Global Warming, a Mythological Crisis
Global warming is happening. As the recent IPCC and UN and any other number of weighty, ponderous, well researched reports can tell you, we’re in trouble climate-wise. We’ve known about it for a while as even Exxon’s internal researchers and Arrhenius himself have theorized and measured for over 100 years. The problem with global warming is a mythological one.
Mythological!!!?? As in made up, superstitious stories? Yes, but no.
Homo Sapiens have been around for a few hundred thousand years. Our immediate hominid ancestors for a million or two before that. What is it about us, the modern Homo Sapiens that makes us different, that has allowed us to rapidly colonize every niche and biome on the planet and get ourselves into this climate pickle? Imagination. Our best data on ancient Homo Sapiens suggests that something happened 70 or so thousand years ago that gave us the edge. Up until that time we had been co-existing with not just predators that we could not master but other species in the Homo family, such as Homo Neanderthalensis, Homo Erectus, Homo Denisova and perhaps more. Suddenly, Homo Sapiens pushed out of southeastern Africa and advanced across the globe, wiping out or absorbing the other Homo species and colonizing new lands. Neanderthals were bigger, stronger, and had larger brains even than Sapiens, but although we carry some of their DNA, they are extinct. Our best theory is that Homo Sapiens either through a subtle genetic mutation or cultural innovation learned how to imagine, to mythologize. As Yuval Noah Harari states eloquently in his book Sapiens, this ability to conceptualize, communicate, and build a lasting mythology allowed Homo Sapiens to outcompete the rest of life on Earth. Ok, now what in the heck do fireside tales have to do with global warming?
The skill of imagination allowed Homo Sapiens to cooperate beyond the scale allowed by group strategies used by other species, such as gossip and interpersonal relationships (grooming e.g.) that limit hunter-gatherer type of groups to 100 or so individuals as we see today in chimpanzees and best can guess for Neanderthals. Imagination allows the creation of shared myths, such as common creator, ancestor, homeland, religion, nation, and corporation myths that allow us to cooperate without concrete interpersonal relationships across broad geographic and temporal scales. Throughout our history, the increasing complexity of Homo Sapiens culture has been the result of ever more complex myths allowing ever more complex cooperation. The results speak for themselves. From species that happily subsisted with wood and stone tools for over a million years like Homo Erectus, we have us who in the span of 200 years of industrial evolution created the internet, the atomic bomb, and the snuggie. So we’re not perfect, but shared myths have helped us solve problems for millennia.
Look at the myths that have shaped our recent history. A few hundred years ago the American colonies were feeling self sufficient, didn’t like being under the thumb of their European sponsors and wanted to keep the bounty of the rich, open (except for those pesky natives…wait for it…) land for themselves. So they created a shared myth that these disparate, isolated and fledgling settlements could become states under a mythical shared nationhood. And the arc of this myth echos that of previous myths. The Roman empire (and the Ottoman after it) rose from a small city-state to encompass much of the known world, bringing disparate cultures and geographies into a shared myth of belonging and prosperity. There were cultures who would not be assimilated but another part of homo sapiens power of imagination and mythologizing is the myth of THE OTHER. The other is someone not like “us”, who doesn’t share our group myth and is therefore lesser and acceptable to be pushed out, marginalized and even exterminated. Neanderthals, Goths, Native Americans, Muslims, the Chinese, ad infinitum. These myths allow the creation of a new, larger group that coalesces, prospers, and then ultimately loses its power, struggles to remain relevant and fades in decadence. I’m sure the Romans had a sense of the state of affairs while watching their bread and circuses much as we do watching our apprentice President. For as long as they hold, these shared myths allow large groups of Homo Sapiens to feel part of a team, to work together with thousands and millions of other strangers toward a common goal to have an edge on the other. What is the European Union if not a myth created to allow a larger economic group to compete with the other of the United States and China? At each stage in our short history, Homo Sapiens has used ever more complex myths, building on those of the past, discarding those that have had their moment, enabling the solving bigger and bigger challenges. From the scale of hundreds of hunter gatherers dominating a prime geographical area over predator and Neanderthal to the scale of thousands building an agricultural society, to the scale of millions building an industrial society, to the scale of….
Which brings us to global warming. Even the current preferred name of climate change hints at the power of myth, or as we enlightened apes of today call it, narrative. The lens of history gives the impression that myth and narrative is unidirectional and cohesive. History is written by the victors and what is history if not myth? In all Homo Sapiens’ society there are those who resist new myths and while those losing voices are ultimately forgotten we can see the ebb and flow of myth in our societies today. Changing myths surrounding racial and gender status, fiat currencies, reproductive rights, war. We’re constantly adjusting the narrative in an effort to solve a problem and some of us are fighting to prevent the adjustment of the myth. Hence climate change versus global warming. Sure climate change might be more accurate, but it is also sterile and less alarmist and gives those who benefit from the current myth cover to prosper from the system as it is a little longer. But imagination or not, Homo Sapiens live in the real world and their cooperation through shared myth will evolve as it has, for better or worse, for millennia. It is up to us to recognize this and shape it. How?
Today we see cooperation among Homo Sapiens approaching (and slightly exceeding) the billion individual mark. The USA, the EU, China, India are all organized on this scale in order to compete. We create myths about each other as “the other” to solidify our shared myths and use second tier societies (Russia, Africa, etc) as foils, victims, and proxies for this competition. The problem is that right now the benefits of these myths are too good, and those that are resisting change too powerful to allow us as a species to respond appropriately to the threat of global warming. And it is about warming. Who gives a shit if some tiny spot in Scotland is ultimately cooler due to the collapse of the Gulf Stream, when all of continental America, Europe and Asia is 4 degrees hotter and agriculture crumbles? We need to build a shared myth that we are in this together, that the other is someone out there in the future or outer space or the oligarchs who got us in this mess or even grow beyond this notion of the other. And this myth needs to be mainstreamed with a quickness. We can’t let it fall to Extinction Rebellion or The Proud Boys or whatever marginal myth-making groups are out there to try futilely and interminably to wrest the narrative from the Exxons and Bilderbergs who hold the reins at the moment. Global warming needs to be mythologized so that we all can cooperate together, as a species, moving from the scale of approaching billions of strangers working together against an other to all billions on the planet just plain working together. The science is done, has been done for decades, we need to recognize the power of myth and build a global mythological team to solve the problem or the problem of global warming will solve us. The complexity of our current mythology makes this incredibly challenging as we have seen. Capitalism, nationalism, religion are all powerful myths resisting this new myth and will have to fall or adapt. Myths ultimately need a shaman, a champion, a leader or more accurately a series of them to shepherd them through to adoption and the sooner we all become those leaders through the complex tools we have empowered ourselves with (namely the internet) the better. Witness the push by the powers in control of the current mythology to suppress this tool of myth changing that is global communication and the internet! These groups hanging onto power are scared, they know what is coming. People all over the world if given the freedom to communicate and access facts and appreciate the problems facing us can band together and create the new mythology of Homo Sapiens that will solve global warming. What will it look like? Who knows!??!! Different. Strange. Wonderful. But we have to start today, so get that powerful imagination turning. Share it. Talk to your neighbor. Groom them if need be. Let’s figure out the new mythology!