Post #61
October 5, 2022
Johnny Lyons
Claire writes: “I spent last week at a writing retreat in the company of Dark Angels. We were all struck by the wisdom and thoughtfulness of this piece about how to confront the climate emergency, written by philosopher and writer (and fellow Dark Angel) Johnny Lyons. Johnny kindly agreed to allow us to publish his piece, which forms part of his next book on politics, as the FW blog this month. Thank you Johnny.”
The saying “May you live in interesting times” is usually meant ironically. To live in “interesting times” is regarded as a curse, since it is characterised by anxiety and conflict rather than relative peace and goodwill. Yet today we find ourselves in undeniably interesting times. Indeed we are living in what threatens to be the beginning of the end of human time.
And I am not talking about the renewed risk of nuclear war, which at least has the advantage of focusing our minds wonderfully. The phenomenon I am concerned with has had nothing like the effect it should have on how we think and behave. Worse still, it has now reached a point that it’s most probably beyond our control to fix. Furthermore, unlike thermonuclear war, where in Tom Lehrer’s lyrics, “We’ll all go together when we go, all suffused with an incandescent glow”, the problem I am referring to will end in a slower death comparable to the proverbial frog being gently boiled alive.
The identity of the problem has no mystery attached to it. It's been a matter of public record for some time, even if many of us choose, ostrich-like, to ignore it. The findings of countless scientifically recognised climate studies converge on the verdict that the world is heating up at an unprecedented and catastrophic rate, due to human-caused global warming. Moreover, this doom-laden picture only darkens when you add the fact that we're destroying the planet’s indispensable and finite natural resources with abandon. It’s not just the pace of climate change and environmental destruction that’s alarming, but that their trajectory and impact seem irreversible. If any other species was causing even a soupçon of the destruction human beings have visited upon the planet, we would have sought to exterminate its members long ago.
Reflecting on why we have destroyed the planet and stubbornly blown our chance to save it is a singularly depressing activity. But it’s one we must dwell on if we wish to experience our final days less horrifically than they promise to be. This is hugely challenging of course, since the forces ranged against an honest reckoning of the situation are deep and pervasive.
Among the most potent of these forces is our resistance to face the truth of our predicament. Indeed we have reached a point in our existential condition where a wilful blindness concerning its meaning can no longer be dismissed as entirely irrational. The terrible truth of our situation is too overwhelming for many of us to face in the cold light of day. It’s not only that, as individuals, we feel powerless to do anything; but that even if we could, it’s too late, as the damage is already done. But acknowledging these entirely understandable feelings needn’t diminish our commitment to truth, or the priority of ensuring that it informs our thought and action.
The mess we’ve created didn’t happen randomly or by accident. No doubt we didn’t will global warming to happen, but it’s undeniable that we caused it. Recognising the non-randomness of our situation provides the key to seeing the opportunity we have to make the ever-closer inevitability of our end less ghastly than it will otherwise be. And the opportunity lies in politics.
Politics has been defined as the art of the possible. More often than not this definition is intended to emphasise the complacency and limitations of politics. The art of the possible tends to be viewed from whatever the status quo is, or will permit. There are two problems with this viewpoint; it implies that the prevailing circumstances are fundamentally untouchable, and that they are permanent. Neither of these assumptions is true.
Let’s briefly consider the fate of the seemingly sacred and unchangeable status quo before the outbreak of Covid. Who would have predicated or even imagined that hundreds of millions of us would have changed their behaviour instantly, profoundly and persistently? Yet this is what actually came to pass. Our response to Covid reveals a number of valuable and timely insights, including:
We can transform how we live our lives in quite radical ways quickly and globally.
We need tangible incentives to change our conduct.
It’s more effective to appeal primarily to self-interest than morality, even if we may not wish to admit it.
Co-ordinated, collective action is the only answer to our biggest and most pressing problems.
None of the above could have been achieved without politics.
The recognition that politics is vital to how we live in this world need not lead us to deny that it’s a double-edged sword. Throughout human history, politics has caused as much (if not more) harm as good. Being alert to the danger politics can bring is as crucial as working out how we can make it work in our favour, by creating the conditions for a humane and civilised existence for as many as possible, and for as long as possible. In short, it’s about time we got politics to work for the benefit of all of us together with the rest of the natural world. It is, after all, the only world we have.
Everything I have said may strike you as blindingly obvious and/or entirely irrelevant; “We must do something!” (No kidding!), “What can I possibly do to make a difference?” (We’re still at square one). I plead guilty to the first charge but with the caveat that, in this case, stating the obvious hardly amounts to redundant speech. Regarding the second, I’ll let the jury decide, while leaving it with the following thoughts:
Firstly, if everyone decides to do nothing on the grounds that their individual action will make no difference, then the last throes of humanity and all other living species are virtually guaranteed to happen sooner and be more hellish than they need be.
Secondly, the fact that a single individual’s conduct will not decisively determine the shape of things to come does not render their action trivial. The Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn conveyed the spirit and significance of this point in his 1970 Nobel speech: “And the simple step of a simple courageous man is not to take part in the lie, not to support deceit. Let the lie come into the world, even dominate the world – but not me.”
Thirdly, surely it’s time to rethink and re-imagine how we look at time itself. The ancient Greeks are helpful here. They had a dual notion of time. ‘Kronos’, they claimed, defines time quantitively in seconds, minutes, hours and days. This has become our default view of time too. But the Greeks also had a qualitative idea of time, which they called ‘kairos’. Kairos measures time qualitatively and in moments – for instance, the crow of a cockerel, the setting of the sun, falling in love. Here we have the idea of the right time or the opportune moment for something to happen. When we look at the world through the lens of the ‘kairos clock’, it takes on a very different look and meaning. For a start, we recognise that we are not the centre of the universe, that the human world is part and only part of a much larger and richer world we call nature. We are also more likely to see that it’s never too late to let our imaginations tap into nature’s ways and rhythms – who knows what might happen if we do!
Where a spring rises, in the little wood
of birch and sycamore beside the house,
I stand and listen to the undying source
whispering there. I’d travel if I could
through the lost ages to a distant time
When it was sacred to a pre-Christian god;
I’d tie a token on a thorn and climb
back to the present, sure in the belief
we can still touch the origins of life,
relish perspective, silence, solitude
far from the bedlam of acquisitive force
that rules us and would rule the universe.
Such things survive, beloved of poet and artist,
only where their despoilers haven’t noticed –
in a yard or a hidden cove, out on the edge,
the rushy meadow and the fallow acre
ripe for development as industrial plant.
Serving as temple, shrine and sepulchre,
these places minister to the soul by dint
of radiating a strange air of privilege;
and here we live, not in petulant rage
for world dominion but an inner continent
of long twilights shrouded in mist and rain,
the lasting features of our lost domain.
From ‘Trump Time’ by Derek Mahon
Author: Johnny Lyons is the author of a number of books, including The Philosophy of Isaiah Berlin (Bloomsbury). This piece forms part of a book he is writing about politics. His website can be reached at https://johnnylyons.org/.