Almost a decade ago, we replanted our front yard in native wildflowers. It’s pretty awesome. The positive impact on pollinators and birds is quite obvious. We get all manner of neat insects, and butterflies, and bees, and birds, all year long. The yard itself shifts constantly through seasonal color schemes. Spring blooms with white petals, then gradually moves into more vibrant spectrums. I actually love winter almost as much, when the brown seed heads and stems offer a textural contrast to overcast skies and (less than we used to get…) snow.
There are several yards in the neighborhood doing this now, with different philosophies. They’re all quite cool, in my opinion. I’dd add that we were not the first, as a botanist friend inspired us with her deep-stemmed, tall-plant version. She also blazed the trail from a you can’t do that here perspective. There’s an ordinance about mowing your lawn, as there are in most cities. Wild = unmown = violation. She won out some time ago, though, and the city let her keep what she grea. As for our own non-lawn, it’s never received official blowback.
This past week, however, we learned that a neighbor across the street, who started converting their yard after seeing ours, got a threatening notice from the city. Mow your lawn or get a fine, it said. The good news is that he wrote to the mayor and to Council, and they said his yard is fine. Plus, they said they’d soon address pollinator gardens officially, since meadow yards are a very good thing, particularly in contrast to the lush green yards maintained through the constant application of various poisons and chemical fertilizers.1 So that’s a win, I guess, but also a reminder that the easy way often isn’t the coolest.
Which Leads Me to Politics…
I imagine our city will likely formalize the legality of wild yards, because they’re into issues like sustainability. Backyard chickens were officially permitted a few years ago, for example. But since local politics are riven with the strife of our national binaries and feverish commitment to disagreement, there will probably be some complainers shouting about property values, or curb appeal, maybe something about socialists destroying the fabric of America. Somehow all roads lead to cries of SOCIALISM! when the righties get going here in Red America.
It’s that knee-jerk battle I’ve been thinking about. Whether it happens in the case of the pollinator gardens or not, the battle is always ready to happen, if you catch my drift. That’s the baseline for politics, which is to say it is the desired register of politicians, because embattlement fires up people, and anger is a strong motivator. Particularly when politics succeeds primarily by maintaining warring factions who might hate or distrust their party’s own politicians2 but who refuse at all costs to support the other party’s people3, because they hate and distrust that even more.
Anger is the not-so-mysterious and practiced force of partisanship, deployed to distract us from paying attention to the substance of our lives. The effect of politics is substance. The mode of politics is a parlor game.
Take our front yard meadow. I’m sure some people hate it, but lots and lots of people comment on the beautiful flowers when they pop up. I mean, how can you not!?
Furthermore, I would guess if you had a conversation with people, most would agree that pollinators are good. Like, who hates a monarch butterfly? Similarly, I think most people would likely agree that poison is bad. Except that’s where the anti-substance power of politics comes in. When you’re talking lawns, it is far more likely that people will get angry about the house with a lush, semi-wild meadow (So unkept! So unsightly!) than about the many houses pumping glyphosate into the soil, despite pretty damning evidence of the health impacts of that weedkiller, as well as the generally disastrous effect of American lawn envy. One could write reams about why that is.
The Part About Seriousness…
Earlier this year, writer Ted Gioia wrote about what he calls Dopamine Culture. It’s a fascinating article, suggesting a decline in the seriousness of American engagement with, well, lots of stuff. He argues that the quick hit of dopamine, a la social media, is steadily replacing deeper engagement. It’s worth reading, even if at times I can’t help but hear in Gioia more than a bit of back in my day crustiness.4
But when I think about substance vs. politics, and I think about who is the face of the Dopamine5 Culture in American politics, I see the very real consequence of thin engagement. That’s what allows lying forcefully to seem more “Presidential” than telling the truth in a thin, elderly way.6
Worse, I think lots of people know their engagement with substance is thin. They understand how they’re being snookered by distortion and bad faith oversimplification, but they just can’t bring themselves to engage the much, much harder task of substantive nuance.
As an example, when I was running for office, one GOP neighbor wanted to know only if I was “Pro-Life.” Before I could even answer, she said she didn’t want to hear an answer that began with issues like capital punishment or war deaths or anything other than abortion. Which is to say, this neighbor 100% understood that truly subscribing to a philosophy accurately described by the term “Pro-Life” would be nuanced and complicated. She didn’t want that. She just wanted to vote for candidates who wanted to ban abortion, a ban that measurably worsens maternal mortality rates, which is to say it is not actually pro-life.
Deep thinking — substance — would reveal the thinness of that neighbor’s desire. The political position called “Pro-Life” doesn’t make more things live. Policies that are actually pro-living, as in, things that would actually lower the American childhood mortality rate: fighting poverty, providing universal prenatal and maternal healthcare, offering free school breakfasts and lunches, protecting the environment. But that’s not how politics wants to talk about issues. There’s no dopamine in serious policy.
Back To the Lawn
Beauty is learned.
As Mary Oliver writes in her poem “Spring:”
There are many stories, more beautiful than answers.
We need the stories, is what I’m saying. The longer ones. Even the convoluted ones that start by telling you about a front lawn meadow, move into politics, cite a jazz critic, , head back to politics, then quote some poetry. We’re not getting anywhere with our dopamine politics. Well, we are. We’re getting somewhere bad, and fast.
So rip out the lawn. Invite the pollinators. Hear that as a metaphor and a call to action.
And Maybe…
The book. Ready for pre-order.
There’s a reason why the yard sparying companies put warning signs in those lawns after applications. Keep pets and childrens away for a few days, those signs read. I guess that gives the poison enough time to leech into the soil and be forgotten.
See: you know.
Yeah. Same thing.
I write that knowing that I also have a fair amount of Old Man Screaming At Cloud energy. Takes one to know one, etc.
TFG puts the dope in dopamine…
I gotta say, I don’t like either. But I will take the haltingly-delivered truth every single time. But I’d sure like to see strong, forcefull political truthtelling.