Climate Change and the Big Muddy

Climate Change and The Big Muddy

I just finished a reading marathon.  A marathon of wading through a book called, This Changes Everything.  The author, Naomi Klein, overwhelms the reader with evidence of good and bad things that are happening right now .  The title is fitting because the author forces us to question revered topics, such as: capitalism, free market, small government and GNP, among other things.  She cites the data, the scientific evidence, the predictions and the expert opinions. Her conclusions:  Of all the problems that humans face today, global warming is the most deadly and the most inevitable. That’s the bad part. The  good part is a grass roots movement that can save us from this disaster, such as having ordinary people like us becoming the policy makers about how to run the country, including the operation of hospitals, maintenance of  roads,, bridges, etc.  while, at the same time decreasing  the use of fossil fuels.

As soon as I finished the book Scott asked me what I thought of it.  He agreed with the dire predictions of climate change but thought that the optimistic idea of ordinary people, like us, solving the problem, was ludicrous. I was inclined to agree with him.  We go to work for someone who is willing to hire us, send our children to schools that already exist,  live in houses that someone else built and shop at stores that are stocked by someone else with products imported from everywhere.  Discontent about this top-down world is not uncommon and it sometimes leads to coups and violent uprisings which usually lead to chaos and more top-down leadership but a peaceful transition of starting at the bottom, is almost unheard of.

Then I remembered my great grandparents, John and Margaret Esplin who, with a blessing from the Church, but with little else, helped establish a  communal settlement in Long Valley, Utah.  This came on the heels of their being a part of a colonization disaster in Arizona known as the Muddy Mission.   When Brigham Young visited the colony in 1870 he called it a God forsaken place and advised the survivors to either return to their previous homes in Nephi, Utah or move to Long Valley, Utah. The ones who chose Long Valley wanted a community of shared property but

the settlers who already lived there were not interested so the newcomers moved several miles up the valley, pooled all of their property,  divided it equally and then assigned different responsibilities to each person. Six women, for example, cooked all the meals while a group of teenage girls set the tables and served food to the entire community, and so on.  The first and largest structure was a dinning hall that doubled as a meeting hall.  As soon as possible they added houses (shanties) for families, a bakery, a blacksmith, a tannery, a woolen factory, etc.  It became known as Orderville and was regarded as the most out successful United Order attempt in modern times.  It lasted for about 10 years and was reluctantly disbanded by the original founders in 1885, partly because it was so prosperous that it attracted people who wanted to buy into its prosperity

but lacked the will to put the well being of others above their own.

In an attempt to explain the differences between those who set up the United Order and those who turned it down, historians often point to the Muddy experiences as the game changer.  Life at the the Big Muddy forced them to work, share and sacrifice for each other in order to survive, and that shared stress produced a close knit atmosphere that they wanted  to keep.

However, what they achieved in Orderville may not be enough to solve the problems that Naomi Klein is talking about. Their compassion only had to extend to those people who lived next to them and worked along side them.  To make Klein’s bottom-up plan work we would all have to be political activists who looked out for everyone, including people we don’t know, who live somewhere else or who are trying immigrate to the U.S.because their homelands are uninhabitable because industrial countries, like the U.S., are responsible for the inhospitable weather conditions that they are trying to endure.

If that’s the kind of humanitarianism needed to save us, we’re probably not ready. 

Duane Harmon

6/5/2022