THE DEMONS OF OUR NATURE

Steven Pinker’s new 800-page book, The Better Angels of our Nature, is a real shocker. Pinker’s main point is that, evil as the present may appear, things in the past were much worse. In gruesome detail, he describes the horrible things humans have done to each other throughout history. After the first 100 pages, I stopped reading and looking at the illustrations of tortures, and skimmed the remainder of the book.

Pinker ends the book with some cautious optimism about the future. Perhaps we will continue on a path toward more humane and rational treatment of each other, guided by rationality and the need to survive.

I am skeptical. When we can push a button to destroy a city without seeing the carnage that results, are we any better than medieval executioners who watched their victims slowly dying on the rack? Are we not simply objectifying those we kill, treating them like avatars in a video game? Are we not still murderers?

We are slowly ruining our planet, also. Population biologists like Paul Ehrlich have warned since the sixties that for survival the world population must be controlled, but for some reason I can’t fathom, it has become politically incorrect to urge women to use birth control. At the same time, “pro-life” groups have fought against Planned Parenthood because their clinics offer abortion in addition to contraception. Apparently these groups are willing to allow unwanted children to be born to parents who cannot afford them, and some women forced to bear children resulting from  rape or incest. To me, that attitude is truly evil.

Sometimes we seem to be lurching back into the Dark Ages. As recently as the 1950s, when I was in high school in a conservative area of rural Michigan, the theory of evolution through natural selection was widely accepted in most of the country. No one was forced to believe the theory, but we were expected to know the scientific evidence that supported it. The Scopes “monkey trial” was just an amusing bit of history. Today creationists all over the country make it difficult for biology teachers to present the theory that unifies their field and that has been accepted by the scientific community since the late nineteenth century.

Voltaire,  that brilliant philosopher of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, spoke through his Candide that this is not at all the “best of all possible worlds.” After traveling the world and experiencing much of the depravity Pinker describes, Candide went home to “make his garden grow.” He recognized how much irreparable evil and ignorance surrounds us, and contented himself with trying to live his own life with honor and decency. Voltaire himself fought against religious intolerance and injustice throughout his life, at times being banished from France or imprisoned.

I am as saddened by the stupidity and evil of modern life as I am horrified by the wickedness of the past as described by Pinker. As we sang in the sixties, “When will we ever learn?” Voltaire had it right, though. We may not be able to change quickly or on a large scale, but as individuals we can work for social justice and for rational approaches to life; and perhaps if our species survives for a few more centuries we can change into the beings we are capable of becoming.

RV ENVIRONMENTALISTS

 

Knowing we are environmentalists, friends sometimes look amused when we announce we are planning another trip in the RV. How, they wonder, can we justify using all those fossil fuels and polluting the air with carbon compounds?

They have a point. We try to minimize the environmental damage as much as possible. Our 24’ Sprinter-based motorhome (which uses gasoline rather than diesel) gets about 13 mpg, very low compared with most autos, but high in comparison with larger rigs. When we can, we take the shortest route to destinations (though often we choose scenic routes). If a campground close to home is as appealing as one farther away, we choose the nearer one. We seldom tow anything—our inflatable kayak was carried on the Suzuki just once, but usually travels under the dinette table—to keep the RV as light as we can. As it is only 24’ long, we can drive into rather small parking spaces, and we don’t usually need to have a dinghy. Yosemite, Glacier, and some other national parks provide buses for visitors; our rig can stay in the campground. By having our own “apartment” with us, we can stay out of elaborate resorts and campgrounds that are like small towns, and stay in Forest Service campgrounds, where there has been little despoiling of the natural environment.

The propane used for heating and refrigeration goes surprisingly far, probably because the rig’s interior is small. We avoid using the microwave oven, doing most cooking in a Dutch oven on the stovetop, which also heats the interior somewhat. If we happen to have electrical hookups, a tiny ceramic heater keeps us warm without using propane. Of course, then we are using electricity; we balance that use with reading rather than watching TV. Occasionally we take wood from our home in the forest to make a campfire, if we are not going far. (Wood can harbor insects that might be invasive in other areas.) We keep the refrigerator and freezer very full, minimizing the number of shopping trips and making refrigeration as efficient as possible. When stopping for the night, we always use simple leveling blocks, which also maximizes the refrigerator’s efficiency. (This can be annoying, but is important.)

Being a coffee addict, I have to make a special effort to conserve electricity. Water is heated in a camper’s teakettle, then poured through coffee in a Melitta filter cone. If I don’t drink the coffee immediately, I save it in a thermos to avoid having to reheat it. Yet, some campers say they _must_ use their microwaves for reheating coffee!

Knowing that the fresh water tank holds only 35 gallons, which must do for showers, toilet-flushing, cooking, and cleanup, we are extremely frugal with water. Our showers are the Navy type—rinse off quickly, turn off the water, soap up, rinse again quickly, turn off the water! Or, we may take sponge baths. Yogurt containers in the shower and on the counters hold warmup water for later uses. We try to dry-camp most of the time, and use the vault toilets rather than our water-consuming toilet. Cooking and dishwashing are done with the smallest amounts of water possible, but we do use our lightweight Corelle dishes rather than disposable plastics. We wash and re-use aluminum foil, cover dishes with saucers instead of plastic wrap, and save glass and aluminum for later recycling. I always feel smug when dropping a tiny litter bag (if anything) into a campground’s Dumpster, seeing the gigantic bags inside.

My companion is an enthusiastic user of solar energy, both at home and while traveling. This means hauling a solar panel with us and hooking it up to the batteries; in sunny weather it provides enough electricity for us. In fact, we only use the generator during extreme heat waves, when air conditioning is a necessity. Only one light is on at a time, and the TV is usually off. We do use the radio, which uses a very small amount of electricity.

Though we prefer dry-camping, our small tanks limit us to doing so for about three days at a time. After that, we must look for a campground with hookups. Even there, we avoid wasting electricity and water. The sustainable habits imposed during dry-camping serve us well when resources seem more plentiful, as well as when we go home again.