Of Whom Is Temperance Required?

On water, gardening vs industrial ag, and student protests in the desert

People where I live have stopped gardening to save on water bills. I read this in a local organization’s recent food needs assessment, which also says that “53% of participants worry about running out of money for food and 45% don’t have enough money to buy the food they need.” In Arizona, there aren’t any water restrictions placed on individuals (organizations have some), but there is a culture of being careful with water. Or at least being told to be careful. In a 2021 article for The Guardian, a municipal utilities director for Tempe said, “We’re not saying, ‘Don’t [use water] … We’re saying, ‘Use water wisely.’” 

Temperance is decidedly old-fashioned, a virtue only for the poor in the eyes of the rich. To be an American who is wealthy and powerful (aren’t the words synonyms here?) is to consume, and “habitual moderation in the indulgence of the appetites or passions” is not valued. “Making it” means buying whatever you want and fashioning a life through where and what you purchase. Restraint and moderation aren’t required – unless, as a recent example, you are a student protesting the genocide in Gaza.

There was no temperance when police shot pepper spray balls and rubber bullets at people protesting the war on Gaza at U of A’s campus last week, as Arizona Agenda reports. Or when police arrested two dozen protesters at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, AZ. At my alma mater, Arizona State, dozens of students were arrested after peacefully protesting. Some were suspended and effectively banned from campus, including their dorms. Students filed a lawsuit against the university over the suspensions. A statement made by ASU read partially, "While the university will continue to be an environment that embraces freedom of speech, ASU’s first priority is to create a safe and secure environment that supports teaching and learning." Safe and secure for whom?

In a sickening op-ed in my local paper, a columnist smugly says that the students who were arrested and suspended are learning about consequences. Meanwhile, a faculty member spewed vile, hateful words and accosted a woman in a headscarf and was placed on leave, not arrested. Who is learning what in this situation? Powerful people and institutions don’t respond with moderation because they know it isn’t required of them, only of others. 

This idea of temperance is directly tied to US Protestant ideas about consumption and moral living. “The temperance movement, rooted in America's Protestant churches, first urged moderation, then encouraged drinkers to help each other to resist temptation, and ultimately demanded that local, state, and national governments prohibit alcohol outright.” The timing aligned with the industrialization of food. Margaret Visser writes, “...the new fizzy drinks achieved a reputation even loftier than that of a remedy for sickness: they were non-alcoholic, therefore safe and pure; they were an alternative to Evil.” She also mentions that Coke was initially advertised as “the Intellectual Beverage and Temperance Drink.” If you drank soda you were good, if you drank alcohol you were evil.

I’m interested in consumption and moderation (by choice and force). And how influential Protestant and fundamental Christian virtues have been and are in the US, as well as how those “virtues” align with consumerism and capitalism. Alcohol being evil sure was convenient for the soda industry, and strains of this continue today. I come from a long line of Irish-Catholic alcoholics, so I appreciate the myriad of non-alcoholic drinks available, but there is no inherent evil in beer.  

In Phoenix, there’s a large population of Mormons and soda shops to service them as they abstain from coffee, tea, and alcohol. Especially in the depths of summer, I see no temperance when it comes to fizzy drinks (and that’s not just among Mormons.) A giant styrofoam cup filled with ice, syrup, and bubbly water is a standard accessory when the last day below 100 degrees F is a distant memory. There are times when all I want is a cranberry limeade from Sonic, and I give myself that small pleasure. But I will always prefer beer to soda and resist the story that sobriety is the gold medal of morality. Alcoholism is the bird on my shoulder. I keep it close to stay honest with myself and, I hope, to remain able to enjoy booze here and there.

Choice – not being told what to drink or eat or being able to choose to grow your own food – is directly connected to self-worth. I’m reading Food in Cuba: The Pursuit of a Decent Meal by Hanna Garth (a previous pick in Alicia Kennedy’s book club), and this truth is laid out plainly. People suffer when they cannot access the food they desire, even if they technically have all the calories they need to survive. Garth argues that “an adequate food system allows people to access and maintain desired local foods, supports ethnically specific cuisine, and at the same time offers up the possibility that food consumption may remain or become a practice of self-cultivation that is part of the politics of the good life.”

The people interviewed in the report I mentioned earlier are from a poor part of my city, a city that is rapidly gentrifying and growing. A city that I love, where many people do much with little. Following the report, the city is racing to implement initiatives about food access, school and community gardens, food forests, cooling centers, and more. And, as Kim Foster wrote recently, “Hunger is a problem. But it’s a by-product of a much larger systemic issue and that is poverty.” Similarly, lack of access to water is a by-product of many things: Settlers moving to the desert and feeling entitled to make it as green as the places they left. Massive overconsumption as the state’s population explodes. But by percentages, industrial agriculture is one of the most to blame. 

In 2019, the Arizona Department of Water Resources reported that 72% of the state’s water went to agricultural use. This water is used to grow, among other things, lettuce. According to the AZ Farm Bureau, “between the months of November and April, 90% of the U.S. and Canada's leafy greens and other vegetables come from the Yuma area.” At the same time, growing your own food in the desert can be considered an immoderate, borderline frivolous use of water. The message is, “Don’t be dumb, go to the grocery store.” When I think about growing food, I become immobilized by the magnitude of what I don’t know and the pressure I feel to not waste resources. I go to the grocery store and read about gardening. 

But this pressure and the lack of knowledge or money to pay for gardening water is tied to how poverty and hunger continue. If people can’t afford their water bill, they don’t garden. If no one gardens, we become increasingly reliant on grocery stores and prey to their rising costs and whims. The grocery stores know we can’t (or don’t) grow our own food. The state tells its citizens to use water wisely, not wanting to impose restrictions because they’re unpopular, and yet water is used unwisely by industrial agriculture. In the AZ Farm Bureau article I shared above, the headline is “Yuma is to Agriculture What Silicon Valley is to Computers.” I think the note of pride in this is telling: Agriculture is big business and looks to other giant industries for their comparisons – none of which were built on the virtue of temperance or the belief that everyone deserves food or the ethics of water conservation that citizens are constantly fed.

I’m currently growing rosemary and mint from cuttings. They lived in separate Mason Jars of water until they sprouted wispy roots. Following advice from YouTube tutorials, I planted them in pots of soil and kept them on my kitchen table by the window for another week. One day, they sprouted mushrooms and I posted to Instagram asking if that was a good or bad sign. Answers varied, but one friend, the genius chef and writer behind This Plate Will Save Your Life, mentioned it could be a sign of over-watering. She advised poking vents into the soil and letting them dry out a bit. The two pots are in the sun right now, and small leaves are growing. Keeping them alive has taken less water than I thought, but much more attention. 

Temperance as an act of control and tool of the powerful silences student protestors, keeps people dependent on grocery stores, and makes us think we can purchase our way to fulfillment. At the start of this year, Alicia Kennedy reminded us of the quote from Diane de Prima, “No one way works, it will take all of us shoving at the thing from all sides to bring it down.” 

Let there be no temperance in shoving. No moderation in the strategies, energies, and creativity used in the project of liberation. May we be moderate in consumption, but not in criticism and organizing. Moderate in wishful thinking, but not hope. Moderate in accepting the lies of the food industry, but not in feeding ourselves and our communities, body and soul. Let temperance be an act of love for ourselves, others, and the earth so all may have plenty.

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The Good Enough Weekly comes out every Friday, alternating an essay with Of the Week. I also take on freelance editing and writing projects. Reach out if you’re looking for help in those departments — I’ve worked on everything from zines to textbooks. More info here. And my zine of adapted Irish fairytales, Desert Pookas, is available for preorder now!