Neo:
Hello?Morpheus:
Hello, Neo. Do you know who this is?Neo:
Morpheus?Morpheus:
Yes. I’ve been looking for you, Neo. I don’t know if you’re ready to see what I want to show you, but unfortunately, you and I have run out of time. They’re coming for you, Neo, and I don’t know what they’re going to do.Neo:
Who’s coming for me?Morpheus:
Stand up and see for yourself.Neo:
What, right now?Morpheus:
Yes, now.The Matrix (1999)
This is in continuation from the previous post “Realization…” which started scratching at the surface of how we can better grasp the issues we face, by looking them in depth. If you haven’t read that yet, I would suggest you to read it first.
I’ll take a brief detour before beginning this blog post. In the intervening time between the previous post linked above and this one, a few things have happened.
A mammoth chunk of ice has broken off of the Larsen-C ice shelf [1]. The size is difficult to comprehend. Perhaps a picture can attempt some justice —
Pay special attention to the bottom right corner of the above image to get a sense of scale.
Elsewhere, in the peer reviewed journal PNAS, a recently published paper [2] talks about the ongoing sixth mass extinction, and in a scientific paper, uses terms like “biological annihilation”.
In other news, US government scientists have finished a report on likely effects of Global Warming. Fearing that Donald Drumpf’s saboteurs will suppress it, some of them have decided to leak it [3].
Some of the projections in the report are pretty dire. Under business as usual, we are staring at a five degree Celsius temperature rise by the end of the century. If all emissions were to cease instantly, we are still looking at least another degree Celsius of temperature rise — that means an overall rise greater than two degree Celsius. As per the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), even limiting to a two degree temperature rise is fraught with many grave dangers [4]. Five degrees would mean runaway climate change [5], meaning that at that point, the earth system will take over, and we will have little to zero ability to do anything about it.
For a time, I studied at the University of Michigan [6], and lived in Ann Arbor. The quiet, serene and well laid out university town is less than an hour away from Detroit [7], which used to be called the “Motor City”. It is the headquarters of Ford and General Motors, the original pioneers of the global automobile industry. Then, in a sequence of events brilliantly captured in the documentary “Roger and Me” [8] the city (and its adjoining town of Flint) went through an upheaval. There is other literature that captures this in detail. One such book is Thomas J. Sugrue’s work “The Origins of the Urban Crisis” [9]. The original “silicon valley”, the place where people went to make money, to change the world, now resembles a neglected, forgotten war zone. Broken homes, broken families, broken communities. It is not an image that comes to one’s mind when one thinks of America. A professor at Michigan, who had grown up not too far from Detroit, once told me with a sigh —
“the problem is that we don’t know how to shrink,
we only know how to grow.”
I think the problem is more widely applicable than the context in which he made the statement. Our global civilization is a runaway train headed to disaster. We must learn how to adapt and shrink.
In his book, “The Great Derangement” [11], the author Amitav Ghosh talks, among other things, about why modern storytellers (novelists, artists) have failed to depict climate change in their work in the depth and importance that it deserves. He drops a hint…
Thus was the novel midwifed into existence around the world, through the banishing of the improbable and the insertion of the everyday.
Ghosh says that in the last two centuries, modern art and writing has centered around the idea that nature is orderly and gradual, whereas the evidence to the contrary is compelling. Even while we live in an era of apocalyptic climactic upheaval, we are lulled into thinking that the changes are very gradual and we, and the planet can adapt to it. In past posts, I have tried to explain why we are isolated from this reality. But this simply cannot be explained away by technology — which is just an amplifier of intent.
Paul Kingsnorth, one of the co-founders of the Dark Mountain project, drives home the point that our current cycle of civilization is essentially the result of the stories we’ve been telling ourselves.
If we are indeed teetering on the edge of a massive change in how we live,
in how human society itself is constructed, and in how we relate to the rest
of the world, then we were led to this point by the stories we have told
ourselves — above all, by the story of civilisation……What makes this story so dangerous is that, for the most part, we have
forgotten that it is a story.— The Dark Mountain Manifesto [12]
Looking at things this way, the premise that our current state is a direct result of human nature is only a small mind-step away.
Roy Scranton, in his terse but hard hitting work “Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization” [13] talks at length about our want to “do something” and identifying an enemy —
…while the typical collective human response to threat is to identify an enemy, pick sides, and mobilize to fight, global warming offers no apprehensible foe.That hasn’t stopped people from trying to find one.
The Flood Wall Street protesters say the enemy is American corporations. Tanzania’s Jakaya Kikwete and Nauru’s Baron Waqa say the problem is the United States and Great Britain. Shell Oil and the Environmental Defense Fund seem to think that it’s intractable UN bureaucracy that’s holding us up. Barack Obama has implied that it’s China. Tea Party Republicans would blame Barack Obama, I’m sure, if they admitted that global warming was actually happening and caused by human activity. Meanwhile, NPR-listening liberals want to believe that Tea Party Republicans are responsible, so that they can frame the problem as one amenable to solution by moral education and enlightened consumerism, as if it were all a matter of convincing people to eat more kale and drive electric cars. One climate activist has argued that just 90 companies are responsible for almost two-thirds of all historical greenhouse gas emissions, which conveniently absolves billions of automobile drivers, airline passengers, meat eaters, and cellphone users of responsibility. The enemy isn’t out there somewhere — the enemy is ourselves. Not as individuals, but as a collective. A system. A hive.
He goes on to express how the current iteration of this civilization is over, and how we need to learn from it in order to survive whatever future has in store. He talks at length about death —
…the practice of learning to die is the practice of learning to let go: Learning to die means learning to let go of the ego, the idea of the self, the future, certainty, attachment, the pursuit of pleasure, permanence, and stability. Learning to let go of salvation. Learning to let go of hope. Learning to let go of death…
… Learning to die as an individual means letting go of our predispositions and fear. Learning to die as a civilization means letting go of this particular way of life and its ideas of identity, freedom, success, and progress. These two ways of learning to die come together in the role of the humanist thinker: the one who is willing to stop and ask troublesome questions, the one who is willing to interrupt, the one who resonates on other channels and with slower, deeper rhythms…
The age of Ecocide
The blue-whale, the largest animal on the planet could perhaps be thought of as one of evolution’s successes. It has been around for tens of millions of years, has no natural predators, has an almost infinite food supply, is unlimited in range in that it can virtually be in any ocean on the planet and has no other inherent disadvantages. Whales are also talented and extraordinarily loud singers. Some two hundred years ago, a typical blue whale could communicate over a distance of 10,000 kilometers.
Today that number is down to a few hundred kilometers. We humans have cut the whales off from themselves. We have also hunted them down to less than 1/50th of their population [14]. Even the largest living creature on the planet is an endangered species in the age of Ecocide. Yet this is just one example, one reminder of many — that we have stopped caring (if ever indeed we did care).
So far as we are able to tell, the existence of life in the universe is incredibly rare and precious. With all our technology and imagination, we are yet to discover the existence of any extra-terrestrial life markers. Even on our planet, all life exists within a very thin sliver on the earth’s crust. Go a few kilometers above or below sea-level, and you will find nothing living.
If an independent alien explorer were to observe our planet in time, what conclusions would it arrive at. It would see different species. It would discover whales — who have been living peacefully since eons, and ask only to be left alone, to sing their rich and plaintive songs. It would discover coral reefs — vast under-ocean niches teeming with all kinds of life. It would discover immense forests, and all the diversity they support. Finally, it would discover humans — who in a blink of geological time, have brought everything to the brink of catastrophe. What would it think of our hubris to call ourselves Homo Sapiens (Wise Man)?
From Man to Not-Man
Look back again at the pale blue dot. Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn’t strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?
— Carl Sagan [15]
If you have been observing the progression of prose in this series of blogposts, you might realize a transition of emphasis from the material to the subtle. I believe the progression needs to continue. These material challenges before us have deep subtle, spiritual roots, and have to be tackled in that depth. Again, the point of this series of blog posts is to spark conversation and debate, not end it. I believe we are still scratching the surface.
I believe another transition that needs to happen, consciously & deliberately if need be; the shift in emphasis from Man to Not-Man.
This was touched upon in the previous blogpost “Realization”, but a more serious examination is due now. Many writers from Daniel Quinn in Ishmael [16], to Paul Kingsnorth in his Dark Ecology [17], to Philip Larkin in his Poetry [18], have brought forth this emphasis, or the need for such a shift.
To say that we need to think as Not-Man is not to undermine our existence as a species, but to emphasize that our fate is deeply intertwined with nature — and all the diversity of life it supports. To think as Not-Man is to ponder our existence on this planet more deeply, to recognize the certainty of death — as individuals, as a civilization, as a species. To think as Not-Man is to think in deep-time. To think as Not-Man is to think both spiritually and scientifically. To think as Not-Man is to let go of our fears and renounce our egos. To think as Not-Man is to recognize that we are born of this cosmos, that we are born of this Earth, that we belong to a family immensely larger than we realize, and to recognize our unqualified, intimate, intrinsic love for it, to recognize that in our arrogance and ignorance, we have put it through untold suffering and in great peril. To think as not man is to realize that we need to fundamentally reform our ways.
It is time to shed a few tears.
It is time to think as Not-Man.
[To be continued…]
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