Spinning out of control
The case for developing our collective locus of control
One of the lessons that I’ve tried to hold on to from the first time I trained for a marathon is the importance of developing an internal locus of control.
To simplify this a lot, if you believe that the direction and successes—or failures—of your life are the result of fate, or chance, or circumstances outside of your influence, you have an external locus of control. If you think you’re in the driver’s seat, and have agency and responsibility for how your life unfolds, you have an internal locus of control.
Of course it’s not so black and white, either-or, and it isn’t an innate, immutable characteristic. The very first lesson in The Non-Runner’s Marathon Trainer is that one can develop and grow one’s internal locus of control, and that doing so will be an important factor in whether or not you can run a marathon. I mean think about it: If you think you can’t run a marathon, chances are pretty good that you won’t.
(I know this sounds like some hokey 20th century pop-psychology stuff, and maybe it is, but maybe it’s also still useful?)
Of course, this has applications outside of running. One could say the same about a long thru-hike, about writing a book, about changing careers, about making a big move or other enormous life change. If you think you can’t, you probably won’t.
I’ve been thinking about my internal locus of control a lot recently because, in so many ways, the world feels like it’s spinning out of control. It’s quite easy to give in to feelings of powerlessness when deluged with executive orders and layoffs and other bad news, broadly speaking. It’s particularly galling when people who seem like they should have power to do something act like they don’t, making us lowly normies feel even more powerless.
Maybe there’s a little voice of skeptical negativity in your head whispering, Yeah, but what if things are out of our control?
I’ll let David Whitsett take this one:
[I]t doesn’t matter whether the events in your life are REALLY in your control or not; it only matters whether you THINK they are. If people believe they are in control of events in their own lives, they usually try to exercise that control, whereas if they feel what they do or don’t do makes little or no difference in how things turn out, they usually don’t even try to influence events.
In short, if we act like things are out of our control, they will be.
I feel like this is where I should suggest some things to do to exercise your agency, but this post is already uncomfortably preachy for me. Figuring out how to individually contribute to the collective good is enormously personal. One can’t be expected to do everything, but to do something.
To be clear, I’m still figuring it out myself. Right now, it just looks like doing my job as a climate reporter and editor. It’s reading the news. Listening to the radio. Writing this newsletter. Posting through it all. Fighting off existential dread and feelings of powerlessness. Staying sane, more or less, in the maelstrom.
Reading list
Hell ya
Following a large public outcry (internal locus of control), it seems the Department of the Interior is backtracking on plans to rescind job offers to thousands of seasonal parks employees this year. However, the ~1,000 permanent employees (about 5 percent of the parks service workforce) who were let go as part of the Valentine’s Day massacre last week are out of a job, and the parks department will be smaller and weaker without their institutional knowledge. [Jack Dolan for the Los Angeles Times]
Something to hold on to
The race to “save the tiles” from the wreckage of the Los Angeles wildfires. [Evan Jacoby for LAist]
I don’t know how to feel
A wildlife refuge in the Adirondacks is now closed to the public (following a string of state and federal wildlife violations) and for sale (a mere $800,000). [Gwendolyn Craig for the Adirondack Explorer]
*Eternal screaming*
The Pacific Crest Trail Association is scaling back planned trail work because their funding from the Forest Service is under review. “We are unsure when or if this funding will be cut, reduced or fully restored,” Megan Wargo, the PCTA CEO, writes. “We’ve canceled 56 weeks of planned projects—more than one full year’s worth of trail crew maintenance—and likely cancelled hiring six seasonal trail crew leaders who are experts in trail building and repair and provide crucial support and supervision for trail crews. Cutting back needed trail maintenance will directly affect the PCT experience this year and in the future, and surely will increase the amount and cost of work we will need to address later.” [PCTA]
Excuse the excessive block quote but:
At California’s Yosemite National Park, the Trump administration fired the only locksmith on staff on Friday. He was the sole employee with the keys and the institutional knowledge needed to rescue visitors from locked restrooms. / The wait to enter Arizona’s Grand Canyon National Park this past weekend was twice as long as usual after the administration let go four employees who worked at the south entrance, where roughly 90 percent of the park’s nearly 5 million annual visitors pass through. / And at Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania, last week’s widespread layoffs gutted the team that managed reservations for renting historic farmhouses. Visitors received notifications that their reservations had been canceled indefinitely.
And this is, as you might realize, not even the high season!! I want to chuckle at the “institutional knowledge” necessary for rescuing visitors who lock themselves in bathrooms, but I can’t. Well, maybe a little. Honestly, once the WaPo reporters pointed out that Yosemite is the size of Rhode Island and has hundreds of buildings and gates with locks, I wonder at them only having one locksmith on staff. [Maxine Joselow and Andrea Sachs for the Washington Post]
At least 3,000 people at the United States Forest Service and the National Park Service have lost their jobs. What does that look like? Well, last year, seven forest service employees oversaw “500 miles of popular trails crisscrossing the Cascade Mountains. In a single season…they monitored 70 backcountry toilets, carried out 600 pounds of trash and disposed of more than a thousand piles of human waste.” (“Pile” is such a delightfully nonspecific metric.) After Valentine’s Day, there’s just one full-time employee left to patrol 340,000 acres of wilderness. [Austyn Gaffney for the New York Times]
High Country News estimates losses have been even greater, with 3,400 people from the Forest Service and about 2,300 people from the Department of Interior, the agency that oversees the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, out of a job. The purported “savings” from these cuts are a pittance; one fired worker never made more than $22/hour. And as Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of the National Parks Conservation Association, reminds us, the Park Service costs one-fifteenth of one percent of the federal budget, while bringing in $55.6 billion for the national economy. Nice job balancing that budget, guys. [Christine Peterson for High Country News]
The US Fish and Wildlife Service has frozen tens of millions of dollars of funds meant for global conservation, biodiversity, and wildlife efforts. [Benji Jones for Vox]
Finally, Alaskan permafrost is thawing and leaching toxic metals into rivers, turning them orange. What an appropriate symbol for the times. [Leo Collis for The Cool Down]