This article is not about politics. I will not be encouraging you to participate in local or federal elections, or espousing a particular party line, or exposing government mismanagement, or railing against the potted plant who ostensibly represents me in parliament.

This is about how we as individuals decide upon how we act as a group. We do this every time we vote in an election: we're taught, and we believe, that although single votes don't matter, summing the votes does. We trust this system enough to base our system of government on it: politicians promise to try to achieve a set of tasks that only an organized group can accomplish (such as enact laws), and we cast a ballot for the representative whose promises most closely match our goals.

Democracy may seem obvious now, but it took most of human history to come up with it. Other living things don't vote. Individual algae don't know or care that they're part of an algae bloom. Birds don't consciously create flocks and decide which flock to fly with in order to achieve a desired end that the flock could achieve but individual birds could not. Lemmings don't understand population boom and bust cycles. They're all just individuals trying to get by in an environment that contains many other similar individuals. They may understand that they are members of a group, but are unlikely to understand the group itself.

So here we are with this wonderful achievement – democracy – and brains capable of abstract thought, and yet for some reason we have great difficulty applying the lessons of democracy to the problems of group dynamics, outside the context of an election. Let's look at a few examples of problems that by their nature are caused by groups, and can be solved only by groups, yet don't immediately make us think about voting:

• Traffic. One car is not a problem, yet a billion cars is.
• Air pollution. One coal fire is not a problem, yet billions of tonnes of coal being burned every year in coal-fired power plants is.
• Factory farming. Slaughtering and eating one animal is a problem for the poor animal in question, but slaughtering billions of animals per year has far wider implications.

You participate in choosing your government by literally casting a ballot, but you participate in choosing your environment by metaphorically casting a ballot. You cast a ballot each time you decide how you are going to interact with your environment, and the results are just as real as those of an election.

• Do you drive? Then you vote for more roads, more traffic, less effective public transit, deaths, injuries, pollution, traffic noise, urban sprawl, and foreign wars to gain secure access to fuel.
• Do you fly? Then you vote for poorer air quality, contrails in the troposphere, flight path noise closer to the ground, and an increased risk of a global pandemic by facilitating the spread of pathogens.
• Do you use electricity from coal-fired power plants? Then you vote for greenhouse gas emissions, toxic solid wastes such as flue-gas desulfurization sludge, polluted water, and miners having to work in a dangerous unhealthy environment.
• Do you eat animal products or other food produced in an unsustainable way? Then you vote for diminishing biodiversity, fish die-offs, deforestation and degraded soil, monocultures of feed crops, increased use of drugs to control disease (leading to drug-resistant pathogens), and abused slaughterhouse workers, on top of the untold suffering of all the animals themselves.

Do any of these things sound like bad ideas to you? Then don't vote for them. The majority rules in these arenas of human behaviour just as it does in politics, and every vote counts. Do you have to take that trip in a car? Is that flight absolutely necessary? Do you really have no choice about where your electricity comes from? Is there honestly nothing else to eat except that factory-farm-raised animal? Although you as an individual are almost powerless to change these things, the problem and the solution can be found in the actions of large groups.

Extend the paradigm of voting into your daily life. With which group do you want to stand? How will you vote today?

Steve Hansen Smythe, May 2013