Can The Idealist Save What The Realist Killed?

It is rampant in the timber industry, and it’s been killing it for years: Realist thought (politics)…”a set of theories sharing a common theme that the primary motivation of states is the desire for power or security, rather than ideals or ethics”. This holds true in corporate and national culture. Security over ideals. Ring any bells?

When I say idealist I don’t mean the ‘impractical dreamer’. That’s what they used to call them.

I am the common idealist, or perhaps, the generalist idealist: I want things to be ‘good’. That’s really what it comes down to, and my Dutch friend Yuri can attest to that. First he helped me struggle with my ‘environmentalist’ image, which I’m not, but he thinks I am. In which case, maybe I am. As a treeplanter he imagined me sitting around a campfire with peers, guitars, maracas, soda(?) – singing to the trees and dancing for them. Really, he told me this. I tell him I’m stronger than that, and I planted for money. Who carries, strides and plants 3000 trees a day for the environment itself? No one does, that’s who.

Yuri is the European epitome of the general idealist. Similar to myself he grew up abroad with a diplomatic family, and strives for a similar lifestyle. He’s a realist as far as stability goes, but he’s that lifestyle idealist. He will not destroy things to benefit his comfort.

Idealists are back, and we walk the cities in droves, and want it to conform to our needs. We are acutely aware of urban problems and beyond, and we want them to be ‘good’.

Back here I showed my excitement in an ‘official’ recognizing that we (as a nation) produce too much timber (for our own good). That rarely happens, which is one of the reasons some are at the bottom of a shit-cycle.

The other day my manager chuckled as he mentioned three Industry oldies retiring in two years, “things might finally change”. It is a shame that it comes down to people retiring for change to happen, the things they did for security!

Now, I can’t be a total anti-corpo, as the reality is there’s so many factors I am not schooled in that are factors in Annual Allowable Cut decision making. The idealist in me would like to see the rug pulled out from under industry feet; chop in half cut-rates, those who go down do so to the benefit of the environment. Then the realist punches me in the gut reminding me to stop being a fool; things will fail, but you’ve got to let it happen over time.

Like any big transition, you can’t snap to its end. Say perhaps you’re in that school-to-work transition, which is a period of time, not particularly a point in time. Imagine if you just found yourself in a job one morning, just woke up into it. A little stressful it would be, no?

There is coming a transition in the forest industry wherein over a period of about 5 to 10 years there will be a nearly complete transition from old-growth (current harvest) to total second growth harvest. Even the veterans of the industry have no idea how this will go over. They’re scared, but they won’t even be around for that transition. That’s like a national debt being poured like boiling tar over children who played no part in it. There is a parallel transition concerning the generation about to be involved in its workforce, and I think it’s about to be diluted with people who may want to care too much. How will that play out?

As an idealist, I’m playing my options wide. Or maybe I’m totally in the wrong place here.

What’s it like when an idealist generation saturates a workplace that is used to thriving on forcefulness?