Our Duty To Build The Future

April 27, 2018 7:19 AM

“It is not that we are not capable of sustainable prosperity. We have never had more or better ability to build a better world. What we seem to lack is a belief that we can actually use those powers to change anything, and we lack that belief precisely because the future has been ripped out of our cultural debate...

.. Because the reality is that change is not only in the interests of future generations, it’s in our own interest. Almost all the things we need to do to safeguard the best possible set of choices for the children of 2050 are things we’d want to do for other reasons, anyway.” In 2010 Alex Steffen wrote Putting The Future Back In The Room, on the practical need for optimism in the face of Climate Change as a radical political act in beliving social and political change is possible.
posted by The Whelk (16 comments total)

Cynicism is reactionary hope is revolutionary.

Related and previously: David Graeber "Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit."
posted by notyou at 7:37 AM on April 27, 2018 [5 favorites]

Almost all the things we need to do to safeguard the best possible set of choices for the children of 2050 are things we’d want to do for other reasons, anyway.”


WHAT IF IT'S A BIG HOAX AND WE CREATE A BETTER WORLD FOR NOTHING?
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:10 AM on April 27, 2018 [19 favorites]

Duty Now for the Future
posted by Thorzdad at 8:14 AM on April 27, 2018 [4 favorites]

Thanks for posting this article, it mimics a lot of what I've been thinking lately but articulates it better.

[...] the planetary crisis is a crisis of vision, [...]

[...], and by promoting (in the most direct financial sense) cultural work that promotes cynicism and a disdain (if not a hatred) for idealists, from talk radio to teabagging.

This is the part that hurts the most, I think.

I planted a few hundred trees this year for Earth Day. I've spent the last few years slowly reforesting and rewilding the couple dozen acres I can afford, and investing in renewable power, and reducing my consumption, and reshuffling what I buy to be as local as humanly possible—to the point of walking to farms with a wagon to buy goods—in order to get myself a little closer to carbon neutrality (and, ideally eventually, a carbon-negative lifestyle). And, according to online calculators, after a few years of effort we're so close. It's not that hard or that disruptive.

But it is alienating: people my age (e.g. millennials) are mostly appreciative and interested, but would never spend that kind time and effort themselves. It would disrupt their lives and their self-image. People older than me are disdainful. "Why would you waste your time and money like that?"

But I look at my daughter, and the inheritance we're all leaving her generation, and I think that I would sell my soul to buy her even another year before the famines begin in earnest, and wonder what happened to my parents and friends and neighbors that they wouldn't do the same for their children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews.

So I despair. But I keep planting trees.
posted by ragtag at 8:18 AM on April 27, 2018 [15 favorites]

It's either figure out now how to keep billions of people alive through sustainable technology, geoengineering and wealth redistribution, or it's figure out later how to keep a few million people alive in polar regions, mountain ranges, and caves.
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:20 AM on April 27, 2018 [4 favorites]

I really enjoyed Mark Fisher's book on this subject, Capitalist Realism. It's a bite-sized bit of theory that I found engaging and digestible. Fisher talks about “Capitalist Realism”, a condition where both the individual and the wider culture seem incapable of imagining life outside of capitalism. He explains why this is, how it works, and how we can pierce the veil.

The best part of the book for me was the chapter where he laid out three clear aspects of life that puncture directly through capitalist realism and make plain the failures of capitalism: co-morbidity of high rates of mental illness with advanced capitalism, the obvious presence of oppressive bureaucracies in late capitalism (breaking the typical argument that other systems than capitalism uniquely lead to bureaucracy), and the oncoming climate apocalypse that capitalism is utterly unable to deal with and, indeed, greatly exacerbates.

He has a real sense of fun in the way he builds up his arguments too. The book starts with a riveting analysis of Children of Men, and ends with his imagining a Marxist version of the British reality show Supernanny.

He did end the book with some stabs in the direction of figuring out an alternative to capitalism, but it wasn't really the focus of the book. If I remember correctly, he talked about using the three ways of puncturing capital realism to make it clear that capitalism is not an inevitability and not worth maintaining, and then using a classical Marxist critique as the foundation for creating a new popular culture that could bring us together and move us somewhere new.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 8:41 AM on April 27, 2018 [8 favorites]

Years ago, Alex Steffen also wrote "Cynicism is often seen as a rebellious attitude in western popular culture, but in reality, our cynicism advances the desires of the powerful: cynicism is obedience."

Those words have stayed with me like almost nothing else in my life. That sentence really changed my whole way of thinking about how I interact with the world.
posted by seasparrow at 9:00 AM on April 27, 2018 [22 favorites]

Alex Steffens:

"We already have the ability to solve or at least address the planet’s most pressing problems. We don’t have every solution we’ll need, not yet. We do, though, have the technological capabilities, the design genius, the scientific ingenuity, the entrepreneurial zeal, the policy acumen, the community-building skill, and the educational and cultural wisdom. It is not that we are not capable of sustainable prosperity. We have never had more or better ability to build a better world. What we seem to lack is a belief that we can actually use those powers to change anything, and we lack that belief precisely because the future has been ripped out of our cultural debate."

This optimistic view of the power of human ingenuity is also held by others such as Ramez Naam.

But in addition to Paul Kingsnorth (earlier) and the Dark Mountain folks, there are also many other smart, informed informed individuals, such as Mayer Hillman, who believe such optimism is unwarranted.
posted by PhineasGage at 9:15 AM on April 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

The arguments have been made. The time for radical optimism is now.

I think a good trick for this is to find a big change you can make, and then make it. And then do it again. And again. And again.

Next thing you know, you're hauling trees home with a hand wagon, etc.
posted by aniola at 9:40 AM on April 27, 2018 [5 favorites]

Radical optimism is much better than nihilism (which at times seems the only rational response to the crisis). When trees get killed through clearance I felt (and feel) like a murderer. I have to be in business to live but loathe this form of capitalism on a daily basis - I too will go on planting trees and trying to repair Earth. But is is always in spite of society here (NZ is very poor at Earth care - but our marketing is great!).

this "the future has been ripped out of our cultural debate." I lay this firmly and mostly at the door of the fundamentalists wRong-wingers, who have no care for our home planet, a lack of compassion for people and creation, and have a future in another reality - all this has contributed to my turning away for many years now.

But recently I've been managing a number of repair projects for a theologian and conservationist whose lifeway gives me hope again for my belief and our Earth's future. Because this project will take us 500 years and only belief (of some kind) will get us there.
posted by unearthed at 10:05 AM on April 27, 2018 [3 favorites]

lifeway

What a great word.
posted by No Robots at 10:09 AM on April 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

Relevant quote from my childhood:

I don't care who made this mess, clean it up.
posted by aniola at 10:13 AM on April 27, 2018 [7 favorites]

I sometimes try to talk myself into full, gleeful hedonism as the only way to deal with the nihilism (a la Slim Pickens), but when I start to buy some bacon, I think of the environmental impact and quietly put it back in the refrigerator case...
posted by PhineasGage at 10:18 AM on April 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

We may be at the cusp of a revolution, one asteroid mined for reaction mass (rocket fuel that does not need to be launched) could open the solar system. All industrial processes could be polluting space not the surface. The planetary processes will clean itself up if not constantly overloaded, although good ecological husbandry is not a bad thing.
posted by sammyo at 10:59 AM on April 27, 2018

I always wonder who this “we” is that Alex sees fit to place such great faith in.
posted by adamgreenfield at 2:16 PM on April 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

This is fantastic stuff, I am seeing a lot of this sort of despair in myself lately and this essay is really resonating with me in a positive way. It reminds me of why I am proud to work in solar. I feel like whatever else, by helping get more kWs of PV installed, I'm having a positive environmental impact.

We humans could be gardeners. We'd be good at it, too.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 7:27 PM on April 27, 2018 [2 favorites]