we could find ourselves in the midst of a fulfilling transformation. I imagine that by paying more attention to the interdependent web of existence of which I am a part than to my inherent worth and dignity, I can shift my emphasis from More to Better.
Humans are relational beings: like it or not we are always embedded in community. This is good because it means that by tending to our community we also support our own well-being. Creating stronger relationships and a vibrant commons gives all of us and each of us a better quality of life. Nurture what is Better in the community and we arrive at Better for each individual.
Recall that our UU values were initially articulated in the midst of the Enlightenment at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Even the wealthiest of most of our UU forebears were materially quite poor. To walk through Thoreau’s cottage or Emerson’s home or the Alcott house is to be reminded that although they were intellectually and spiritually and relationally wealthy, our spiritual ancestors were materially poor in comparison to us.
In that time, our Unitarian forebears were deeply grounded in their interconnected community, but their innovative emphasis on the worth and dignity of the individual was needed as an important Enlightenment corrective to both the undue privileging of some classes of human beings and the impulse to devalue all humankind as cogs in an economic machine.
What they took for granted in their shared interdependent web of relationships with each other and with the places they lived, we have nearly lost in our intense pursuit of the individual good. In our time we need a different corrective.
I am persuaded that much of the harm we do to ourselves and to others falls under the category of unintended side effects—slops dumped over the wall unknowingly. Our forebears never dreamed that honoring the inherent worth and dignity of every person would result in the hyper-individualism and disconnection of our current culture. It never occurred to them that human agency could create global warming or decimate local food sheds or destroy the relational fabric of our communities. It never occurred to them that we would forfeit the “good” that they took for granted in our pursuit of more stuff, more choices and more convenience.
If we UUs reverse the order of our principles we will shift our goals and our focus from “more for me” to “better for us.” Both the intended results and the unintended side effects will be healthier for all concerned.
Your inherent worth and dignity are still important. You do not have to give up imported coffee or chocolate. You do not have to silence your needs or stifle your feelings or become a door mat for others to walk all over. You do need to be willing to flex, and to go out of your way to act for the good of the group first, in trust that acting for the good of your neighbor will benefit you by and by.
As Bill McKibben writes, “Reorient your personal compass a little bit (to) shed a certain amount of your hyper-individualism and replace it with a certain amount of neighborliness…. Think of yourself as a member of a community and you’ll get a better deal. You’ll (help) build a world with some hope of ecological stability, where the chances increase that you’ll be happy.”
Human happiness isn’t about More for me; it’s about Better for all of us. To get there we need to turn our whole culture upside down. And what better place to start than reorienting our own principles in order to live in a new way?
- Turn the Principles Upside Down - July 1, 2014
