Is harm reduction. And I don’t mean it in the standard public-health way (though of course that’s awesome too).
I was introduced to the idea of harm reduction as applied more broadly through an interview with Julia Butterfly Hill that appeared in the spring 2005 issue of LiP (“Addicted to Waste: Harm Reduction, Disposability and the Myth of Activist Purity”), and I’ve thought about it pretty much every day ever since.
Unfortunately, the interview’s not available online, but here’s the nugget of what Hill had to say: “In our addiction to oil, in our addiction to capitalism, in our addiction to consumerism, in our addiction to comfortability, the first things we need to look at as activists are…how [we can] create incentives for people to reduce that harm, on themselves, on their communities and on the planet.”
It’s easiest to see how useful this approach is when it comes to environmental issues—recycling, conservation, giving up our disposable cups, etc. don’t mean we’re not still doing damage, but doing less damage is pretty much always a good thing. (Banal but true, and all too easy to loose sight of.)
But I think it also applies to pretty much anything, whether we’re talking about our own consumption habits (of everything from food and clothing to TV, magazines, porn) or broader projects of social justice. Harm reduction is basically the best antidote I’ve come across to making the perfect the enemy of the good (or at least the better). And I think we all need a whole lot more of that.