Why Local Matters

If you ever come visit me in Vermont, we are going to go to Ben & Jerry’s. My family has always done that with everyone who has never been to Vermont before. If it is a nice, summer day, we very well might go down the road to the Stowe Bike Path. Not only are these places that I am always looking for an excuse to go to, but they are things that are unique to my area. You cannot have these experiences elsewhere, so if you come to my home state, I want you to be able to check them out. If we have something that is good, I want to be able to share that with you.

Let’s imagine a scenario, however, that you come to Vermont, and I really want to take you to McDonald’s. I’m not writing this to necessarily bash McDonald’s, but you probably have a McDonald’s within five minutes of wherever you live. If you eat at the McDonald’s that is relatively near my house, it is probably going to be a lot like the one that is near your house. That can be a good or bad thing depending on how you feel about the mega chain, but if you were to eat at a McDonald’s in Vermont, you will have learned nothing unique about Vermont.

If you know anything about McDonald’s, you know that their food preparation procedures are extremely uniform. They have their work down to a very tight process, and because they are so committed to doing things the same way every time, the product is largely the same no matter which location you decide to eat at. The Vermont version will be ideally identical to any other location in the United States.

Our experience of a place is not only determined by what we eat naturally, but when you come to Vermont, you have the opportunity to do some things that you can only do in Vermont. Doesn’t it then make sense that while you are in different places, you should take advantage of these opportunities that you could not have in your own hometown or really anywhere else?

It is worth wondering why these experiences are different in different places though. There is no reason that a very fine ice cream factory could not be built in Toledo. There is no reason that you could not find a beautiful bike path in a different town with very similar scenery to what we have in Stowe.

We ignore geography in our normal lives because we have largely triumphed over any constraint that geography had even up to 100 years ago. We are no longer limited by distance. I could go to the airport today and practically go anywhere in the world in a day or two. While most of the European world never went to China and had to imagine what it was like through the stories they collected from people like Marco Polo, it would be really easy for me to book a flight to Beijing. China does not and certainly is not an unachievable destination in the modern age.

Shipping particular food is not necessarily a problem either. Consider what types of food naturally grow in a particular country and then remember that it is really easy to move just about any kind of food around the world. That’s what makes it possible for McDonald’s to operate everywhere. Even if beef cattle would not really be able to survive in a particular climate, it is quite easy to ship hamburger to wherever it needs to go. Our food is not limited by geography either. When I go to China, I can eat exactly what I have Vermont more or less (although I do understand that there are geographically different menus for chains like this, I have a feeling that hamburger is pretty universal outside India).

However, what do we lose by ignoring geography? What happens when I go to China and purchase the same hamburger I can get here?

On one hand, not very much. That is the beauty of a global economy. We have the ability to meet consumer demand anywhere in the world. If people in China want a McDonald’s, or if I want McDonald’s when I travel to China, I will not have a problem fulfilling that desire. I may not really be experiencing what is unique about China, but I am getting what I want, so some people would say that there is really no problem with this type of scenario.

On the other hand though, sticking with this culinary example even though it could apply to different elements of any culture, we lose a significant part of the adventure when we don’t take advantage of unique experiences that we can only find in certain places around the world.

My family was recently in Gettysburg, and for each lunch and dinner, we ate at a restaurant that was Civil War themed. Those are the types of restaurants that don’t exist in Vermont, so it was fun to be able to visit them. It is part of what makes a Civil War site like Gettysburg unique. They actually have attractions that are related to what makes their area different than my area.

We could have eaten at McDonald’s, but it would have not really seemed like we were anywhere different than here in our own town. It added to our adventure to try some restaurants we don’t have at home and enjoy a little bit of what makes Gettysburg in this case unique and different.

You might be sitting there and asking yourself what I am trying to aim at here. After all, it seems rather obvious. Let me try to wrap it up for you.

Until approximately 100 years ago, human history was experienced in the local area. While some people, like the aforementioned Marco Polo, went on adventures, most people spent their entire lives within a day’s journey of their immediate area. Travel was difficult, so you became very comfortable with the place that you lived. Those places began to develop their own character or culture if you will. Residents there were able to produce certain types of food because of the environment. They built their houses out of certain materials that were readily available. Their clothing was reflective of the temperatures that they had to endure. A person’s life was tied to his or her local area in multiple ways.

Traveling in that time meant that if you did have the privilege of going somewhere else, it was going to be a lot different than the place you were from. They had different conditions that shaped the formation of their culture, so you knew that you were in a different region without a doubt. Chain restaurants were not really a thing because it was not practical for them to be a thing. Wearing the clothing of the Eskimos in the Sahara Desert would make very little sense because of the different climates. We didn’t all shop at American Eagle back then.

When you went to that other place, you knew that you were somewhere different. That was not necessarily a bad thing, of course, but it was obviously a change from the norm. In that time, I would not travel to China and imagine it was just like Vermont. That would not have been the case in the way that I could find certain shared elements today.

What are the consequences of this type of transition?

First, we have lost our sense of local identity. We don’t identify with what makes our particular area unique because we are wrapped up in some type of giant cultural homogenization. When we lose our connection to the place where we are from, we are losing part of what it means to be human. We exist in a certain time and place for a reason, and we need to embrace that connection we have to the world right outside our door.

Second, we feel threatened by the world outside. Granted, we are not connected to our local identity as much as we should be because of this giant process of mass media and mass commerce, but we do cling to certain aspects of our local identity, and that can bring out really ugly parts of humanity. I never had this experience, but many of you may have moved when you were a child. From what I understand, it is hard to be the new kid in school. Why is it hard? There is a desire for familiarity that can cause children to ostracize those who just moved to town. Rather than root our identity in the time and place where we are, we define our identity as being against those who are from elsewhere. You can see this all over in a variety of different applications, but because we have less connection to the local, we still have this desire for our own time and space, but it manifests itself in keeping others out of our culture rather than inviting them into joining it with us.

Third, we lose a sense of adventure. Why do we bother traveling to new places? It is fun to see things we have never seen before. Those differences only come about because different areas have different cultures. If we entirely develop a blanket culture that is entirely the same everywhere you go, there is going to be no adventure. What is the adventure and finding out that everything is exactly the same?

For all of these reasons, we see a decline of community. First of all, we don’t connect with those around us. However, we also are afraid of those from the outside because we feel threatened that our weak connections are going to be diminished entirely by those from without. When you combine that with a reduced sense of adventure that result from cultural homogenization, I think that you can see why it matters.

These parts that make up local communities are important to the people who live there as well as the people who come to experience life there. What we do not need is more of the same. In fact, we need towns to develop their own identities. Communities have different characters, and that is not a bad thing. Rather than just look like every other town in America, it is better if the townspeople, based on their own talents and abilities create their own culture. They take ownership of the result and develop bonds based on these commonalities. When newcomers arrive, they are not a threat to the already strong local culture and are therefore not perceived as such. They may not assimilate immediately to their new culture, but people are willing to accept that diversity because of the strong local identity. They don't feel like a little bit of diversity is going to tear apart their identity. With a weak identity, a little diversity feels like danger. This is the beauty of local cultures and communities.

We hear a lot about buying local and slowing down the economy, but those are only symptoms of the deeper problem. The philosophical problem revolves around our divorcing people from their local communities. Once we bring that unification back together and restore a sense of identity based on geography, we will start to have those good things that we can share with each other. We will have more local favorites like Cheerwine or Big Red. People will be able to experience these great things when they visit other regions, and there will be a degree of adventure and newness about other places that is refreshing and desirable. We don’t do this to shut people out or build barriers, but we do it to build up from within so that those from our area and from other places benefit. It all works together in a giant symbiotic system.

God's Boundaries Are for Our Good

I said that I was not going to write about Chesterton for a little while, but I came across a situation a few weeks ago that brought Chesterton back to the forefront of my mind again. I was thinking about a quote that is misattributed to him by Bartlett as saying, “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up.” The spirit of this quotation, according to the American Chesterton Society, comes from a longer passage in “The Drift from Domesticity.”

“In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, ‘I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.’ To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: ‘If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.’”

You can certainly see the similarity of spirit between the abridged version and the more accurate quotation, but I think that the point of this is pretty hard to miss. We often times think that fences are bad things, and we have come to the conclusion that any type of boundary is some type of affront to our unfettered pursuit of freedom that we feel entitled to in 21st-century America. However, there are some things that it is good to stay away from, and sometimes boundaries are positive things.

Imagine a world where there is no personal property. There would be even more conflict than there already is because there would be no definition of what belongs to me and what belongs to you. Some people picture this as a type of communist utopia, but human nature tells me that we do better when we actually know the situation we find ourselves in, and we prefer the security of knowing that our car will not be taken by someone else while we are inside the grocery store. When we come back out, we have the reasonable expectation that our property will still be where we left it. That allows us to go places and have more freedom than we would if we had to limit ourselves to places that we knew we could return home from. These types of boundaries or fences do indeed restrict freedom, but they serve a purpose and actually provide a greater amount of good than would be provided by removing that restriction.

There is a caveat to this. In the words of James Madison, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” If nobody ever did anything wrong, then obviously we would not need boundaries. We wouldn’t need a law protecting personal property if everyone respected personal property. I would be reasonably assured that going to the grocery store would not result in my being stranded at the grocery store. It is not because the boundary from the outside would protect me, but people’s internal boundaries and sense of morality would protect me. We do not live in that world clearly, but it is worth pointing out that in the ideal world, boundaries may not be necessary if no one would do anything that would cause the harm that the boundaries protect against.

Therefore, given the situation that we find ourselves in, it is worth considering the types of harm that boundaries can protect us from. There are all kinds of things from the outside that can potentially impede our ability to flourish. To bring another founding father into this conversation, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to Charles Yancey, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” The implication of this is that perhaps our greatest threat to our own freedom is our own ignorance. We are not perfect, and we are not always the most intelligent people. Some of us are ignorant by choice while others are ignorant just because they haven’t had the opportunity to be exposed. Boundaries protect us from our own folly at times.

I know this may not be a popular example, but we can consider speed limits. Maybe sometimes they seem too low, but as a general rule, they are there to encourage people to drive within a range of safe speeds. I can imagine being in a town I don’t know very well, and I may not realize there is a local school nearby. It is good for me to slow down in that situation, but because of my own ignorance, I would not know that. Other people who have that knowledge have decided that it would be a good boundary to impose on my driving.

This is not a perfect example because a speed limit is not an unbreakable boundary. I can still be unsafe if I want to be, and my freedom is not restricted by the existence of that speed limit in that moment. However, I think that you see the connection here. It is important for people who know something about a particular situation to be the ones who set the boundaries, and the world will be a better place when they do, based on their own expertise.

Now, we have to return to the beginning of the story. I suggested that boundaries may be good things. This is in stark contrast to our belief in total freedom without limits in America today. Because we are not perfect and did not have perfect knowledge, we rely on the wisdom of others to help determine where those boundaries ought to be set. For some of us, we may be in positions where we even have the ability to help determine some of those because we have the relevant knowledge and expertise to know where the line should be drawn between what maximizes flourishing and what actually causes harm due to excess.

The Christian Parallel 

As Christians then, this is vital for understanding God’s role in our lives and role in the universe. After all, I think that a normal reason that some people reject our faith is because they see it as the imposition of rules. Taking Chesterton’s perspective on this issue allows us to recognize that sometimes boundaries are good, and they provide us with the opportunity to avoid harm. We know what we can do, and we know what we should stay away from.

The common rebuttal for this argument returns to the fact that people do not trust God to know where that boundary line is. They feel that they know better than God. Therefore, if there is going to be aligned about what is right and wrong, I am going to trust my own judgment rather than what God has outlined. Of course, a refusal to acknowledge God’s authority is a pretty solid sign that this person is not going to be very receptive to the Christian faith.

In response though, I would suggest that if you followed my argument up until this time, I think it is pretty clear that we willingly subject ourselves to the judgment of other people all the time. I may not know why a particular speed limit should be set at a particular limit in a particular area, but I trust that there is wisdom to that decision. I subject myself to the limit based on the authority of another person. Therefore, it seems kind of confusing to me that we are so willing to subject ourselves to a variety of forms of authority on earth, but we are so resistant to do so when it comes to the supernatural. We don’t necessarily have a problem with authority, but we have a problem with certain types of authority, and we have a problem with authority that runs directly contrary to our nature.

That is the fundamental difference between the boundaries of God and the boundaries of man. The boundaries of God conflict at the deepest level with our own sinful nature. However, consider the implications of pursuing a sinful lifestyle. It is not hard to tell, and it is not hard to see in people’s lives that it leads to a disaster. When we push against what God would have for us, the results are never good. I know some people are going to read this and shut the door right here. All I can say to you who may choose to make that decision (which of course may be irrelevant if you actually did stop at the previous sentence) is that it is important to actually take a serious inventory of things that have gone well and things that have not gone so well. I am pretty confident that if you compile that list of the things that have not gone so well, the vast majority of them are going to be times that either you yourself or other people have violated God’s law. You would have been better off if you respected the boundaries of the One who had more wisdom and knew where to put those aforementioned boundaries.

I guess that is the bottom line of this discussion. We all still have the free choice to determine how we are going to live our lives. We can try to make our own boundaries in our own imperfect intelligence and wisdom, or we can realize that sometimes listening to authority is a good thing if that authority has the understanding and the wisdom to put the boundary in the right place.

The beauty of this is that I can then have the confidence to run right up to the boundary. I know that as long as I am within those guidelines, I am in a safe place. I can maximize my own human freedom to do whatever I want within the boundaries without potentially running into disaster. This only works with someone who has the wisdom to not make the boundaries too restrictive and therefore inhibit the degree to which we can flourish but also not too broad that we run headlong into a preventable disaster. As I have emphasized throughout this discussion, human wisdom is insufficient for the task. We do not always know where the boundary ought to be, and our judgment can be clouded by our own shortsightedness.

Therefore, at least for me, I do not find the boundaries of God to be an oppressive imposition on my freedom. Rather, it is a set of boundaries I willingly take upon myself because I know that they are designed for my good. Within those boundaries, I can truly be free without fear. That is just about the best combination for anyone who wants to get the absolute most out of the human experience.

Why We Need to Ask What Is Right with the World

I hope you have enjoyed our summer with G.K. Chesterton. As I have now completed my summer tutorial at Faulkner University, my studies are going to move in a different direction. Consequently, we’re going to move in a few different directions on this website as we go ahead, but I don’t think that we will ever leave him completely.

The final book I had to read for this tutorial is What’s Wrong with the World, and Chesterton got right down to the heart of the problem of what divided society in his day and continues to divide society in our day.

“This is the arresting and dominant fact about modern social discussion; that the quarrel is not merely about the difficulties, but about the aim.”[1]

Chesterton uses the example of diseases and cures to illustrate this point.

“But exactly the whole difficulty in our public problems is that some men are aiming at cures which other men would regard as worse maladies; are offering ultimate conditions as states of health which others would uncompromisingly call states of disease.”[2]

In the spirit of Chesterton’s example, consider our American healthcare system. Some people say that single-payer healthcare would be the solution to all of the problems we have. It is not that we necessarily disagree on the fact that our healthcare system is broken, but what some people see as the way to solve the problem is exactly what other people see as a worse problem. For some, the implementation of single-payer healthcare would not cure the problem but actually make it worse. Some people believe that the implementation of this type of government-centered solution to health care would create a dilemma that is even worse than the one where we find ourselves now. Therefore, we should not aim for that.

You can apply this illustration to just about any modern political issue, but Chesterton’s point is well taken. Naturally, if I view something as a disease, even if other people think that it is a great thing, I am not going to want to move towards that which I believe is bad. After all, if I have any type of conviction whatsoever, I should be willing to stand my ground and contend for that which I believe is good while opposing that which I believe is bad.

This leads to a great deal of tension though. If you and I are aiming in divergent directions, my cure is your disease, and your disease is my cure. In our modern-day condition of habitual gridlock, this is where we dig in our heels and end the discussion. We can’t believe that some people would be ignorant as to oppose that which we know is absolutely true. We conclude that they just don’t understand what is wrong with the world because they are in fact defending that which we believe would make the world a worse place.

Step 1: Don't Kill the Common Ground

Chesterton invites us to take a step back however and consider a more fundamental question that I believe is more productive for any dialogue that we have with people who we cannot see eye to eye with on principle.

“What is wrong is that we do not ask what is right.”[3]

I find this approach to be refreshing because I do think when we come together with the intention of discovering that which is good and right, we began to build a vision for what we want. Naturally, there is going to be a great deal of disagreement, even in this exercise. After all, if you ask a pro-choice advocate what is right, he or she is going to say that access to abortions is right. Pro-life people will vehemently disagree with that vision of what is right.

Even in this situation though, there are some things that we can agree about. For example, I know pro-life and pro-choice people who agree that it is very important to provide support for particularly single mothers after the child is born. Naturally, these women have a lot on their plates, and helping to provide resources is something that I think we can agree is right. We may disagree a little bit on the means to achieving this end and the responsibility of private charity versus governmental programs to provide that support, but it is right to care for mothers.

Taking this perspective on what is right with the world will enable us to get things done. In this endeavor, pro-life people can see pro-choice people as allies in an endeavor to care for mothers. Yes, we still have disagreements, but we have taken the step towards that which is right. Sometimes, you have to take the victories where you can get them.

Another important issue facing our world is homelessness. Again, most people would agree that having no home is a problem and one that should be remedied if possible. The means by which that aim is achieved again differs based on the perceived responsibility of charity and government, but let’s aim towards things that you do that which is right. Let’s aim towards fixing homelessness.

That being said, this doesn’t avoid the problem of those more difficult questions. Yes, we should agree where we can. That is true. We should work together to solve problems that we realize are problems without a doubt. We shouldn’t let disagreements on other issues stop us from fixing the ones that we can work together on. That is definitely a plague in Washington, but I think it happens in our everyday lives as well. There may be someone I don’t like, and even if that person says something that is 100% true, I am going to disagree with it just because I don’t like that person. Be honest. We all know we have done that, so let’s not pretend that we are somehow above the debate that we see in our political system. Ours may be more insignificant in scale, but the problem is the same.

Step 2: Build a Vision Based on the Common Ground 

There are those times when we sincerely disagree however. People in favor of abortion believe it is at a minimum morally permissible to kill children in the womb based on a decision made by the mother. People opposed to abortion believe it is morally wrong to kill children in the womb no matter what. Perhaps you think I’m generalizing here, but those are fundamentally the two main position. There is very little middle ground between these issues, so it is going to be very hard for us to find this unified vision that Chesterton suggests.

He very well may be right that the problem with the world is that we do not know what is right. I think he is accurate in that assessment. As a Christian, I believe that God’s way is the right way. There are plenty of people who would disagree with that and would conclude that God’s way is the wrong way. How do we then deal with these visions in conflict?

Chesterton makes a bold claim as to how we can argue persuasively for our perspective, and it is one that I think you may feel is somewhat out of place in contemporary America given his perspective on a more traditional role for the mother in the home, but don’t lose the forest for the trees in this passage I’m about to give you.

“Now the whole parable and purpose of these last pages, and indeed of all these pages, is this; to assert that we must instantly begin all over again, and begin at the other end. I begin with a little girl’s hair. That I know is a good thing at any rate. Whatever else is evil, the pride of a good mother in the beauty of her daughter is good. It is one of those adamantine tendernesses which are the touchstones of every age and race. If other things are against it, other things must go down. If landlords and laws and sciences are against it, landlords and laws and sciences must go down. With the red hair of one she-urchin in the gutter I will set fire to all modern civilization. Because a girl should have long hair, she should have clean hair; because she should have clean hair, she should not have an unclean home: because she should not have an unclean home, she should have a free and leisured mother; because she should have a free mother, she should not have an usurious landlord; because there should not be an usurious landlord, there should be a redistribution of property, because there should be a redistribution of property, there shall be a revolution. That little urchin with the gold-red hair, whom I have just watched toddling past my house, she shall not be lopped and lamed and altered; her hair shall not be cut short like a convict’s; no, all the kingdoms of the earth shall be hacked about and mutilated to suit her. She is the human and sacred image; all around her the social fabric shall sway and split and fall; the pillars of society shall be shaken, and the roofs of ages come rushing down; and not one hair of her head shall be harmed.”[4]

It takes a great deal of thought, but Chesterton is making the claim that we can build our entire framework of that which is good by simply agreeing that one thing is good. In his example, he goes from the very simple and generally agreed to principle that it is a good thing for a mother to find her daughter beautiful all the way to the conclusion that we need a revolution in the world. You may disagree with this logic or some of the intermediate steps, but I think this is the process that we need to take as Christians when we try to help people make the world a better place and more conformed to that which God would have it to be.

There is something very significant to the fact that there are still some things that we can agree to as right or wrong in our society, and as Christians, if those things are consistent with God’s vision of that which is right, we have a hope to make our case. All it takes is one grain of truth, and if we have that, we can move in the right direction. Until our world entirely forgets that which is right and has no more desire to find anything true, there is hope.

Wrapping It Up

It is easy for people like me to become rather jaded. We see all of the insanity in the world around us, and we might feel like there’s nothing we can do to stem the tide. We wonder what is wrong with the world like GK Chesterton did, and we come to the conclusion that everything is so far gone there is no more hope.

However, I would like to propose that the battle is not done, and we do not have to surrender. I have outlined two main propositions in this article, and I think that they are what we need to do if we are going to move in the right direction.

First, we have to realize that there are things we can agree on. Let’s take those easy victories right from the beginning. We shouldn’t let our disagreements ruin the easy and obvious things that we should be working on together.

Second, we need to use those areas of agreement to build our cumulative case in areas of disagreement. Like Chesterton, we can start with something as simple as beauty and use that as a way to build towards a vision of what the world should be. Every worldview can do this, but as Christians, we are uniquely positioned with the Truth. Therefore, we do not need to fear this exercise. Rather, we can coherently show others why our worldview answers questions better and why God’s way of looking at the world is a better way than other worldviews. It provides more answers of a higher quality than any other understanding and the world.

In that way, we will indeed help people understand that which is right and properly align their aims. We can answer Chesterton’s question if that is where we focus.

[1] G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong With The World (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 2-3, Kindle Edition.

[2] Ibid., 2.

[3] Ibid., 3.

[4] Ibid., 126.

Plastic Straw Ban: Extended Thoughts from a Man with a Disability

I am sure that you have heard the news about many companies and municipalities making the decision to ban plastic straws. In fact, some of you may have heard about it because of me. Recently, I was interviewed by one of our local news stations to provide my thoughts on these types of corporate and governmental policies as a man with a disability who uses plastic straws to drink. I appreciate the opportunity and the platform to be able to share my thoughts on this policy matter, but I have a lot of thoughts on this issue, and some of them bear much more explanation than would be appropriate for a TV news clip.

First, let me set something straight before you make ridiculous accusations about the case I am about to make.

I am not clinging to plastic straws out of some kind of desire to watch our world burn and wildlife die. I am all for an acceptable alternative to the plastic straw that meets the needs of individuals with disabilities. While some will argue for perhaps metal or paper straws, those options are not acceptable for separate reasons. For more detail, I would refer you to this Facebook post made by Disability Rights Washington that emphasizes some of these shortcomings. However, I just want to clarify that as we talk about this issue, I am not trying to burn down the planet. Even in my own life, I have a water bottle at home with a reusable plastic straw that I use all the time. I am not opposed to these solutions but rather am opposed to a broadbrush policy by corporate or governmental entities that doesn't take into account the needs of the disability community at large. Find me a suitable alternative to the plastic straw, and this issue goes away as far as I’m concerned. An option with at least the same if not better functionality with less negative environmental impact is a good thing in my book.

With that issue out of the way, let’s talk about the types of bans that are being implemented.

Corporate Straw Bans

First, corporations like Starbucks (who is apparently backpedaling), McDonalds and Marriott are making the business decision to eliminate plastic straws. While I do not agree with this, as a consumer, I know if I go to a restaurant that does not use plastic straws at all, I know what I am getting into by dining at that establishment. As a parallel example in my own life, I also bring my own silverware when I go to restaurants. Because of my reduced muscle strength, it is difficult for me to lift heavy silverware, and many restaurants seem to have extraordinarily large forks. Therefore, I know what I am getting into, so I bring my own. While it is not ideal and I wish that they had silverware that was more conducive to my own physical strength, by going out into the public business, I know that their policy is to have a certain brand of silverware. Similarly, if they simply do not have straws, I know that going into it.

It is possible to make the argument at this point that it is unreasonable for me to know the plastic straw policy of every restaurant before I choose where to eat. Especially if I’m on vacation, how would I possibly know such things about restaurants that I may not even know I am going to be eating at until I am on the road and thirsty? This is certainly a reasonable concern, and one I am certainly sympathetic towards. That being said, it is simply a reality that the world is not always conducive to people living with disabilities. That is the hard truth as much as we may wish it to be otherwise. Consequently, this is the exact reason I always travel with my own plastic straws. If you watch the video of me linked to above, you’ll see me with a Ziploc bag of straws because I never know when I might need them and they are not available.

I know that my conclusion here is not going to make some people happy, but I at least know up front when a place like McDonalds says that they are eliminating plastic straws, I know that if I want to use one, I need to bring my own. Is it ideal? Certainly not. Is it justified? I don’t think so (more on this point later). However, short of a government mandate that would run directly contrary to these policies and mandate that any drinking establishment provide plastic straws, these bans do not worry me quite as much simply because I have the ability to be aware and plan ahead. Part of my life is always planning ahead for places that will not be as accommodating as they ought to be. It is a bad corporate policy that I disagree with, but it is not my largest concern.

Governmental Straw Bans

The second type of ban that is being implemented is governmental. The city of Seattle for example has banned plastic straws but has also implemented a one-year waiver allowing for restaurants to provide customers with plastic straws upon request when medically necessary. Other cities around the country have begun to implement these types of policies as well, and as far as I have seen, most of them have similar waivers for allowing straws to be provided for people who have medical necessity. The interesting exception to that is Santa Barbara, California who does not have a provision in their policy that would permit restaurants to provide plastic straws based on medical necessity automatically.

Therefore, if I was going to be traveling to Seattle for example, I should be able to go into any restaurant and receive a straw upon request. That seems reasonable. However, take a look at this material provided by the city of Seattle to restaurants. They do not mention that these types of exceptions are permissible and that it may be a good idea to have a stock of straws for these types of situations for people like me. They emphasize the banning of the straws without mentioning that there are important situations where they are permissible and legal.

Therefore, you have to wonder how many of these restaurants are actually going to carry that inventory. After all, they have been receiving this literature from the city that plastic straws are now illegal without realizing that they could have them for certain consumers. Therefore, if I go to Seattle, assuming I can get a straw, I think the probability is very high that restaurants are not going to have them. Maybe my assumption is wrong, but if I was the restaurant owner who was presented with this literature, I would not have plastic straws in stock. After all, the city has told me I cannot use them, so what would be the point?

I may even want to be as accommodating as possible to my patrons as a responsible business owner, so I might want to have straws for people who rely on them to hydrate, but this notice certainly does not let me know that I have that option as a business owner to continue assisting my customers with disabilities if I choose to. It does not inform the public of the option even though it exists. In that case, the option to provide straws based on medical necessity might as well not exist.

Now, consider the situation I could find myself in. I am in Seattle, and I assume that, because I have medical necessity, straws will be available for me. For people who are not like me personally and do not always travel fully prepared, it is reasonable to assume that straws will be provided because of the city ordinance that allows this exception. However, if my argument above is reasonable, I might find myself somewhere where I don’t have my own straws and, even though I am allowed to have one provided by the restaurant, the restaurant simply does not have them in their inventory. They had been told they cannot have them, and I would not hold that against the restaurant owner. After all, they are abiding by the law of the city they live in. How can they know about an exception that is barely presented to them? I don't think that is on the business owner by any means.

Governmental straw bans are different than businesses who decide not to provide them because one I know about ahead of time and still make a choice to attend that establishment. If I go to a Marriott hotel in the future, I know that they will not provide me with a plastic straw. Maybe I don’t like it, but I know and can plan accordingly or make a different choice of the hotel that I stay in. With the city that technically allows them for me like Seattle, I could find myself in difficult situations because, in practice, the policy discourages restaurants to even have straws and inventory who therefore very well might not have them if my suppositions are correct. There is no mandate that they have to have plastic straws for people who request them after all.

Working Towards a Solution

With corporate and governmental bans being enforced, what is the better solution? Assuming that no one absolutely wants to unnecessarily harm the earth, what are we to do?

Before getting to that point, it is important to realize that there is substantial question as to whether or not the banning of straws will have any type of serious environmental impact. The often cited example that 500 million straws are used every day is based on a questionable statistic discovered by a child who was nine years old at the time. It is far from a precise number.

Beyond that, I would also point out that straws are a very small portion of any of our pollution problem on this planet. I understand those people who would consider any pollution as something that ought to be eliminated. I can sympathize with that, but let’s be honest. This is a popular topic because environmental activists want a victory, and the fact that this is a topic where they thought no one would push back.

Consider psychologist Robert Gifford who said to Grist, “Banning straws is about as important as spitting in the wind… But a lot of social psychology research says that if you get people to say yes to a small request, they are more likely to accede to more serious requests.”

There are many more severe issues that could be taken into consideration and change our environment for the better, but those who take substantially more effort. The commercial fishing industry for instance is the chief pollutant of the ocean (perhaps unsurprisingly). Why are we talking about banning plastic straws because they are ruining our oceans without focusing on more severe issues?

Quite frankly, someone has calculated that banning plastic straws is an easy victory. As Emily Conrad of the Anacostia Watershed Society said, “Plastic straws are really kind of like the gateway to rethinking about single-use plastics.” The strategy is to get people thinking about environmental issues and make them feel like they are making a difference in the environment when they really are not doing anything significant. It is important for fundraising purposes as well as organizational mission statements.

To reiterate my statement from the beginning, I am certainly not anti-environment. I am all for finding an alternative to a plastic straw that provides no reduction in function while creating less pollution. We all can agree on that. However, while that solution is being worked on, let’s not deceive ourselves by thinking that plastic straws need to go or else our planet is going to die. There are substantially larger issues that we should be dealing with if our concern is actually making a difference in protecting the environment rather than what the article from Grist refers to as slacktivism.

That being said, reducing our environmental impact, even by a little bit, is a good thing, and providing access and options for consumers with disabilities is also a good thing.

First of all, I think governmental bans need to go. The government is supposed to enact policies that work for the benefit of its constituents. As a proponent of relatively little government intervention, unless there is a substantial reason to ban a particular activity, I don’t see the necessity of making that policy restricts a certain activity. The evidence does not seem to be there that plastic straws are the major cause of global pollution, and it apparently has a relatively small impact on the environment. Therefore, I don’t know that this type of heavy governmental intervention is serving the interests of its constituents. It seems to be providing greater harm by interfering with the lives of people with disabilities than the benefit it is causing by banning something with what seems to be a rather small environmental impact in the grand scheme of things.

As far as corporate bans, they also need to go, but it is for a different reason. I do believe a business has the right to do what they want. That being said, in the interest of serving the public, I think it is in the interest of the business to provide a usable option to broaden their customer base. It makes business sense to me to offer plastic straws. Why would I make a business decision that carries a relatively low-cost (purchasing straws) but can drive customers away that would generate more than enough income to pay off that cost? As a business, we don't want to lose customers aside from the entire morality of the situation.

However, in the interest of reducing environmental impact wherever possible, why not implement a simple policy, like many restaurants have, that plastic straws are only available upon request? This seems to be a reasonable compromise. Consumers who need these straws have access to them, and since many people will not request them given that they often times do not want them in the first place, the impact of pollution will be substantially reduced.

If you wonder if this proposal might work, Marriott began only providing straws on request, and only 20% of people actually wanted them. That is a substantial reduction. Granted, they are using paper straws rather than plastic which is not ideal, but I think you can see that this type of policy is effective at meeting the needs of people while simultaneously reducing the environmental impact of straws in general.

At the end of the day, in my opinion, people who are advocating for banning plastic straws are largely virtue signaling.

How do I know this? The new lids use more plastic than the old lids and straws put together. Albeit these lids are going to be using compostable plastic, but they could and apparently are going to be using straws made out of compostable plastic anyway, so this announcement really could have been simple that they were changing the composition of their straws. It would not be ideal because of the concerns many disability advocates have about the material straws are made out of as I mentioned earlier, but looking at Starbucks directly, this is a PR move 100%.

In the interest of being environmentally friendly, they are putting forward a project perceived by many to be more environmentally friendly by using more plastic than they were using before. This is nothing but spin and virtue signaling to get applause from environmentalists who watched a viral video one time and are convinced that plastic straws are the greatest evil in the history of the world.

They want to believe they are doing something to help the environment, so they see this as a way to target something they believe is uncontroversial. However, in the grand scheme of things, they are causing more harm than good. Let’s continue working towards a better solution with less environmental impact, but in the meantime, environmental activists, please take your fight to things that actually cause a substantial impact on the environment rather than picking a rather insignificant offender just so you have a cause to fight for. You are causing more net harm by impinging the quality of life of people with disabilities than the increased quality of life derived from a product with a small net environmental footprint in and of itself.

When Prevention Is Worse than the Cure

I have tried this summer to be very true to the spirit of G.K. Chesterton and have attempted, perhaps highly imperfectly, to look at his work in context. Today, I’m going to be writing about Eugenics and Other Evils, and the passage I’m going to talk about really should be considered in the framework of a discussion on eugenics. I have written about these types of issues before on this website, so I hope you will forgive me if I take a little bit of a deviation today. I think the philosophical point he is making about eugenics obviously applies to his greater arguments in opposition to eugenics, but they also have a broader application in other areas that I want to take a look at today.

Chesterton had strong views on the issue of preventative medicine. In our modern day, we obviously vaccinate ourselves against everything, and I don’t think that vaccines were what Chesterton was necessarily talking about when he began to talk about this issue. He would have contended that it is good to avoid pain whenever we can. However, there are times when the only way to prevent something is actually more problematic than the prevention itself.

“This is the fundamental fallacy in the whole business of preventive medicine. Prevention is not better than cure. Cutting off a man's head is not better than curing his headache; it is not even better than failing to cure it.”[1]

Of course, one would never have a headache in the first place without a head, but obviously things would not work out so well without a head. In this case, the prevention would stop a bad thing, that headache, from happening, but when viewed from a higher perspective, the net effect would actually be negative. It is indeed better to have life with the potential to have a headache at some point than it is to never have life at all in the first place.

Chesterton is even so bold as to suggest that life with a headache, an unpleasant experience to be sure, is substantially better than having no life at all on account of preventing the headache through decapitation. You can see his argument against eugenics shining through here, and I think it is rather self-evident, but that is not where I am going to go today.

He goes on to conclude that there are many situations where prevention causes greater problems. “Prevention means being an invalid for life, with the extra exasperation of being quite well.”[2] When something has been prevented, these steps are being taken to purportedly make life better in the future. You can imagine a fictional encounter where you walk up to a person who is missing his or her head. You feel bad for this person because they appear to be missing something that is really important, and you can imagine how frustrating it would be to hear them justify their own condition by saying, “I am better off than you because I do not get headaches anymore.”

Besides the anatomical concern as to how this person would be saying anything to you without a head, this is clearly a case where the prevention would be worse than even doing nothing at all. It is better to live with a headache than it is to live without a head. This is common sense, but sadly, it is not.

America Today 

This may seem to be a little bit abstract, so I want to bring this into a much more real-life example. If we think about the United States of America right now, there are a lot of people who are not happy with the way things are going. They are not happy with our political climate, and they are not happy with our current social situation. They raise a variety of concerns, and I am not going to make it the purpose of this specific piece to evaluate the relative merits of policies pursued by our government right now or advocated for by other people. Rather, the situation itself is more of what I am interested in right now where you have a great degree of polarization and a great degree of tension as a result of our partisan moment.

To use the terms of Chesterton above, this is indeed our disease. Polarization and the utter lack of civility plaguing both political parties is one great illness that we have contracted. There are others that invade our bodies simultaneously, but to understand the illustration of Chesterton, we need to establish the fact that there is a disease that we have.

Since the beginning of our great country, people have had divergent opinions. Almost immediately, you had the Federalists and Democratic Republicans going at it. It is really no surprise that when you get a bunch of people together and allow them to express their opinions, you get opinions that are occasionally polarized. That is not necessarily a problem in and of itself.

The disease comes when you combine that polarization with a lack of civility. We find ourselves in a situation where disagreement implies hatred. If you think that hatred is too strong of a word to use in this situation, I quite frankly don’t think you are paying attention to some factions of the left and the right. Surely there are plenty of fair-minded people in the middle, and I would like to hope that you and I are each in that group, but I cannot believe the vitriol we hear on a daily basis. There is a vocal portion of our country that does not understand how to disagree without hating the other person. I will not say that they are a majority, but they are very loud, and they are the voices that commentators like to hold up as illustrative of the irrationality of the other side. This type of toxic climate is the disease that is polluting the body of the United States of America.

Let’s take a moment to consider how we end up with this type of disease in our society. Largely, polarization comes about because we have the ability to disagree. Fundamentally, the reason that we can have such strong disagreements is a symptom of a society that is allowed to come to different conclusions. If we want to prevent polarization, then there is a very simple way to do that. We can simply take away the voice of the people. After all, if no one is allowed to have an opinion or express that opinion, we have indeed solved the problem. You can’t have uncivil discourse if you don’t have discourse in the first place.

All of that being said, is this prevention a good thing? I don’t know that it is. I think that if we follow this path too closely, you end up with the Soviet Union or North Korea. There was not much polarization in these societies because people would either get in line with the vision of the government or they were forcibly silenced. Perhaps you could say that polarization exists because of these divergent opinions, and there is some degree of truth to that, but you do not see the manifestations of this polarization because it was crushed.

The Soviet Union obviously fell, and North Korea is certainly not a picture of a thriving society in any sense of the term. Therefore, at least in my mind, it makes me wonder if the prevention of the problem of polarization is actually worth it. They may not have had to deal with all of the problems that we see in our country today. It is a lot easier to crush the dissidents with a brutal force of the government than it is to try to address the disease itself which is the combination of polarization and incivility. However, if we have to choose one or the other, I don’t know that this type of prevention is what we want. We don’t want to impose a forced acceptance of the government on people, but if we give people the freedom, we have to figure out the cure. After all, we cannot prevent polarization itself without coercion.

The Cure

Maybe then the cure lies in civility itself. After all, polarization is going to happen in a society where people are free to have their own opinions. Polar opposites are going to develop. Some people are going to be on the left while others are going to be on the right. Some people are going to be somewhere in the middle, and some may not even want to be a part of the system at all. As they are allowed to express their opinions and are not pushed to conform to the preference of the government, people are going to have different beliefs.

What we do not need to do in that process is devolve into hatred. It does not have to accompany disagreement. People can have civil dialogue and learn from each other. Even more than that, people can be persuaded to change their minds based on an intelligent case put forward by a reasonable interlocutor. These types of things can happen, and they have happened through the centuries. There is no reason to believe that this cannot be the cure, and it seems to me that it would be a great deal better than the prevention of polarization.

I know that this may not seem to be rocket science, and it probably should not seem that way to me either. It is pretty basic. Freedom of opinion is a good thing, and the ability to express that opinion is something that I think we should all be able to agree on. We do not want to live under threat of being sent to Siberia because of our political persuasions. As Americans, I think we agree with that by and large. Therefore, when we complain about the terrible political climate we find ourselves in, I think we have to accept that we cannot change human diversity. People are going to have different opinions, and some of those opinions are quite frankly going to seem abhorrent. There are plenty of things that some people believe that I could never subscribe to myself. We’re going to be polarized on certain issues.

Polarization is not always a horrendous thing though. We can still hold together a society despite disagreement if we can do so in such a way that we avoid the root of the problem which is the incivility. Rather than fall into name-calling, we need to cure the disease.

I know that some of you are going to disagree with this. I have heard plenty of people argue that civility is not actually a good thing and only serves as a tool to further the oppression of those who are disenfranchised. However, I would like to disagree with that in extraordinarily strong terms. Diversity of opinion and polarization are going to exist if we want our freedom, so the best way to deal with that problem is to be civil. We only exacerbate the problem through incivility. The only other alternative I see is to strip away freedom of opinion altogether and descend into a totalitarian regime. If you feel that way, I encourage you to evaluate history. You will not be better off. Freedom is a wonderful thing, and many people have fought for it. Let’s not lose it through faulty prevention when we should rather be working for the cure of civility.

As Christians, we are in a very unique position to help in this process. As followers of Jesus Christ, we have an example of one who disagreed vehemently with the religious leaders of His day, but He did not fall into hatred. With that example in our minds continually, we can push into the world and use our freedom for good. We can use our freedom to make a difference and be part of the solution.

[1] G. K. Chesterton. Eugenics and Other Evils (New York: Cassell & Company, 1922), Kindle Locations 631-632, Kindle Edition.

[2] Ibid., Kindle Location 634.