New Pantheon (04) — Ifweall
If only we did decades ago.
[Letter #011]
Good morning, son.
We have an appointment to see the doctor on Friday. They plan to fire up the sonogram machine and allow us to take a look at the fetus that your mother’s been lugging about every day. This will be the first time that we’ll be able to see anything that isn’t just a blob of cells. With a bit of good luck, everything is going normally, and the little fella that we’ll see will end up being you. Also, happy Valentine’s Day. Hearts all around.
Oh, this is the letter that would have everyone throwing me to the wolves, because this particular goddess has ferocious followers. I really didn’t plan on writing about another in the pantheon so soon, but this is the subject that my mind kept fixating on yesterday, Truth be told, she is the first of the pantheon that I ever conceived, so she’s the reason I even came up with this whole thought exercise. I just kept hearing her name over and over again, and I just felt in my gut that something was really wrong about it. It’s taken a long time for me to put my finger on exactly what she’s all about, and I’m not sure that I’ve completely got it sorted just yet. That said, I’m going to give it a try.
To begin with, the name: Ifweall. I think it qualifies as a portmanteau. I just smashed together the words “if,” “we,” and “all,” because that’s exactly what people say when they want to invoke her. If we all just do this, if we all can do that. There may be a more poetic name for this goddess somewhere, but I enjoy the simplicity and directness of this one.
The reason I said that this letter would have me thrown to the wolves is going to be this next part where I describe what the goddess is and means. Just explaining it would have her followers enraged, believing that I wanted the opposite to be true, but it’s more nuanced than that. You’re patient and clever enough to finish to the end of the letter though, I’m certain.
When I first conceived of this goddess, I was doing a lot of reading about collapse. There were some really smart people out there making some very good points and using some compelling evidence. They convinced me that we humans couldn’t continue extracting so much from the planet and turning those resources into pollution, that we were doing this at a rate far too rapid for any sort of recovery. They explained how the system requires infinite growth, at an ever-increasing rate, within the boundaries of our finite planet. That violates physics, morality and simple prudence notwithstanding.
The word “unsustainable” has become so ubiquitous that folks seem to forget that it means, by definition, that the thing in question won’t be sustained. William Catton showed how civilization itself was in overshoot and wouldn’t be sustained, but that’s just too big of a concept for the average person to worry about in our regular day-to-day. When you diagnose a problem with the severity of a world-ending cataclysm, and you bring evidence to the table to back up your point, what you end up with is an audience who is so fundamentally shaken that they simply cannot accept your point. It’s too shocking to be real, so you begin seeing the stages of grief, which of course begin with “denial.”
These very smart people have presented their arguments in some excellent books and articles, but I think they themselves often can’t accept their own arguments. Certainly, they don’t want their audiences to clam up and reject their message, so to avoid spreading worry and dread, these authors (and probably it’s more the publishers) include a section at the end of every one of these publications that’s supposed to salve over the entire thing. Make the situation seem maybe not quite as dire. The author doesn’t want to feel like, or appear to be, a Chicken Little shouting about the sky falling, even if what they were preaching has essentially the same end result. The most common inclusion in these “everything will be ok” sections is an appeal to Ifweall. It’s all but inevitable, as prayers to her instantly slap a hopeful sticker onto any lousy situation.
If we all recycle, we can save the world.
If we all carpool or take a bike, we can reduce pollution and smog.
If we all vote for this candidate, we can get our nation back on track.
If we all march in the streets…
If we all call our representatives…
If we all use renewable energy…
If we all stop taking flights…
If we all just…
If we all…
There have always been suggestions that people band together to accomplish something, but this particular goddess feels new to me. In my ears, appeals to Ifweall aren’t just suggestions or even calls to action. They’re an impotent, wistful longing for some other reality. They’re the “bargaining” step in the grief process. “Gosh, if only things were different, then the world would be better. Ifweall just banded together to make our voices heard!” The invocations started probably a half a century ago, and they’ve become louder, and honestly more useless, ever since, for a few reasons.
It’s been remarkable. No matter how dire the warning, the book or article will always have a final chapter that goes something like this: “Now that we understand the problem, what can we do about it? What can you do to help?” They’re always full of little things that a person could do that would “help” the matter, albeit in no significantly measurable amount, of course. These end-sections were included to make the reader feel more at ease. The intention is to prevent worry and panic, but often they end up just coming across as “then a miracle happens and we live happily ever after!”
But, I suppose that’s what they’re trying to do, right? They’re inviting a miracle. It’s right there in the goddess’s name, “If we all…” Because, just doing whatever thing as a single person, whether it’s recycling or biking to work or boycotting an exploitative company, would be pointless. It wouldn’t move the needle, so to speak. Such an action would be entirely ignored by the universe. But, you see, if everyone did the thing… Well, then some desired outcome can happen and the world will be saved. Presumably.
What happens If-we-all-don’t do the thing? Nothing, naturally, but the author is let off the hook for providing such dire predictions. “Hey, I told you how to get out of this mess. Don’t blame me!” they might say. They needn’t bother really, neither with the disclaimer nor the appeal to the goddess in the first place. Because — and I’m sure you’ve figured this out already — we won’t. Perhaps it is true that if we all do any given thing, then some benefit may occur. But, we won’t. We won’t do that.
How could I possibly know that we won’t?
Well, I mean the cynical part of me wants to just invoke the history of human civilization and perform the “gestures at everything” motion. It’s stunningly rare that revolutions happen, and it’s virtually never that people in general get the actual result they want from them, even when they work together. Sure enough, some autocrat will swoop in and take control, divvying up power amongst his cronies, and then we’re back to square one. “If we all did this thing…,” they’ll say. And, I’ll say, “Yeah, but we won’t. So what?”
There’s a blogger named Dave Pollard who has come up with some “laws” about how things work. I think the first of them explains well what I’m trying to say.
Pollard’s Law of Human Behaviour: Humans have evolved to do what’s personally urgent for them (the unavoidable imperatives of the moment), then to do what’s easy, and then to do what’s fun. There is never time left for things that are seen as merely important. Social, political and economic change happens only when the old generation dies and a new generation with different entrained beliefs and imperatives fills the power vacuum. We have evolved to be a collaborative and caring species, and we are all doing our best — we cannot do otherwise. We have no free will — our behaviour is entirely the product of our biological and cultural conditioning, given the ever-changing and unpredictable circumstances of each moment.
– Dave Pollard, How To Save the World blog [emphasis mine]
If we take Pollard’s analysis as truth, and I myself do, then that means that any appeal to Ifweall is largely self-defeating. Getting everyone on board to make a change would be:
- not personally urgent, because there will always be people who are not personally being shot at or bombed, starving due to famine, or being actively mauled by a lion;
- not easy, because even if a change is easy for some, it wouldn’t be for everyone AND even if it’s easy at first, it may not be easy indefinitely;
- nor fun, because if it was a fun thing to do, a change wouldn’t be necessary since it would have already been the case, as that’s what we would prefer to do anyway.
The only way things change on a dramatic scale, according to the law, is when the old generation dies out and a new generation with significantly different values takes over. This is what I was explaining a couple letters back with the Red versus Blue phenomenon. The system has an inertia, and there are only just so many options available at a given time for what is possible. There’s just not enough time left to change course before the proverbial defecation violently slams into the rotating oscillator. There aren’t enough generations remaining to change the world before it changes itself and us with it.
There is a second way to change things as well, but I’ll get to that later.
Receiving Ifweall’s blessing becomes a problem of scale. The larger the population grows, the more challenging it is to get everyone on board with anything. Even if, one argument goes, that only a tiny percentage of a populace needs to change to make a societal change, the absolute value of that quorum is ever-increasing along with the global population. That is to say, the more time it would take to get enough people on board with the plan. Also, I’m sure that it’s going to take a whole lot more than 3% or whatever to fundamentally change the world, because…
The people in control don’t give a shit about what “we all” want.
For starters, right now, I produce something like 20 to 25 tons of CO2 equivalent in a year of my current existence in our extremely wasteful society. That accounts for the house I live in, the food I eat, the vehicle I use, the clothes I wear, and everything else that I “consume” on a daily basis. It accounts for all of the manufacturing of those items and all of the transportation costs that go into getting them to me. It’s probably estimated a little on the high side, as I try to be frugal, but let’s just say that’s what the average person contributes.
If I slashed my vehicle use to zero and walked everywhere, cut out most of the food from my diet except for only the most locally sourced and environmentally friendly, wore the same clothing for years and washed it by hand… You get the idea. If I did everything “right” and lived in absolute monastic asceticism, Taylor Swift would still knock out everything I achieved in a year with just one flight from Tokyo to New York. The environmental toll that she racks up in a year would dwarf what I could achieve in several lifetimes.
I pick on Swift because she’s the most visible person for this argument, but she’s only the face of the predicament. Her environmental impact is greater than a thousand times my own, and she’s only one person with that kind of money and power. There are thousands of billionaires in the world and a couple orders of magnitude more who are merely “filthy rich.” These people are the polluting equivalent of millions of “average persons.” The actions of a percentage of the people, the “conscientious” citizens, falls within the margin of error in terms of societal change.
So, there ya go. Be sure to live as a hermit, eat nothing but dust, wear rags, walk everywhere, and never do anything entertaining whatsoever. Ifweall just recycle, we can save the planet, you know. Be sure you separate your plastics and cardboard. Work on this your entire life, because it might just offset a single airplane ride for a billionaire to go to Davos or something. Ifweall lived this way, maybe the rich could just keep living as they do now without causing irreparable harm to the planet. Seems to me they would prefer that we do just that.
By now, I’m sure I’ve told you about that old Princeton study where they analyzed the bills that were debated before passing into law (or not). Turns out, it didn’t matter how many people wanted it nor how hard those people campaigned for it. If rich folks didn’t want a law, it wouldn’t become law. If they did, then it was pretty likely to become law. Regular people only got what they wanted when it aligned with what the rich wanted. Ifweall just call our congressperson though, we can urge them to act in our interests. Be sure to vote in your gerrymandered district next time around. It doesn’t really do anything, but it sure does make the citizenry feel involved, so they don’t mind if you keep doing it.
There’s a writer these days named Indrajit Samarajiva who describes the concept of “Capital corporations” as an actual living entity, and that it is in control of the planet, not we humans. He explains that this creature exists and goes about its business, with humans composing its body, in the same way that humans exist and behave with microorganisms working together to form each of us.
“Corporations simply buy all the parties (themselves corporate forms) and sell voters a bribery festival called elections as a circus. Then the corporations turn around — whoever is in power — and literally write whatever legislation they want.”
– Indrajit Samarajiva, indi.ca, “‘We’ Are Not In Control of Climate Change”
This thinking fits with mine, because you’re not going to have rogue cells in your body that force you to change in any significant way. At least, not without the body as a whole trying its damndest to stop those cells.
Ifweall is a goddess who only responds if you follow her rules. Everyone has to make the same prayer, otherwise she does nothing. This makes the faithful really upset with those who won’t worship as they do. The guilt trips and rude comments can be extreme. “Do your part” has become a religious mantra. But, as the population grows ever larger, the challenge of getting enough people to agree on any sort of change grows likewise. NIMBYism, conservatism, and just plain apathy stops most prayers well short of receiving a divine response.
If there was enough time, many generations, then we might be able to convince enough that we could see some shift in society. There isn’t. That’s the predicament we face. We’re in overshoot, with everything from resource extraction to population to pollution, and we’re increasing exponentially. That means that whenever the system doubles in scope, it uses up more than it ever did in all of its previous years of existence combined. There’s simply not enough of anything left to account for another doubling, and the rate at which we are expected to double is rapidly increasing. The system requires growth that cannot be achieved and will accordingly collapse. Indeed, it’s already started to do so.
I think that there would be those who would argue with me, and they would cite instances like the civil rights movement in the US or the movement for Indian independence. They would bring up any number of times when they think Margaret Mead was proven correct when she said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Followers of this philosophy, such as Roger Hallam of Extinction Rebellion, journalist and author Chris Hedges, and Senator Bernie Sanders, all make the same mistake. They insist that what is necessary is for enough people to “rise up,” which I think just means to gather in a public space, and demand that their “voices be heard,” by which I think they mean to just make a lot of noise for a little while and then go home. Regardless of whatever their platitudes are supposed to actually accomplish though, one iron law remains forefront in their minds: violence should never be employed as a method of societal change. This, as a matter of pure coincidence, is the second method of societal change I referred to above.
Putting aside the fact that historical movements often had plenty of time to make their cases and watch as generations of crotchety old bastards die off, a la “Out with the old; in with the new,” every movement that has ever achieved sweeping, dramatic change has had leverage. Gandhi and MLK both preached nonviolence, and yet they were successful. How did they manage that? Simple. Those in power capitulated to them because they didn’t want to deal with their counterparts who were not nonviolent. For every MLK, there’s a Malcolm X. Those in power, we might hypothetically state, must be shown that if they do not submit to the ballot, then they’ll be submitted to the bullet, to paraphrase a speech by the good Mr X.
I’ll discuss violence versus nonviolence more in another letter, I think. It’s not the focus of this discussion. If the powers that be feel threatened, they’ll do whatever they need to in order to remove the threat. However, strongly worded letters, “civil” nonviolent protests, and voting are things that the powerful simply do not care about. Why should they? What’s gonna happen if they ignore the protests? Nothing? Aw, shucks! It’s not like they’re likely to lose their seat, and they don’t care if they do. They’ll just get a “consulting” job for a corporation providing access to their former political colleagues. They don’t care about whatever’s on your placard.
I tend to respond to prayers to Ifweall like this. “Yes, change is needed to make the world a better place. Yes, if enough people work together, then change is possible. But! We won’t. And, it wouldn’t matter now if some of us did. We don’t have enough time for generations who believe the opposite to die off, and they like how things are now. We also won’t threaten the people who could make such a change instantly, because it’s taboo to speak about violence. So, we won’t.”
I do, however, believe that there should be a final chapter or paragraph in these books and articles. I just don’t think they should sell us some nonsense about how we can fix or change things. I think they should discuss the shock and grief that such news brings. I think they should talk to us about what’s going to happen, how we have to face it, and what life might look like as we push through this time to get to the next.
What we need is to get through all of the stages of grief to reach the final: acceptance. We’re running over the cliff, and the momentum can’t be stopped or changed now. We’re out of time, and now things are going to just happen. Denying that it’s happening, getting angry about it, and trying to bargain our way out of it are all just ways of coping with reality. It’s locked in, and we need to understand that. Depression is normal, but it’s ultimately without purpose beyond getting through to the resolution. Acceptance is the only realistic response.
There are a few writers out there who have been working for years to get it into the mainstream consciousness that there’s a difference between a “problem” and a “predicament.” What we face is the latter, not the former. A problem can be solved and the situation will return to normalcy. A predicament has no solutions, only outcomes. You cannot solve a predicament. The best you can do is try to adapt to the changes and mitigate the damage. Apart from that, you just have to accept that things are changing and you’re going with them. Acceptance is what’s necessary, but it’s not what we’re seeing in society now nor will we ever see it, I suppose.
To accept the idea of a predicament is acceptance of what will come with it, which is far too challenging for many people. When we’re no longer able to continue our destructive consumption, when the tap slows to a trickle and eventually cuts off, it means that what’s unsustainable will no longer be sustained. That includes a world of eight billion people. The planet simply cannot support us all. A lot of people are about to die off, and acceptance includes acknowledging that.
It’s accepting that the bright future that we were promised is dead. We’ll never get to travel between star systems or live to be 500 years old through biotechnological enhancements. We will have to reckon with the fact that many of us will die before old age, and some of us will go in tragic ways. I expect the majority of humans will opt instead to “rage against the dying of the light,” regardless what damage that may cause upon their exit.
I expect that by the time you read this letter, the global population will have peaked already and started to decline. That won’t change for the rest of your life, nor will it change for the next couple of generations, at least. The global population has to fall to below a sustainable level. That’ll take awhile, but it can’t be stopped now. It would be nice if we could descend slowly to that level without much discomfort. It would be nice if we could responsibly use what’s left of our resources to ease into a post-industrial future. Ifweall could just… but, we won’t.
Instead, we’ll get more and more prayers to Ifweall, Progress, Productivity, Governance, and several other gods. But, just like the billionaires who are jetting around the world in their fuel-guzzling air fortresses, these gods just — Do. Not. Care.
That’s ok, though. We don’t really need them to care. It actually wouldn’t matter if they did. The entire system, the gods, the billionaires, unsustainable overshoot levels, everything — it’s all crumbling and going away. It may take a few centuries for the dust to settle, but collapse is already ongoing, and humanity is going to find itself in a sustainable existence one way or another. That’s the acceptance that we need right now.
All we can do is try to be kind to one another, work together to overcome the hardships that we’re able, and find a way to minimize the damage to the planet as best we can. Otherwise, we just hold on. The future is dark, but it need not be the final chapter for us. We won’t kill off all life on this planet. It’s tougher than we are. Hopefully, we can be tough enough to hang in there as well. I think we can, and someday we can become better for all of this.
Despite the bleak tone upon which this gloomy letter ends, I sincerely hope that your days are cheerful, my son. The odds aren’t in favor of that, I suppose, but I’ll still hope for it anyway. Be safe out there and know that I love you very much.
Your father,
Papa Bear
[Author’s note: This is a series of letters that I intend to print to paper and deliver to my son, probably around the year 2040. You are more than welcome to read along. The links in the article are only for you, the reader, and will include citations, jokes, asides, and links to books or other items. If you happen to purchase anything through such a link, I’ll get a small commission. Every little bit helps, right?]
