Oh My Darling Dandelion?
Is shame really an effective strategy for making people ‘do the right thing’?
A version of this essay first appeared at The Deleted Scenes.
One of the things that happens when you buy a house with a yard is that you’ll see all sorts of alternative lawn and garden care tips (if you scroll too long on Facebook, anyway, and its algorithm has gotten wind of the fact that you now indeed have a yard of your very own). Many of them are illustrations: For example, you’ll see little drawings from eco-friendly gardening pages showing the hungry bees wondering where all the dandelion flowers went that you killed with Roundup, or pictures of all the pretty butterfly larvae you might be killing by cleaning up your garden in the fall, or the fireflies you’re killing by picking up the leaves.
Now, I’m very proud when I’ve managed to pull every visible dandelion up, or pick up and/or mulch all the leaves. I like the look of a neat lawn, like a great big soft outdoor carpet. And I suppose I even rather like winning the low-key competition of having the tidiest yard on the block. At least for three days until it gets scraggly and needs mowing again. And I like to think that I actually like these things, and have not been brainwashed by Big Lawn or whoever is supposedly doing the brainwashing on this matter.
In any case, those ads about how I’m killing nature by doing normal lawn and garden work don’t persuade me to change how I do the work, but they do make it harder to feel proud of it. It’s like they’re trying to exact some mental tax from you. We might not be changing your mind, but at least we’re making you feel bad!
Is making people feel bad for doing things the way they’re done really effective? Some of the anti-car folks, whom I run into in my writing on land use, urbanism and housing, can do this too. Instead of really having a positive vision, they think they’ve done their advocacy job if they criticize you. As if “you should drive less, you’re burning up the planet” is the same thing as “here’s how we can build great places where you don’t need a car for everything.” The sentiments might overlap, but they are not the same.
This brings to mind something I’ve thought about with regard to housing advocacy. There is an assumption in much of American life that if you live in a “nice” neighborhood, then you’re invested in keeping it the same. (I’ve written about that here.) In this view, there’s a certain contradiction between being a good neighbor and a good resident of your neighborhood and, say, wanting your neighborhood to be upzoned and turned from a quiet single-family suburban idyll to a louder, more crowded, more urban place. Or even just allowing a backyard cottage or a duplex or a very low-intensity small business.
YIMBY/housing advocate types, among whom I very much count myself, might see this as selfless: caring more about future neighbors than our own views or property values. I think the “normal” view, however, is that we’re selfish: We’re putting our own urban-living fantasies over the actual lives of our actual current neighbors.
This in turn brings me back to the yard work debate. There’s a similar contradiction between being a good neighbor with regard to your property, and doing all the eco-friendly lawn care stuff. Not picking up the leaves, not trimming the dead plant shoots in the fall, letting the scraggly weeds grow—it just doesn’t look nice. One may wonder whether the eco stuff was invented to give a justification for not doing the necessary work of property maintenance. (There’s more to eco-friendly lawns than “don’t do yard work,” but still.)
It’s kind of weird: Why is it that the “right” thing doesn’t feel like the desirable thing? Why are “weeds” plants that are hard to eradicate, while “grass” is hard to grow nicely? I always wonder, wouldn’t it be easier if we just deemed “weeds” the desirable plants? Is it the same thing as lobster costing more than chicken? A kind of mental price mechanism? Do we do this mental shortcut of thinking the difficult thing must be the “right” one because of the Protestant work ethic or some other deep background cultural influence?
Or is it as simple as, that green outdoor carpet objectively looks nice, it’s useful for dogs and kids, and there’s a reason for it other than keeping up with the Joneses? I would like that to be true. I dislike the idea that a property well-designed for a suburban family is actually at odds with what’s good for insects and pollinators and the environment. I’ve always liked to think that’s a false choice, like overpopulation turned out to be. What if it isn’t a false choice? What does it suggest I should do with my property?
This is a phenomenon with a lot of advocacy. It’s hard to tell what’s actually true and worth listening to, and what’s just following that “we must be doing something right if we’re making you feel bad” template.
Now, that’s a lot of work on the yard. And I haven’t even dragged out the mower yet.
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