We've curated a list of our narratives that have the highest and lowest Doe Print scores for the Closeness value. Read these to expose you to stories from a wide variety of authors.

Doe Print Value - Closeness

A scarecrow lynched from a West Virginia tree with a “Die, Frackers” sign pinned on it: Now, that’s a sight to see while riding to your first-ever hydraulic fracturing job.

While studying environmental engineering during the Obama years, I opposed fracking. But, after a summer on Appalachia’s Marcellus Shale, I came to understand it. When I returned to class, I could explain it. My tree-hugging roommate’s explanation of the process was that a piston breaks up the rock. There was no mention of the liquid aspect of hydraulics.

I would not call the men I worked with environmentalists. 

We sent plenty of dip spit downhole. Diesel was spilled and not reported. The fracking water was sometimes sourced in questionable ways. However, the crew followed the rules—for the most part.

Oil companies are in the business of extracting hydrocarbons from the ground. They are not in the business of losing hydrocarbons to the neighbor’s drinking water. To understand fracture propagation and flaming faucets (when fracking allegedly goes wrong), we must know basic well construction.

To argue for or against hydraulic fracturing, we must understand basic drilling.

Sticking a straw deep into the depths of this earth can be a wild concept. The weight of a mile deep of rock pressurizes both oil and gas into fluids and, if you punch a simple hole, it could blow. Circulated heavyweight mud provides greater pressure than the rock formation. This prevents a blowout and keeps oil and gas in the reservoir. Overlapping sections of steel pipe cemented in place make up an oil well.

The key is that steel pipe, called “casing.” Casing is the reason you never heard about water contamination before fracking. Drilling wells through water aquifers is nothing new. There is only one easy route through stratified layers of rock and that is a pipe. The basis of a fracked well is this traditional oil well. Hydraulic fracturing is a reservoir stimulation technique that allows more production with less drilling.

The drilling rig is long gone when the frac trucks show up. A wireline crew sends shaped, explosive charges down the cased wellbore. Holes are then perforated at the exact target levels a mile down. The pumps send a slurry of water, chemicals and sand down the straw.

Because the pressure is higher than the fracture pressure gradient of the rock, the rock cracks. Sand fills the cracks and establishes permeability. The isolated pockets of oil and gas now can flow. This is hydraulic fracturing for natural gas.

The fracking process is well-designed, efficient and simple. Ten thousand pounds per square inch of pumping will not cause fractures to break through shale that is 390 million years old.

Still, the upward migration of hydraulic fracturing fluids is possible. Concerns with mechanical integrity of the cement and steel casing apply to all oil and gas wells. A poor cement job could provide pathways for frac fluids to reach the water aquifers. A poor cement job is why the Deepwater Horizon released five million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

My concern with hydraulic fracturing is not the process, but with human error on the surface. 

Bulk hydrochloric acid and biocide winds through the fertile hills of Appalachia. “Biocide” is Latin for “the killer of life.” Trucks crash all the time.

The wind once blew a cloud of the biocide glutaraldehyde that dropped me to my knees. A container of it has a warning sign with a dead fish and a dead tree on it. This product is necessary for underground microbial control and well integrity. Biocide reduces the downhole production of dangerous hydrogen sulfide gas. It also reduces corrosion of steel casing.

The truck traffic is nonstop. There have been bad spills. The Department of Transportation grants exceptions to drivers in the energy industry such as 24-hour restarts, logging waiting time as off-duty and alternate split-break options. The exceptions sound complicated to lay folks like me. But I saw drivers work these little loopholes in order to haul nasty chemicals in the middle of the night.

If you had to pick a reason to rally against fracking, choose the overworked truck driver. Otherwise, know you are rehashing traditional anti-drilling arguments. Human error on the surface should be everyone’s main concern: When automation becomes fully realized, fracking should be safer than ever.

Doe Print Value - Stability

Environment

Insiders

Mother Earth

People Who Hate Fracking Don't Understand It

I learned from an early age that my mom was adopted. Instability and chaos are what I most remember of my childhood. Mom was a mythical creature that was full of life and had the inexplicable power to attract others. Although she was neurotic, chaotic, irresponsible, unpredictable and at times uncaring, she was absolutely comfortable in her skin. Mom had to have her freedom no matter what the cost. 

But she developed the habit of sporadically abandoning me and my five siblings, sometimes for years at a time, just dumping us off on her neighbors and our Nana. As an infant, my siblings and I were separated. She left one of my older brothers and me with an unknown neighbor. This part of my history seems to be a total blur in my family's memories. 

The earliest memories I have as a child is my time with Nana, my mother’s foster mom. Nana was brave enough to take on the responsibility of raising me and my three brothers in addition to her own adopted son and a niece that was sent to her in Mexico City. Can you imagine what it takes to raise so many children?  She managed to keep her household impeccably clean and her affairs in order. Nana was content with her routines. The sleeveless dresses she wore to stay cool in the hot Sierra Madre desert always exposed her strong brown shoulder. She was a reserved woman who spoke only when necessary. She wore her three gold bracelets and gold ring with a sense of honor. Her jewelry seemed to always have traces of masa from the tortillas she handmade. She was natural and wore no makeup, a thrifty woman who never spent money on herself and always took care of the food and household needs. Although my Nana was not one to easily demonstrate her affection, she never failed to care for our every need.

During this time, I felt like a ghost. As my body moved around the house going from room to room, I felt as if I was floating, dissociated from my environment. As I traveled around the house, I witnessed Nana in her habitual routine moving from the stove to the kitchen table cooking and preparing food for the family. It was like a mirage. I heard her voice, “Mi hija Magdalena ya viene por la niña,'' sharing with them that my mother would be coming to take me with her. These words filled me with anguish, uncertainty and created an infinite whirling that pierced through my stomach and chest. There was no face of this person they called my mom to refer to in my mind. I drew a blank. She abandoned me at such a young age there were no memories or feelings to connect us. This stranger was now coming to remove me from the people who had offered me safety and care, yet, I felt ready to move on. Perhaps because this place represented where I was forgotten, felt no outgoing love and abandoned. I finally landed in my body ready to face whatever may come. Somehow, the news filled me with the courage to take her hand. I was ready to go “al otro lado,” across the U.S. border.

When my mom and I arrived in California, I was introduced to my new stepfather, my new baby brother and was also reunited with my two older siblings. For a while, family life was perfect. I had my own bedroom; we shared wonderful holidays; Mom and Dad were in love. One of the most memorable moments during these happy days was one Christmas when my parents surprised us with new bikes. I learned how to ride my bike faster than my eldest brother and was thrilled. 

Suddenly, everything turned around. My mother was diagnosed with uterus cancer and was hospitalized. During her recovery at the hospital. I was told that my stepdad had asked for a divorce. My mother recovered and moved straight into her new adventure. My brothers and I, on the other hand, ended up back with our Nana. This time, in her wisdom, she reunited me with the man she believed to be my father. At my Nana’s request, this stranger came for a visit to meet me. There was a calmness to him, and I felt comfortable and accepting. It inspired a smile in my heart. It was soon after that my new dad took me to his home to introduce me to his wife and my three new siblings. They were kind, respectful and always treated me with love. I felt like I was family.

News would randomly hit about my mom’s whereabouts—some said she was in California, others thought she was in Australia, while some believed she was here in Mexico. Needless to say, she continued to mystify people's imagination. She was a mystery to us all. I often asked myself “Why does mom behave like this?” Is it possible that her unknown mother also gave birth to children with different men? Did she also feel like I did—unwanted? Did her siblings also share this same pattern? Why couldn’t she just be normal? My mind was often full of questions?

I don't know how I turned out as well as I have. As an adult, my childhood feels like a rollercoaster, full of ups and downs and lots of unknowns. I am happily married now with a lovely adult daughter and a wonderful caring husband. Although I had been reluctant to take a DNA test, I felt compelled when my husband gifted it to me. Initially, I hesitated because of my distrust in the possible unknown uses of my DNA, but my curiosity outweighed the worries. I was fascinated by the results. I was excited by the ethnic breakdown and the geographic tracing of my DNA around the world. 

A few months later I purchased a test for my younger brother. Weeks later we got results and realized he was in fact not blood-related to me. I was devastated, as this also meant that the man I called “dad” until the day he died was not my father. It broke my heart. I recognize this man was brave enough to claim me as his daughter and made me part of his family. After much discussion with my brother, we decided not to inform our siblings and continue to move forward as if nothing had happened. We both realized that love and family are beyond blood.

Weeks later, after receiving my DNA results, I was sent an email from a person who turned out to be my mother’s unknown sister’s son—my cousin. I found out they had always lived nearby, and that for a time, we literally lived on opposite sides of the same freeway. After many exchanges, I discovered my mom and her siblings all came from different fathers and that they too had at times been abandoned by their mother, my grandmother. It became clear that there was a generational pattern with the women on my mother’s side, who were having children in unstable relationships that resulted in them leaving their children behind. 

Despite my past, I consciously chose to nurture and love my daughter and husband. I have broken the ancestral pattern of bad choices and abandonment which has burdened the women of my family. My DNA test results opened many doors to discover my family's history and brought new questions regarding my unfound father. 

Does he know I exist? Would he like to know me? Do I look like my father and his children? Is he still alive? I wonder.

Ancestry

A DNA Test Revealed Family Secrets That Changed Everything

LeBron James and Leonardo DiCaprio are two of the most accomplished, highest-paid members of their respective fields in entertainment. Both have also been vocal champions of progressive causes during the span of their careers. But because these two globally recognized entertainers are represented by two different unions—the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) and SAG-AFTRA, respectively—James is walking the progressive talk and DiCaprio is not. As both an enduring NBA fan and a working-class, union actor, let me explain.

This summer, while the NBPA was negotiating with team owners to create a safe healthcare “bubble” for its players and pushing them to advocate for more criminal justice reform, SAG-AFTRA gutted healthcare benefits for its most vulnerable members. 

If you missed hearing about this between the potential collapse of American democracy and the biggest pandemic in 100 years, you can be forgiven.

On August 18th, the same day the NBA celebrated its historic first day of the playoffs during the COVID-19 pandemic, SAG-AFTRA sent an email to members that it would be raising the minimum income requirement from $18,040 annually to $25,950. In addition, premiums would also increase and, most shockingly, members over 65 years old could no longer apply residual income from past projects toward healthcare eligibility. In one fell swoop, the union was making it more difficult for its lowest-paid members to qualify for healthcare, while simultaneously making it nearly impossible for retired senior members to meet the new requirements. And all during a global healthcare crisis in which most members had not worked since March.

We are a union of actors. We are the progressive, liberal, do-gooder types, right?  Surely it was a mistake. But upon digging into the overall dues structure of SAG-AFTRA, I found that my union of free-spirited artists is run more like a Republican think tank. Could the tired Fox News moniker of “Hollywood hypocrisy” actually be true?

Without getting too deep in the weeds, all members of SAG-AFTRA are required to pay an annual fee of $222.96 plus 1.58% of earnings up to $500,000. What about earnings above $500,000? Nada. Zilch. Zippo. Those earnings are totally free and clear from paying dues. So unlike our progressive federal tax code, which taxes the wealthiest Americans at a higher marginal tax rate (44 percent at the peak), the SAG-AFTRA’s dues structure is actually regressive. 

As an example, on the set of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, DiCaprio’s real-life stunt man actually ends up paying a bigger cut of his paycheck in dues than DiCaprio himself or his steely-abbed co-star, Brad Pitt. Mitch McConnell would drool at the opportunity of inverting the American tax code to benefit the rich like this.

What about my favorite entertainment product, the NBA? Is their union set up in this similarly regressive fashion?  Actually, quite the opposite. In the NBA, there is a salary cap on how much the biggest stars in the league can make. In exchange, the union negotiates that team owners pay role players and bench players more. Last season, LeBron James made $37.4 million. That’s a lot, but without a salary cap, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst estimates LeBron would be making closer to $50-60 million annually.  Why does King James take this pay cut? Because in a league where the average career spans only four-and-a-half years, it ensures that “middle class” bench or role players can make enough to live off until they can find another form of employment.

Meanwhile, in the world of Hollywood, our biggest stars—our LeBron James’s if you will—take no such pay cut to help out their fellow actors. In fact, just the opposite. They contribute to dues at a lower percentage of income than the extra whose name won’t even make the end credits. If SAG-AFTRA operated more like the NBA, or hey, even the tax code passed by Trump in 2017, then those megastars would contribute far more in dues and premiums so their less fortunate brethren could be provided the most basic health coverage.

After all, certainly Hollywood’s biggest stars could contribute more. Here’s a list of a few actors who earned more than $40,000,000 on just one film in the last ten years: Robert Downey Jr., Sandra Bullock, Leonardo DiCaprio, Will Smith and Johnny Depp. That’s LeBron James money right there. How much in dues did they pay on $39,500,000 of that? Zero. 

What about the average actor or performer in Hollywood? In 2019, less than 20 percent of union members were earning the $18,040 annual income then required to make healthcare. Certainly, if the biggest A-listers knew they could help keep a retired journeyman actor or an injured stunt woman on their healthcare insurance they would, right?

Now, I suspect most of these highest-paid actors are totally unaware that the dues structure of their union is a regressive, Republican fever-dream. After all, us actors have agents to do all the math for a reason. But hopefully, this might bring it to their attention. Because it’s one thing to bash Trump and other Republicans as cruel and heartless (they are). But it’s another thing to dip into your own wallet to help out a fellow actor who didn’t have a few big breaks go their way.  

And hey, what goes around, comes around. I’d like to think that even if Leonardo loses all of his fortunes to Toby McGuire in an all-night poker game, he too should live in a future where he can still get health insurance from his ongoing Titanic residuals. As things are structured now, he wouldn’t.

Doe Print Value - Goodwill

Doe Print Value - Curiosity

Athletics

Founder's Picks

The NBA Is More Liberal Than Hollywood

I’ve been working on climate change off and on for decades. During that time, I’ve found that the general public doesn’t always understand the realities of the situation, and neither do many of those who are most active about responding to it. I’ve taught college courses on the subject, and even my science and engineering graduate students are often misinformed about it. I’ll admit that I’ve been fooled by many of the issues myself. It’s taken chats with thoughtful leaders in the field for me to really understand the situation.

Much of our climate change strategy so far has focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Some of these, like methane, have a greater impact on climate change than carbon dioxide. In the very first report I worked on, back while I was still a student in the '90s, we came up with well over 50 ways to reduce these greenhouse gas emissions. Thirty years later, we still need to reduce the number of greenhouse gases emitted globally by half before 2030 in order to get to “net-zero” by 2050. The current list of what actions we could take is in an Exponential Roadmap 2030. Its recommended actions aren’t significantly different from what was in the first report I worked on. The reality is, we just don’t have the will to do them.

Let’s take electrical cars as an example. The Exponential Roadmap recommends that by 2030, 100 percent of new car sales worldwide be electrical or plug-in hybrids. But electric cars aren’t the easy fix they’re often portrayed to be. Yes, electric and plug-in hybrid car sales are increasing, but looking only at the growth curves can be deceiving. Overall, they make up fewer than one percent of cars on the road globally as of 2019—just 7.2 million out of 1.5 billion! Can you imagine getting to 100 percent in less than a decade? Pure logic tells you it’s just not going to happen.

And then, of course, there is the challenge of renewable energy sources. If the electricity for your electric car comes from fossil fuel, you’re not actually helping the environment by driving it. When I ask students in classes I teach on energy and environmental policy how much renewable energy they think we use, the answer is typically around 50 percent. As is the case with electric vehicles, the number is increasing, but it’s still only 28 percent globally, which means that even if we had all those electric vehicles on the road, the electricity powering them probably wouldn’t come from a renewable energy source. So again, we aren’t making real headway.

So, I’m sure you’re wondering, is it hopeless? What can we do?

First of all, a new set of technologies is on the horizon called carbon dioxide reduction technologies. Essentially, they take carbon dioxide out of the air. These technologies can take many forms including biological methods, such as storing carbon in forests, agricultural soils or the ocean, and using biomass as an energy source. To me, the most interesting technological method is what’s called “direct air capture”—think of it like a vacuum that takes air in, scrubs the CO2 out of it, and then stores the CO2, either underground or in products like cement. Another option is carbon mineralization. This would speed up what is now a natural process where certain minerals react with air containing CO2 to form solids. All of these methods are expensive and have additional challenges, but they provide new hope for investigation.

Second, we need to advance our use of variable energy sources like wind and solar that don’t generate power continuously. In this case, we need to focus much more on ways to store this energy so we can deploy it when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. Think about this like the battery for your phone—when it's charged, it's great, but when you’re not near a place to charge, you’re in trouble. The same is true for wind and solar energy in terms of their ability to provide a reliable source of energy.

Finally, we have to tackle the social challenge, which is less about whether or not people believe climate change is happening than the degree to which they’re willing to pay to fix it. This doesn’t just mean the people you probably assume it does. We all make decisions every day that result in greenhouse gas emissions. Although corporations get most of the blame, it’s really all of us.

Those of us who support immediate action on climate change need to listen more to those who don’t. We are often biased against such individuals, thinking that they don’t understand climate change and its impacts, and that if we just “educated” them, they would “believe.” The actual picture is far more complex. More than 80 percent of Americans believe global warming is probably happening, and that moderate government action is necessary—more Americans than voted for president-elect Biden, who received more votes than any other president in history.

So, we have to dig deeper. Only about 50 percent of this same population thought global warming would hurt them moderately. The next question is, how much are they willing to pay for action on climate change? When President Trump wanted to freeze an Obama-era automobile fuel efficiency standard that would have doubled fuel economy to 54 miles per gallon by 2025, survey respondents were told it would decrease the price of cars. With that information, just under half supported the freeze. And so, again, we have our divided nation.

In a simpler experiment, I often ask my students a question that was asked of me and other colleagues by a now well-known economist while working on that first climate study so long ago. First, picture the dollar amount of your current income. Next, think of all the societal problems that we face as a society including challenges like homelessness, hunger, health issues and air and water pollution. Finally, if you knew that climate change was a certainty, what percentage of your current income would you be willing to spend on responding to climate change?

I’ve asked this answer of audiences small and large, rich and poor but almost always scientists, engineers, and health professionals. Answers typically range from around 0.01 percent to 10 percent. There are also typically two outliers, at zero percent and 20 percent. So even if we can agree it’s happening, and we’re knowledgeable about the issue, we still can’t agree on price.

In sum, some believe the costs of responding to climate change today are a “luxury good.” If you’re unemployed, having difficulty meeting your basic needs of housing and food, this can well be the case. So, be forgiving, and try to understand others’ economic needs. If your kids are hungry, climate change may not be number one on your priority list.

Science & Technology

The Harsh Realities of Climate Change and How to Respond

When I was little I learned it was best to be kind. That's what little girls do. They look cute in their outfit, and act helpful and kind. 

My father was an alcoholic and a drug addict, and my mom was a silent warrior who tried her best to show us how to live. She was also young and had her own struggles, and couldn’t keep on giving when she herself was empty.

As a child, feeling forgotten made me try even harder to be nicer and more thoughtful. If I could get things just right, if I could perform perfectly, things would be okay. If I could be nice enough and funny enough, my dad would want to stay home. If I could help my mom enough, I would ease her burden enough to make her smile with those bright blue eyes.

I would have done anything for them. I remember being six and wondering what I could do to make the suffering end. How could I change our lives? Who did I need to be to make everyone happy?

I never did figure it out, but I kept trying. Bringing homemade beers from the stash under the back porch to my dad seemed to make him happy—until it didn’t. Without warning, he would flip a switch and rage all over us, lost in his own suffering. It was a fine line I never did get right.

Desperate to be helpful I picked greens from my mother's garden and made a dinner salad. When I sliced into my finger and blood ran down my arm and dress, I swallowed my fear. I bandaged myself, scrubbed the stream from the kitchen to the bathroom, and ran cold water over my dress to hide my failure.

That is how I started life. Pouring myself into everyone. Trying to fix all the holes in our lives by being as sweet as I possibly could. Hoping it would be enough. Smiling to hide my pain, laughing to hide my hurt. Emptying myself.

Many girls grow up this way, no matter who our parents are. The kindness built into  us from the start, the need to be cute—it’s almost universal for little girls. Women grow up believing that it’s our job to shine light on everyone around us, to pour ourselves into other people’s needs, to spread kindness over everyone.

We are never told that a break would be okay, or taught to stop and wonder what we can do for ourselves. That, after all, would be selfish. 

That programming runs deep. Every day I feel the need to make people like me, even people I don’t like. I must prove that I am caring and I am thoughtful. I make sure people know I am a nice girl who does nice things. That I am kindness wrapped in a soft blanket of love and tenderness. Even if inside is a raging pit of fire.

I am a mother now, and I still love kindness and the science behind it. I think about it often and I act on it daily. I make sure my own family performs random acts of kindness, and I still believe we should walk through life being kind. 

But I’ve come to understand that the hardest kindness is being kind to myself. It’s harder than being nice to people I don’t like, and to people who have broken my heart again and again. It's harder than being kind to strangers or strangeness that makes me cringe inside.  

I want so badly for my five-year-old daughter to know what it looks like for a woman to be selfish—because now I know my own selfishness is a form of kindness. Kindness to myself.

I want her to know that it’s important to be kind to others, but it’s more important to be kind to herself. I want her to love herself and know that it's okay to put herself first. That her worth runs deeper than pouring herself into the lifelong project of lifting other people up. Being selfish will get her places and keep her safe and make her strong. 

I want kindness toward herself to come easier than it does for me. It shouldn’t be her life’s most difficult act of kindness, as it is mine.

Acts of Kindness

Why I Want My Daughter to Grow Up Selfish

Love is something that gets hardwired into our bodies when we are preverbal. The nature of our mother’s attunement and relationship to us is our first and primary imprint of what love is. Our father and other caretakers secondarily imprint what love “feels” like into our bodies.

I am talking about a vibrational energy that dwells within the body, not in the conscious mind. This energy acts like a blueprint for our future experiences, because our bodies will choose familiarity over value.

I am a marriage and family therapist: In case this sounds like psychobabble to you, I’ll offer an illustration from my own life. My very charismatic alcoholic father was rarely around when I was young. He left my mother when I was four years old, and after that he was supposed to visit his three daughters every Sunday. Most Sundays he didn’t show up, and when he did, he was usually extremely late. My sisters and I had to sit and wait by the door in our dress clothes complete with coats and gloves. We protested our physical discomfort, but our mother made us stay and wait for hours sometimes. We’d watch her anxiety grow with every minute of his tardiness. She was an anxious wreck, and we’d feel her disappointment each time he didn’t show—our little bodies were imprinted with the vibrational energy of abandonment.

Soon my father moved across the country. He might reach out with a phone call on a birthday, but sometimes he had the day wrong. Some years he didn’t call at all. The disappointment was palpable. We’d see him about once a year. He always had us meet in a restaurant with a bar filled with fellow drinkers who would tell us that we were the most important people in his life. I recall feeling really confused by that since we really didn’t know him—and he didn’t know us.

This mixed message, lack of attunement and abandonment was written in my body as the blueprint for what the love of a man feels like. So, what kind of partners do you imagine I picked in my life? Steady men who showed up, were present and wanted to commit to a loving relationship? Or charismatic alcoholics who were unreliable and unavailable emotionally? 

I, of course, chose the latter—over and over—because that’s what had been hardwired into me. This was the kind of man who activated my love receptors. I could feel this kind of man across a crowded room, and without a single word between us, I would know that he was the one for me. When I met warm and loving men who were interested in me, I never felt any chemistry. I’m wired to choose familiarity over value.

Does any of this ring a bell for you? Have you chosen partners who are reflective of what love felt like from either your mother, father or a primary caretaker?

I never understood that I was duplicating the imprint of my father’s love in my relationships. I thought my lovers were letting me down and hurting me because one or both of us were doing something wrong. I was blind to the unconscious choosing I had done to duplicate a love that felt familiar to my childhood.

Often, I see clients who are not aware that they train their partners to treat them in a way that will fulfill the experience of love they had as a child. I had a client whose mother criticized her terribly when she was young, and that criticism was coupled with her mother’s love. This client would unconsciously antagonize her husband—a typically aﬀable and easy-going guy—until he would lash out at her in ways that felt criticizing.

He loathed treating her that way. She didn’t like it either. But this was “love” for her; this was the familiar, and she was training her husband to perpetuate it for her. She had a history of being able to tolerate feeling criticized even though it upset her. Her body chose familiarity over value.

First and foremost, we need to take responsibility for the “one person themes” we bring to a relationship. I knew I was repeatedly choosing men who would disappoint me. But until I understood that I was duplicating the imprint of my original “love,” I couldn’t change. Believe me, I had tried.

 The aforementioned client thought her husband was doing something wrong—he was too critical. But she was the one unconsciously antagonizing him until she could get him to be critical. She needed to see her part in re-creating her original “love” imprint in order to be able to transform their relationship.

Another important step in transforming this pattern is to stop looking at love as something that comes from the outside, and start accepting the truth that it comes from the inside. Then we can begin to cultivate an internal feeling of constancy and wellbeing.

If you look to others in order to feel loved, you are vulnerable to their human inconsistencies. They are likely to be perpetuating the patterns of their original “love” imprint. Your wellbeing will ride the rollercoaster of the love that inevitably comes from others simply being human. It is far more reliable to find love inside you. 

Lean into the idea that you are love. It doesn’t come from externals: It’s internal. Can you imagine how that could change your paradigm on relationships and life?

Here is a little exercise that can support you in experiencing love as coming from within. Take at least five deep breaths inhaling and exhaling from your mouth—expanding your chest and ribs. Fill your lungs up as much as possible. Then put your hands on your heart.

Imagine a time you felt a profound sense of love, perhaps with a pet, child, parent or lover. Then let the story go and just stay with the feeling of love. What are you feeling in your body? Calm, heat, expansion, openheartedness, joy? Can you feel a sensation of love inside you that exists just because you exist? You can generate it all by yourself just by taking a moment to go inside and feel it.

An important step toward transformation is beginning to hardwire love into ourselves. That love can’t come from another person, it must come from within. We need to re-parent ourselves with an attuned reliable love.

Imagine you are carrying your “baby-self,” in a baby carrier in front of you. Imagine you are carrying your very special “baby-self” right on your heart—every day you tend to him/her with all the depth of love you have in you. You talk to your baby-self and reassure him/her that he/she is loved, special, important, not alone.

This is how you can re-parent yourself and imprint a positive “love” experience into your body. Make this imprint a “feeling” of love that is completely ingrained and a constant—integrate it so completely that when you choose familiarity, you are choosing value.

Love

True Love Comes From Within: A Therapist’s Perspective

Drugs & Alcohol

Up, up and away! Time to get out of the house with The Doe.

Travel

Stories that can only be told from the land of the free, home of the brave.

American Stories

LGBTQ Voices

Motherhood

Earth Day or any day, let's celebrate our planet. 

Tearjerkers

The Doe celebrates its authors this Black History Month.

Black Voices

Extra, extra, read all about it! The news-media industry has shifted dramatically over the last decade—heck, within the last two years. Between print journalism, podcasting, social media and infotainment, The Doe turns over every rock in this evolving ecosystem.

Media

Stories of starting over and finding the fresh.

New Beginnings

The ol' nine to five has changed quite a bit in the past couple of years, from working remotely to, well, not working at all. This month we take a look at how cash still does rule in our capitalist society and what the future of business and money might just look like.

Money

The Doe's editorial team takes a look back at the year and shares its favorite narratives.

Best of 2021

“You know what I mean, Gloria, because you be having sex, right?” was the question asked to me by the brown-skinned, round-afroed boy sitting to the right of me in computer class. Now, any other day, if he spoke to me, it would elicit a smile spanning across my face (accompanied by butterflies in my stomach). He was my eighth-grade crush. However, on that day, after that question was asked, there was no smile, no butterflies. Instead, they had been replaced with a furrowed brow and a sassy response of: “No, I don’t know what you mean. I am waiting until marriage to have sex.” I was 13 years old. I was 13 years old and had made the decision to save myself until marriage—and there I was in my seventh-grade computer class proclaiming it, doing so with great confidence.

I was confident—well, somewhat so. At that age, I couldn’t tell you what being a husband truly entailed or explain the nuances of sex. I wasn’t confident in those things, at all. However, what I did know was that I would love him. “Him” being the man I would stand at the altar with, professing my love to before God, our friends and family. I was confident that I would love him in a way that I would never love anyone else.

I was 13, but I had heard it enough in movies and from real-life married couples. You know, the whole “I didn’t know love until I met you,” referring to a spouse as she gazed into his eyes. Taking these cues, I couldn’t imagine—and didn’t see the point in—giving away something that I deemed so precious, so special. I couldn’t offer it to anyone besides the man that I would vow to love through sickness and health, richer or poorer, until the only thing that would separate us was death itself. This kind of love would be one of the three types that would keep me committed to the proclamation I had made so confidently in my seventh-grade computer class.

Years later, I was introduced to the second love: self-love. I had been the friend who witnessed the worry on my friend’s face as she shared that she had contracted an STD. The friend who sat on the phone listening as my friend cried after having had her second abortion. The friend who heard the hurt in her friend’s voice as she said, “He told me to make sure I go get a Plan B pill,” after having had unprotected sex with a guy she really liked.

After being that friend, and experiencing consequences secondhand, I decided I wouldn’t allow myself to experience them firsthand. That protection was rooted in self-love: a love reflective of a mother’s love that protects her child from foreseeable harm. Like that maternal instinct, I loved myself so that I would keep myself from the hurt of a guy ordering me to take a pill ensuring no lasting evidence would result from our encounter. I loved myself enough to spare the shame of testing positive for an STD. I loved myself enough to avoid years of unanswered curiosity, living with a hurt so deep from an abortion. I loved myself enough to stay committed to the decision that would bring that very protection: saving my virginity.

The third type of love I embrace is for God. I have always loved God and, because of that, I never really questioned what God commanded of me—I ignorantly obeyed. Some would say that is how it’s supposed to be, but I did eventually develop a curiosity in one of God’s commandments. As I began to gain an understanding as to why God gave commands and guidelines regarding sexuality, it was like God was giving me a heads up. I realized that the commandments that God gave, the guidelines God set, were given in love. God wanted to protect me and, with that understanding, I gained a deeper love for God: a love full of gratitude. It was a love that would allow me to trust God’s will and God’s way—knowing it was for my best.

Love. Love has always had the power of influence. The influence doesn’t always work out in one’s favor. But love has served me well. Love was what influenced me to make the decision to save my virginity. And it was love, presented in different forms, that influenced me to stay committed. It has been 19 years since making the decision to wait until marriage to have sex. At 32, each type of love still shows up in my life when their service is needed. Sometimes it’s the 13-year-old’s love for her future husband; sometimes it’s the self-preservation derived from self-love; sometimes—oftentimes—it is God’s love and will that keep me rooted in my decision. They all assure me that the decision that I made in a seventh-grade computer class is one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life.

Why I’m Saving My Virginity at 32 Years Old

Back in 2012, I started taking an interest in Tantra to learn about the capacity for our bodies to transmit energy in subtle and overt ways. As a cis, heterosexual guy, I saw the potential to alchemize my sexual obsessions into powers. I believed these powers could draw women to me and, when interested and open, could even bring them to ecstatic states with little to no physical touch. This was my deliverance, an evolution beyond the trifling games of dating and unfulfilling casual sex and into the mystical magic of deep, real human connection. I took myself, and this exploration very, very seriously.

I would go to workshops and meet Tantricas, breathwork guides, masculinity coaches and energy practitioners who would speak of orgasms occurring in non-physical ways through the sheer movement of energy. I would conspire in my journal and amongst friends to create group touch circles, where we could explore these realms in open, consensual ways. Looking back, I wasn’t sure how consensual I was in sharing these circles with other men but I was definitely keen to find a few ladies to “journey” with.

One day, I followed my curiosity down a Google hole of Tantric videos until I came across a demonstration of “Tantric massage.” I couldn’t believe what I was watching. Here was some schlocky guy, dressed in white, hovering over a massage table where a beautiful blonde woman—also in all-white spandex— was getting a “massage.” The man didn’t touch the woman in a sexual way at all—to my recollection, he didn’t even touch her. He moved his hands up and down her body about an inch to two inches from her skin, waving and pulling air around her, moving it with both hands like he was pushing water from her legs up to her neck, then pinching it away like he was sprinkling salt on her from afar. He held one hand over her head and another moved and swished around her torso and gut. It was all very surreal to watch.  

Slowly, but very clearly, the woman started to move and make noise. Her back arched and she started to moan. There was no doubt she was enjoying the experience and the massage was arousing her. I repeat: I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Without any real physical touch, this normal-looking guy was bringing a woman to orgasm by moving air and energy around her body. I was blown away.

I vowed to figure out how to do what this guy was doing. I wanted to learn how to use my energy to make a woman cum without touching her. This felt like the ultimate power. I began feeling this desire when I would talk to women, trying to energetically bring them into arousal through sheer will. When I had the opportunity, friends or dates would give me the chance to practice with them on the couch. I’d have them close their eyes and then mimic the motions and movements I saw on that YouTube video. After five or ten minutes of movement, I’d inquire, “Did you feel it?” Some said they felt something, or maybe they heard my hands moving around them; others didn’t feel anything. I persisted and kept practicing every chance I got.

One night, I was at my house with a new friend. We had kissed once before but she articulated that she just wanted to be friends and, though a little bummed, I let it go. Somehow in the course of the evening, I mentioned my studies in Tantric massage and her ears perked up—she wanted to try. I was a little hesitant at first, as she said she wasn’t interested in romance, but I thought I could keep things PG and maybe have some energetic success.  

She got on the couch and closed her eyes. I slowly and intentionally brought my energy into my hands by rubbing them together and orienting my attention towards them. Then I began to move them above her body. I swooped and pushed, drew back, held steady and continued for a while, my knees getting sore as I remained knelt over her. After what felt like a while, I saw her beginning to perspire a bit. She was moving and breathing audibly. I could sense a change was occurring. Excited by her body’s feedback and ignoring my physical discomfort, I continued to move my hands and circulate energy from her head to her pelvis to her heart and even her feet.  

Finally, she opened her eyes. “Wow, I really felt that,” she said. Then she asked if she could kiss me. I was pleasantly surprised. Not only did I get the magic to have an impact on this woman but now she did want to make out. We began kissing and, while fully clothed, the physical touch seal was broken. Through the thick denim in her jeans, I was able to bring her fully to climax. I felt superhuman.

This wild experience motivated me to play with my energy while having conversations with women or just hanging out. Sometimes we’d both be interested in energy work but our definitions weren’t always the same. Maybe we’d move or meditate together and I’d start to raise this out-of-body strength. Once I was sitting in meditation with a friend and she stopped us by saying she felt my energy overtaking her. It freaked her out and she was uncomfortable.  

I realized at that moment that consent still matters when it comes to energy work. Just because we can expand beyond our bodies doesn’t mean we always should. In fact, it’s very important to know when it’s appropriate to use this kind of sensual energy in an interaction and when it’s not. Since that “call-in” with my friend, I haven’t really found myself “playing” with this sexual energy in random spaces.  

Now that I have someone I plan to spend my life with, we occasionally practice “sex magic.” We light a candle and bring intention, breath and our own focused energy into our intimacy. I feel grateful to have someone who is game to exchange energy with me instead of a one-way massage, and we can break the physical touch barrier to deepen our experience from the get-go. 

Nevertheless, I’ll always be proud of my ability to transmit sexual energy without touch.

Doe Print Value - Openness

I Discovered the Joys and Limits of a No-Touch Orgasm

It’s not easy being a climate scientist these days. 

On the one hand, there are the climate deniers and “lukewarmers” who deny the fundamental reality of climate change, or insist that climate change’s impacts somehow won’t be so bad. About once a month I get an email out of the blue from a retired engineer or physics teacher explaining why we climate scientists have it all wrong, and why we don’t understand some basic physical principle. Often, these emails come with helpful links to self-published textbooks or online manifestos offering more details.

On the other hand, there are the many people, especially younger ones, who are genuinely worried that climate change is very soon going to bring about the end of human existence as we know it. And about once a month, I get an email from a high school or college student asking what they should do to help prevent the collapse of society.

While I commend and respect this level of concern about the climate crisis, I don’t personally view climate change as an existential threat to society. The countries and communities who can afford to adapt to a changing climate will do so—and they already are. But those who can’t will experience all of climate change’s worst effects. For me, the climate crisis is a question of social justice and equality, of ensuring that everyone can be prepared for its consequences, rather than something which will bring about the end of society as we know it.

As a climate scientist, I often ask myself how we got into this situation. The conventional explanation is that this mess is the fault of the business conglomerates and special interests who have funded, directly and indirectly, so much climate misinformation. But do we scientists deserve some of the blame? Could we have been clearer in explaining our findings? Have we fallen into a trap set by the fossil fuel industry and its entourage?

One of our biggest problems is communicating uncertainty. Scientists are obsessed with uncertainty—defining it, measuring it and reducing it. You’d never publish data without putting some uncertainties in it. But most people don’t spend so much time thinking about uncertainty. Politicians especially like to have clear, simple stories to tell. So people on either side of the climate debate can latch on to climate scientists’ discussions of uncertainty. It’s a clash of nuance versus messaging, and scientists are much better at nuance than messaging.

I still don’t know what the right line to take on this is. There’s no uncertainty about the basic science and data of climate change: It’s real, we understand it and we know humans are responsible for it. But we’re still trying to work out how bad it’s going to be. Really bad? Or really, really bad, but not apocalyptic? We get excited when a new piece of evidence helps us parse these shades of gray, but non-scientists typically aren’t as interested in confidence intervals or new advances in data-infilling.

Another issue is that we depend on models to make predictions. In fact, this is how all of science works: We make models of reality, which we test by making predictions. The climate models used to forecast the future are some of the most complex computer programs ever written—millions of lines of codes, written by hundreds of researchers, which run on some of the largest supercomputers on Earth. But even these models are imperfect representations of the climate system, with countless biases and approximations. It doesn’t take much work to pick apart a climate model and decide you don’t trust its predictions. Clouds are the largest source of uncertainty (how do you even define a “cloud"?), but they’re far from the only source of error in climate models.

The key, though, is to realize that these models are all we have. And they’ve actually done a pretty good job at predicting the climate’s trajectory since the first climate model predictions were made in the '80s and early '90s. Everyone who works on these models is an expert in their field, and does their best to create the most accurate simulation of the climate system that they can. In a way, it goes back to the issue of uncertainty again—there’s much we still don’t know about the climate system, but we’re confident in the big picture.

I would actually argue that this confidence is another source of anxiety for climate scientists. I said before that scientists are obsessed with details, but we also like to have deep, important questions guiding our work. Think of Darwin’s endless study of finch beaks as he gathered evidence for his grand theory of evolution. In climate science, the basic science is settled. We know how radiation interacts with Earth’s atmosphere to keep the planet habitable, and how adding CO2 to the atmosphere will cause the climate to warm up. We know why storms will get stronger, deserts will expand and the oceans will acidify. The question of “why” has been replaced by questions of “when," “where” and “to what extent?” Having answered the fundamental questions, climate science has become a mission-driven science. Societal and political relevance has replaced the romance of pure, blue-sky basic research.

Returning to the question of what climate scientists can do to better communicate our science to the broader public, you can see our dilemma. We know the climate is changing and that this will have many bad consequences. But we aren’t sure how many meters the seas will rise, how much stronger storms will get and how bad, generally, things will become. We’ve built incredibly complex, sophisticated models of the climate models, but we also know that these models are riddled with errors, and that some of their predictions won’t come to pass. 

People want answers to precise questions: How much warmer will it get in my city? How will my crops be affected? When will all the glaciers melt? As a climate scientist, I don’t feel confident about saying anything other than: I’m not sure, but trust me, it’s going to be bad.

Climate Change

A Communication Crisis: How Scientific Standards Get in the Way of Explaining Climate Change

Everyone wants a better planet for their family and children. This includes conservatives who hunt, fish, camp and farm for a living. It would seem logical that they actually have the most to lose from the planet being destroyed. They also usually have the most experience with tending to nature, but that’s not what you typically hear in the media. 

The environment is not a political issue, but it’s being used as a prop.

The disagreement is not over whether liberals or conservatives want a more environmental future. This is a false premise that is used to divide American citizens, so we never debate the real issues. The lie that is sold to us is that the government can solve all of our problems, and if you don’t believe their narratives, then you must not like the earth we all live on.

There are plenty of people who actually believe this horrific lie put out by your federal government: that the government alone can "fix it." They think Greta Thunberg is a scientist. They believe that geoengineering can control major weather events. They think the Paris Climate Accord saves mankind and that ranchers don’t know how to manage their own properties without government regulation. All of this is a lie. It is used to keep us divided so we never actually take action by coming together.

Take the Keystone XL Pipeline, for example. There are narratives that this massive project would destroy entire towns, pollute waters and cause irreparable harm to the environment. This became an entire political issue for eight years with disinformation on all sides. What the pipeline actually did was create a safe transportation method of fossil fuels from Canada to America that are up to the regulations of 2021, not the 1900s.

Now that the Keystone Pipeline is gone, fossil fuels are not gone. They will still be imported from OPEC, the Middle East and places where we’re building pipelines along with other countries. Their regulations are not as strict as ours. They face many geopolitical problems like terrorism and sabotage, and we have to import that oil by ship and rail, which is inherently less environmentally friendly.

If this sounds insane, it’s because it is. 

Major donors to political PACs will receive contracts to import the oil in a much more irresponsible way. Military contractors will be used to guard the transit routes and add to the pollution. For example, the U.S. military uses around 400,000 barrels of oil per day, but you never seem to hear the outcry for their "carbon footprint." We also spend around 81 billion dollars per year to guard "fossil fuel assets," according to CNBC. However, it is easier just to blame the Texas cattle rancher or the union worker who was building a pipe, because if the violence and pollution are happening in another country, it’s out of sight and mind to the average American.

I watched destructive waste management destroy the ecosystem for fish that we needed to live. I devote my life now to helping people transition to solar panels. I don’t do it because I believe the world will end in ten years. We have already seen "climate preachers" like Al Gore get rich off of these inaccurate models and help their political pals. I simply believe that a first-world country should not have the most electrical blackouts of any developed nation. 

Solar technology is still a way from replacing anything, and there will be unintended consequences—like how to dispose of the batteries once they are spent. However, the true free market and entrepreneurship will figure these things out if the government stops advocating for its largest donors and lets innovation loose. We do not need more hyperbole and division. We need logic and solutions, and this will never happen if we continue to vilify each other and believe false narratives.

Saving the Environment Is Not a Political Issue

My love for the environment started before I could even talk. Labeled a “nature girl” from toddlerhood on, I would most likely be found climbing trees or collecting bugs as a young child. In the summer, I went to nature camp, where crunchy granola counselors would instruct like-minded children about the hazards of petting a snake the wrong way (flipping their scales up apparently feels like peeling off a fingernail) and leaving no trace. (On an ill-fated camping trip, we were instructed to defecate in a bucket and shovel it onto a compost pile. Suffice to say, I can still remember the smell.) 

When I first heard about the concept of ecoterrorism, I found segments of it incredibly justified. I was a precocious, strong-willed preteen, and I preached the idea of purging the world of millions of humans to leave more room for native species to flourish. (Only the people I didn’t know, of course.) After all, radical problems such as deforestation and global warming require radical solutions. Driven by unbridled empathy towards all living things on Earth, I even periodically gave up my beloved chicken tenders for a very low-protein diet of carbs, carbs and more carbs. 

When it came time for my Bat Mitzvah, a Jewish rite of passage, I insisted that the theme be eco-consciousness. I handed out invitations that were printed on recycled paper and planted hundreds of trees in the guests’ honor. I even had a “Peace, Love, Recycle” banner draped across the walls of the venue and had the phrase emblazoned on the back of the organic cotton sweatshirts given out as party favors. They were worn by all the invitees to school the following Monday.

All those years, it was so obvious to me, as it is now, that everything that humans have done—and continue to do—to modify our environment has a harmful impact on the world’s ecology. I intuitively knew that our planet was in trouble without having to be taught in school. It was a no-brainer to me; I could see it with my own two eyes everywhere I went. All the endless highways coated in bumper-to-bumper traffic and the bright lights and the noise felt—and still feels—so inherently wrong to me that the idea of denying the existence of climate change is impossible to wrap my head around. 

And yet, all these years later, I no longer really care about the environment. It used to be that every other word out of my mouth was nature-related. Now, I don’t spend much time thinking about it or do more than the bare minimum to protect it. 

Don’t get me wrong, I (almost) always recycle, drink from a reusable water bottle (filling it exclusively with tap water) and even bought a metal straw during that year-long period when sipping from a plastic one vilified you. Essentially, I do what I’m told is right by popular science, but I no longer have that same fire lit underneath me, that same drive that nearly had me signing up to suicide bomb a factory. While I cannot pinpoint an exact moment when doing more than tick the perfunctory boxes of environmentalism stopped mattering to me, I have finally figured out why it is that I no longer care.

In the face of big corporations, and yes, late-stage capitalism, I feel completely powerless to do anything. How can my actions matter when billion-dollar industries are altering the natural world on a scale I can hardly comprehend? Maybe it isn’t a lack of caring that got me here, but a sense of environmental despair brought on as a coping mechanism due to caring too much. In the convoluted world we have orchestrated for ourselves, it’s somewhat impossible to give a damn without going insane, or resorting to drastic measures such as ecoterrorism. 

The idea that average people are responsible for the brunt of climate change, and that our individual actions—choosing biking over driving and tofu over steak—can solve the climate crisis has been foisted upon us by a few big companies that are doing the vast majority of the harm in order to distract us from their evildoing. It is a smokescreen perpetrated by the biggest offenders to keep us consumed by guilt and focused on the steps we can take to mitigate the damage—a distraction while they loot the natural world to feed the economy. While we’re busy fighting over the merits of a vegan diet, they’re destroying the environment on a scale we can hardly fathom. 

In 2016, more than half of all greenhouse gas emissions came from energy production, manufacturing and industrial processes, which doesn’t even include the energy required for transportation. In transporting oil, the number of 50-barrels-or-more spills per year has quadrupled since 2000, putting our oceans and marine life in grave danger. BP, one of the largest oil companies in the world, and a repeat oil-spill-offender, even dared to come up with the concept of a “carbon footprint”—a way of measuring your own individual impact in terms of CO2 emissions—as part of a new ad campaign aimed at deflecting attention from their hand in harming the planet. It worked brilliantly, playing off of our guilt and fear, as they carried on remorselessly polluting.

Modern agriculture is another huge contributor to climate change and is often talked about in a way that inaccurately forces the practices of animal farming and pesticide use to shoulder the blame. It’s easy to get caught up in the sexier debate of whether or not we should be eating animals at all—as discussed ad nauseam in an onslaught of gratuitous pro-veganism Netflix documentaries—instead of thinking of ways that we can reformat animal agriculture to both allow us to enjoy meat and remove carbon from the atmosphere. 

It sounds impossible, but it’s actually based on ancestral ways of tending to the land that involves using fewer resources and makes it less financially enticing to the bigwigs in charge. Called regenerative agriculture, the concept involves allowing cows—a large producer of methane, a greenhouse gas—to roam in open-air environments, unlike the manure-filled stalls they’re currently confined to, and to graze on grasses, instead of being force-fed corn, which their stomachs are not meant to digest. In grazing on grass and allowing it to regrow in a constant cycle (before killing them for their nutritious meat), the cattle act as a carbon sink, with the plants pulling it out of the atmosphere in order to create oxygen as they grow back. 

Vegans prefer to hide in an unimaginative, black-and-white world, where shades of gray that come in the form of creative solutions, like regenerative agriculture, don’t exist. Its militant proponents have formed a community unable to parse through the murky reality that animals can make an excellent source of food in moderation and that they can be raised responsibly in ways that will both give the animals more dignified lives and protect the environment. They only wish to chomp on their beloved organic vegetables, which are perhaps causing just as much destruction to the land. 

The jury is out on whether it’s genuinely productive to label either conventional or organic farming as “worse” than the other since they’re both damaging in unique ways. While conventional farming employs pesticides and herbicides, which pollutes water sources, kills marine life and poisons human health, organic farming requires far more land use, which means more habitat destruction and less efficient food production—not to mention more (often undocumented and vulnerable) labor, which often suffers egregious abuses. 

I’m right in thinking that I can’t fix any of these problems all by myself. It’s natural that I resort to feeling defeated so that I can go on with my everyday life without being consumed by guilt. Even while writing I feel overwhelmed by the largeness and complexity of these problems, and I know I’m not the only one. These seemingly insurmountable problems have us backed into a corner of apathy, a kind of pandemic that is a far greater long-term threat to human existence than any respiratory virus.

It’s incredible to think about what we could do if we cared even a fraction more than we currently do; if we figured out how to harness the power in the collective. We are at a crossroads in environmental history, and while it can feel at times like impending doom is inevitable, we must not self-sabotage or give in to the urge to silence our inner conscience out of fear that we’ve already failed our future generations. Only through a meaningful return to our roots—to ancestral wisdom instead of artificial intelligence, to the internal compass of what is good for the planet—can we reimagine modern life once and for all. Then, perhaps, we can radically alter the course of history.

Climate Grief and the Hopelessness of Reversing Climate Change

Picture a grocery store with all the produce and products you could ever need under one roof, all in reusable jars, bottles, bags and other relevant receptacles. Now imagine that you can have any item in that store delivered to you via a tech-driven dispensing mechanism. Its backend would be driven by a production and shipping ecosystem that integrates with producers, and a logistics operation to collect used containers, so that no plastic or other non-biodegradable waste would be generated at any point along the way. 

This was the big, aspirational dream that my husband and I envisioned as we tried to concoct a new concept for a large-scale, zero-waste grocery store. We were motivated to come up with alternative models of food retail after learning that more than 20 percent of landfill waste in the U.S. comes from containers and packaging, and less than ten percent of plastic is recycled. 

To play around with the idea, we decided to visit our nearest grocery store and immerse ourselves in the exact kind of space we wanted to render obsolete. As we entered, we headed straight for the first row of the tens of shelves in the hangar-like building. Bang! A wall of mayonnaise. Hundreds of jars. At least 20 different kinds. We asked each other, “Could we ever convince people to choose between just two or three alternatives? How many people would react by calling it a restriction on their freedom or invoking the word 'communism'?” We dreaded the idea of turning the corner to the pasta aisle.

I’m an entrepreneur and author, with a background in end-of-life care, who has set up several businesses around the world and consulted for Fortune 500 companies and government-led projects. I like to tackle hairy problems and unpack and challenge the underlying forces behind what is considered reality—while enabling others to see what appears normal or established in a radically different way. So I decided to dig into this space further and try to understand this problem and figure out if a new kind of grocery store might be the answer.

As a lover of words and history, I decided to dig into the origins of grocery stores as we know them. I found that the word "grocery" comes from the French word grossier, meaning wholesaler. In the 14th century, products that didn’t come from a farm in the local area—like spices, sugar, pepper and, later on, cacao, tea and coffee—were sold in bulk. People would bring their own containers, wrapping and other receptacles to hold what they bought. It was only in 1916 that the first self-service grocery store, Piggly Wiggly, was opened in Memphis, Tennessee. Much of its success stemmed from its neat packages and attention-grabbing advertising—a drastic shift from over-the-counter service where customers had clerks managing relatively undifferentiated inventory. 

Our concept of a “normal” grocery store is just over 100 years old. When they began, people were just transitioning away from horse-drawn carriages, bloodletting was still recommended in medical textbooks and movies were black and white, not to mention silent. In reality, we have a much longer history and deep roots in sustainable habits, including furoshiki, the ancient Japanese practice of wrapping gifts and items in beautiful reusable cloths, and the Seventh Generation Principle, originally from the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), a philosophy that upholds the idea that decisions we make today should result in a sustainable world seven generations into the future.

It is important to remind ourselves of this especially when we get news from the National Chicken Council boasting that Americans had 1.42 billion chicken wings during Super Bowl LV—enough to circle the circumference of the earth three times, when laid out in a line—and Whole Foods sells peeled oranges in plastic tubs.

Where did we learn to celebrate this kind of consumption? How did we actually buy into this? What is it that makes a wasteful lifestyle feel normal and aspirational? Well, naturally, living in L.A., it's easy to find some culprits in our neighborhood. It’s a widely known fact that U.S. media plays a major role in shaping the aspirations of people across the country and around the world. We must be wary of its impact, especially since life often imitates art. After all, when was the last time we saw someone in a movie or TV show wear the same outfit twice (other than when they are under incredible stress, or at a very low point in their life)? And what does that say about the kind of messaging we are getting about reusing? 

To paraphrase the brilliant sci-fi writer Kim Stanley Robinson, our dream life has been colonized by the American Dream factory. So if that is the case, then maybe what is pumped out could at least be wiser in the ways that we treat the ecosystems of which we are a part. Of course, the issue and solution must go beyond just the media. 

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Doe Print Value - Closeness

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Full Collection

Why I’m Saving My Virginity at 32 Years Old

I Discovered the Joys and Limits of a No-Touch Orgasm

A Communication Crisis: How Scientific Standards Get in the Way of Explaining Climate Change

Saving the Environment Is Not a Political Issue

Climate Grief and the Hopelessness of Reversing Climate Change

Is Zero-Waste Grocery Shopping Viable? How Mayonnaise Broke My Heart

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