Earlier this year I read the fascinating little book by Jenny Odell How to Do Nothing: Resting the Attention Economy. 

It fascinated me because, amidst the expected social media antagonism (agree!) and progressive politics (not so sure!), I noticed an underlying, intriguing thing: deep sentiments of conservation. Odell's certainly not aligned with conservative politics, but the sentiments about the environment, the labor movement, and activist politics hearken back to previous eras: she wants to bring to the present the best of the past. While most right-of-center conservatives may disagree with Odell about which parts of the past to bring to the present, the orientation to bring back anything is conservative. If we all have this conservation bent, the question becomes what we're going to conserve. The "make America native again" hat may not exist, but you could see Odell wearing it proudly.

My local paper, the Salem News, recently announced the granting of a conservation restriction to some privately owned land next to Norwood Pond. The acreage abuts the pond itself, which is a city park, and a few waterfront homes. The conservation restriction does this: prevents development, gives overseer rights to the Greenbelt Association, and makes the land tax-free for its owner. In other words: it preserves forever this person's 23 acre private forest. This conservation protects things exactly how they are right now—the status quo above all.

Conserving things exactly as they are today strikes me as a really limiting kind of conservation. Instead of keeping the pond's eastern edge forever private and forever no-trespassing, imagine if we built a nice little boardwalk around the pond. In that imaginary world, the kids from the school up the hill could take their science period and walk a mile to see exactly what a vernal pool is or watch a heron eat a frog. Using a little imagination or allowing for a future that's slightly different from today could make things better. Instead, our conservative energies seem devoted to stopping anything that vaguely smells of difference.

Alright, enough whining about my pond boardwalk dream. Here's the reading: two pieces about why we can't have nice things.

Reading