Individual actions
Because I emphasise the individual so much, in response I very often hear that individual actions don't matter, that we need change in our systems and not in our lifestyles. Those who defend individual actions understand well that we need change in our systems, and I do not disagree with those who advocate such change. I'm equally curious about alternative systems, what they do and should look like, how they can be brought about. And I do not think that humans have to choose between voting and, say, adopting a vegetarian diet. This unnecessarily creates camps that supposedly oppose one another, while the goal (hopefully, a genuinely sustainable society) of those humans is very much the same.
Individual actions are so much more than avoiding single use plastic or avoiding flying. I've practised minimalism and voluntary simplicity for many years and my constellation of practices/individual ecological actions is more or less settled. By settled I do not mean set in stone or final, but rather that more or less the same practices are there, though they are in becoming. They are imperfect and even ephemeral. I've recently yet again taken a look at my "sufficiency list", a playful list of necessary objects I sketched years ago, and it remains largely the same. I don't put much thought into this list and feel no need at all to live with more (or with less, or with any particular number of objects).
What occupies my mind these days is not ecological practice in terms of materials, energy, and objects (recycling, living in a small apartment, avoiding flying, living with less than what is the norm in this society, etc.). Rather, it is my individual "actions" in terms of how I as a human being approach myself and fellow others. These thoughts are animated by two inter-related things. One is a stressful part of my journey that is currently unfolding. And the other one is existentialist philosophy which I love and to which I come back often, especially during difficult times. For me, existentialist philosophy replaces therapy (though there is also existentialist psychotherapy). Existentialism brings my attention to choice and responsibility, of course within the framework of society which pre-exists us. Since we are constantly in becoming, I ask myself, what sort of person do I want to become? What do I want to manifest, what do I want a "human being" to be like, what do I need to shed, what matters to me in life. Approximately a year ago I was in Copenhagen with a colleague and her child, we went to a Lego store as the child wanted to see it. There were lots of individual pieces and I found the plurality of possibilities to build stuff fascinating. Recently my mind returned to that story and its significance to me as a lesson from existence. Constructing oneself, and thus a human being, from a multitude of options, is a daily activity. Somehow during more stressful times it more prominently feels inevitable and important.