This is a Friday Food For Thought rant from Facebook that gets sassier as it goes. Although I work hard to make space for folks just dipping their toes into sustainability, I do love a good rant from time to time π
Our cultural risk assessment thought processes are 
illogical and serve only to uphold harmful systems. Don’t believe me? Lets explore! 
Lets use lawns. Because I *hate* lawns.
It is completely “normal” within suburban norms to push back on messy lawns, or lawns that are perceived to be messy. Food beds, native plants, chicken coops – these all come with ample…
BUT MICE
BUT TICKS
BUT RATS
BUT BUT BUT THE CHEEEELLLDRENNNNN WE NEED NICE LAWNS FOR DA CHEEEELLLDRENNNSS
This makes zero fekking sense. Not only is lawncare *directly harmful* to children with all the mowing and blowing and fertilizing and whatnot, but the sheer amount of energy lost squabbling over lawns on Nextdoor and in HOA meetings is actual lunacy given how desperately we need bodies in state legislatures to fight for oh I dunno… literally anything else that would actually keep kids safer.
Also, chickens and native plants and stuff aren’t even associated with the big scary things people think they are. We don’t have ticks and mice and trash all over the place in our yard we have butterflies and spiders that aren’t hurting anyone or doing anything but existing – our fear of them is an *us* problem not a *them* problem.
We should culturally be more concerned about what our cars and consumption habits are doing to our kiddos’ minds, lungs, and future on this planet than we are on **checks notes** the fact that they might see a bug.
And because we always wind up here-
“But it doesn’t look pretty in the winter” or “I just don’t think it looks nice.”
What the fek even is concrete and brown grass? What are those weird mulchy median things in Target parking lots that we walk by and ignore? Pretty?
Bite me. We’ve just learned to ignore those because they don’t bother our mindless consumerisming and its easier to keep lawning because we don’t want our crabby neighbors to talk to us.
See again: Bite me.
Stop defending lawns. Don’t get rid of yours if you’re not gonna. Accessibility and budgets and all. But don’t stand idly by thinking that turf grass lawns *matter* one teeny weeny itty bitty tiny bit or that upholding misinformation about the “harms” of delawning makes any sense at all.
Cars are dangerous. The normalization of turf grass lawns is dangerous. Mindless consumerism is dangerous. Compliance to social norms is dangerous. The audacity of demanding “systemic change” from individualistic suburban cookie cutter leafblower hell is dangerous.
This lawn is not dangerous.