Shades of Grey

Most people realise that when we interpret the world, nothing is black or white. A gradient exists between any two perceptions. The recent debates on the mental and physical manifestations of gender in humans have highlighted one area which has been clumsily treated as binary in most cultures.

The fact that we have dared to question the wisdom of this binary approach might offer hope with regards to some of the major issues that we face today, in particular man-made climate change. We might dare to question the wisdom of growth economics in our collapsing world. We might ask ourselves why do we encourage young people to aspire to having their own home, family, car and go into jobs that incur further ecological cost on our overburdened planet? Why do we teach our young to work towards these objectives when they all increase our collective predicament? We have been taught to strive towards these objectives in the modern world. None of these objectives are helpful in the context of escalating global ecosystems collapse.

According to Wikipedia human nature is an artificial concept rather than a fixed quality. This article and all my work assumes that we can and will change our inclinations once this is acknowledged as necessary.

In this article I shall explore how we might turn things around and look at our values, priorities, and potential very differently. In particular how our emotions can assist us at this point in time. Although people are now waking up to fact the our ecosystems are dying, most of them are not questioning business-as-usual. Most cannot look beyond the lifestyles that they have been used to; they feel a greater need to protect their lifestyle than to protect Earth’s ecosystems. All our strategies to reduce CO2 emissions are looking for financial and technological solutions, rather than fixing the cultural issues that create our problems.

We all know that if there were less of us there would be less emissions, there would be less building, less need for food and water, less pressure on all the public services and the natural environment on which we depend for our survival. This is very simple logic. Although family sizes are small in the affluent world, the importance of this strategy is not acknowledged. When birth rates fall we get newspapers panicking about loss of GDP growth, and asking who will look after us in our old age? Well the way things are going, getting to old age will become increasingly difficult, especially for the younger ones.

We do not publicly acknowledge global overpopulation. This could be easily rectified if our media chose to explain that the surface area available on Earth is only adequate to support about 2 billion and we are currently at 8 billion and still rising. At the moment, to make matters worse, Earth’s ability to support us is rapidly diminishing as a result of climate breakdown. The data on ecological overshoot, and Earth’s falling biocapacity are not in dispute.

What if our leaders were to apologise to our young adults and confess that we have made a mess of their future, and ours? Supposing our politicians declare a truce amongst themselves? At the moment all parties represent different flavours of growth economics, nobody is suggesting that we need to reduce GDP. What if they agree that they are all wrong? What if they form an all-party emergency government focussed on inspiring voluntary and equitable downsizing of GDP? They could beseech our young adults to forgo what we taught them, and ask them to help in the design of a new eco-friendly society that treads lightly, rather than tramples on ecosystems.

My friend’s son asked her whether it was selfish of him not to want children. At the moment, with climate and ecosystems collapse escalating daily, the most unselfish choice anyone can make is to forgo the wonders of child-rearing. Once we are emotionally mature enough to see this perspective, we shall find that letting go of eco-costly luxuries is much easier. It puts all other things into perspective; it helps us to recognise our priorities more clearly.

Acknowledging our joint failure is not a weakness; it is the first step towards building a sustainable society. With the cooperation of young adults on population size, we can then implore the rest of the population to rethink their priorities. By reducing recreational travel to a minimum, we can release hotel accommodation on a large scale; these buildings can be offered to single adults as accommodation with communal cooking to minimise eco-costs. Luxury liners can be moored up and used as accommodation in a similar way. In this way we can refocus the building industry to repurpose existing buildings, rather than any new builds.

The recently acknowledged fluidity between genders will help us to be more flexible in our new society. We can stop promoting the nuclear family structure in our teaching; we can allow greater freedom and experimentation with sexual interactions, so long as contraception is freely available. A healthy sex life goes a long way to improving wellbeing, and developing loving relationships on a broader basis than within a monogamous marriage.

The constraints in our current culture can result in marriages where the partners are not well suited but they are trapped together due to cultural expectations and financial constraints. We promote the concept of ownership and obligation in our family relationships; this opens the door to jealousy and emotional blackmail. Our main obligation needs to focus on recovering our ecosystems from the damage that we have inflicted. With far fewer children, the family structure becomes too confined. Any children are precious to the whole community.

With the family structure losing its dominance, we can facilitate the emergence of communal hubs where local skills and resources are shared and balanced with the needs of local wildlife. The hierarchical structures that are in place at the moment can be replaced by flexible networks, where skills and resources are funnelled swiftly to where they are needed.

Once the ambition to rescue ecosystems becomes a widely shared priority, this will suppress personal ambitions to have a family, own a car, and buy a house. We are all working so hard at the moment, but our aims are not helpful. We would do far less harm if we spent our time singing and dancing, and using precautions to avoid bringing any more children into the world at this dangerous point in time. Births that slip through the precautions are clearly destined to be exposed to the challenges ahead.

It would be a sign of our emotional maturity once we learn to express love towards others without the need for a commercial gift and card. Think how much CO2 we could save by removing the commercial aspect from Christmas!

For those who are reluctant to let go of their dreams of financial and technical solutions, please bear in mind that making a profit and using technology always inflicts a certain amount of damage to our ecosystems.

Our current culture encourages us to suppress feelings of fear and to compete with each other. The entrepreneur who exploits Nature to his own personal financial advantage is admired. It is precisely this model of thinking that drives a successful businessman to do a great deal of environmental damage. A competitive social structure does not create the best mental disposition to be happy, content or fulfilled.

When people are asserting themselves and competing with each other, they often grow to respect the most tough and ruthless amongst themselves. We see this in commerce and politics, which has many ruthless and insensitive people at helm. Elon Musk and Donald Trump are two examples. Their style of bullying and hierarchical management has been falling from favour for a long time, but clearly not altogether; they show us that these stereotypes are wielding extremely powerful influence at this critical juncture in human history. The fragile existential situation with depleted resources and failing ecosystems leaves humanity ripe for mind games that could stir up another World War.

It is key to improving our collective strategy that we recognise that we are all interconnected and interdependent; we cannot outdo one another without causing further destruction to our habitat. Our only option to improve the situation is to cooperate constructively. There will never be any scientific or financial solutions, because our problems are caused by our never-ending pursuit of GDP growth. This was always a cultural problem. The fact that we are not addressing this root cause is the reason that we are failing to stop the steady increase in CO2 levels.

The paper, Scientist Warning proposes a Roadmap to Ecological Justice, describes more fully the emotional evolution that is needed to enable humanity to steer into a wiser direction. The extract below is taken from section 6:

• Arrogance can evolve into Humility once we accept the reality of ecological collapse, recognising the injustice for future generations, and those already unable to subsist
• Self-interest can evolve into Ubuntu as we accept the need for a mindset that recognises our interconnectedness, and respects the global commons
• Anxiety can evolve into Resolve to act wisely and collectively
• Anger can evolve into Empowerment if a suitable mode of expression can be found
• Hate can evolve into Respect and Understanding given a suitable relearning process
• Guilt can evolve into Reparation if a route for reparation can be identified
• Blame can evolve into Forgiveness if reparation is offered, and forgiveness is sought
• Judgement can evolve into Trust in each other, given enough collective discussion and collaboration; altered behaviours from leaders, will be key to inspiring trust

There is no black and white, however there are ways to maximise mitigation from climate and ecosystems collapse. We are allowing our culture to prevent us from starting a managed retreat from severe ecological overshoot. This is unwise.