So, What Should We Do? Part Four

February 07, 2024

Pictures from Seneca State Forest, West Virginia

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I wrote a couple weeks ago about the evolution of my thinking to highlight how my thoughts have changed so considerably over the last few years, and this post is to delineate this change even further. I have spent the last 3 years on this blog focusing on our predicaments, how we arrived at this moment in time, why we collectively can't seem to make any progress in reducing the severity of these predicaments, and the grief we suffer as a result of the realization of what we are losing. I've also spent quite a bit of time discussing how we can still have a lot of fun, take the time to enjoy the beauty of nature, and be grateful for all the wonder that life itself is.

I think that it is very important to choose to experience joy and view our situation from what may seem like a very different perspective to some. Yes, it is very evident that conditions are going to be much worse than many people assume. However, as I pointed out in my article about external change versus internal change, we have the power to change our perspectives and see the predicaments we face from a more positive aspect. Let's keep in mind that if we feel sadness, it is because we are choosing to feel sadness. This is different from the process of grief. Grief is a necessary part of loss of any type and cannot be done away with. However, once one reaches acceptance, it is important to stay grounded and remain in the acceptance phase. It is rather easy to waffle between acceptance and bargaining, which can prolong the depression stage. 

Most of life surrounding us is the way we choose to see it. If we look for negative aspects of situations and conditions, this is what we will find and see. Likewise, if we look for positive aspects, we will find and see those instead. Now, we must be realistic in our expectations and not hope for that which cannot be. But we can choose to see the conditions which surround us from a more positive aspect and choose happiness and gratitude over the alternative negative perspectives. If we choose to see things from a longer, more geological perspective, as pointed out in The Cycle of Life, we can come to understand that things were always going to turn out this way.

By letting go of illusions of fairy tales and accepting realism, we can also let go of attachment to outcome and choose to be grateful just to be alive. Remember the illusion of control? We're really not in charge here on this planet - we are part of the larger picture of life. As such, learning how to remain joyful despite our circumstances is rather important. Framing these circumstances in the correct manner can mean the difference between having a rather dour outlook and one with a more optimistic stance. This doesn't mean that we look forward to conditions being all "happy happy joy joy." We know that things aren't going to be great. But we can still choose to go through life with a more positive attitude moving forward without falling into hopium. We may have to work at this, however. Once one accepts the predicaments we face as reality and no longer chooses to deny, get angry, bargain, or get depressed about it, it becomes much easier to get out of the ruts and resume traveling along the route of life. 

For the complete version of this article, one can go back to the original 3-part series located here and here and here. Looking at the title, it is helpful to define who, precisely, "we" is - and Tim Watkins helps us in this article. Most notable is this quote from the article:

"War, of course, is but one of the many bottleneck crises washing over us. The declining energy and resources which are the cause of war is a more existential matter. As are climate change, freshwater shortages, environmental decline, depleted soils, etc. And in each case, the use of “we” is more often deployed as a psychological device to mask individual powerlessness. Because if the supranational technocratic kleptocracy have failed to resolve them, while the nation state is no longer fit for the task, what collective is left to us to resolve crises that are global in scale?

The sad reality is that in the face of all but the smallest of crises, it turns out that there is no collective “we,” and that we are each on our own."

Perhaps remembering that the systems which surround us are self-organizing, meaning that they often won't work the way we would like them to, can help us to accept more fully that we really don't control things the way some mainstream narratives might suggest that we can. For instance, a popular narrative within the climate change community is that all we have to do is reduce emissions in order to reduce climate change. This is essentially false - ecological overshoot must be reduced first in order to reduce emissions - if we want any chance at reducing climate change. In order to accomplish that, society would have to collectively reduce technology use and I have discussed many times how actually accomplishing this tends to go against our "prime directives." Once one accepts that the likelihood of that idea actually happening voluntarily is remote at best, one can begin to work on herself or himself to adjust one's own mental attitude. This mental adjustment means ignoring what everyone else is doing (for the most part) and focusing on our own goals, whatever they may be. Choosing to ignore the crowd rushing to jump off the Seneca Cliff (in other words, bargaining to maintain civilization) and focusing instead on more sustainable activities can actually be a highly empowering activity. This is what Howard Zinn has to say about it, quote:

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory." 

All of this, of course, is much more difficult to actually do than to talk about doing it. As I have mentioned in the past, it involves sacrificing certain things and/or activities and choosing instead to live in a different manner. One must choose the most important parts of life and discontinue parts which no longer make sense. Some people have this idea in their head of what constitutes a successful or bountiful life. When faced with the facts contained in this blog, a complete overhaul of these ideas becomes necessary. To reflect some of my most recent reading, I have added some new material to several of my posts, including the page about why we should Live Now, that I frequently put at the end of my articles. We must live according to our own ethics, regardless of whether those ideals will reduce overshoot or not. Some of us are called to engage in certain activities even if they are fruitless while others don't feel those same urges to "do something" about the predicaments we face. As I pointed out in my last article, generally speaking, we lack agency to be able to do much about the situation we find ourselves enmeshed within. The responses we choose to make will reflect our own personal spirit, ethics, and strengths. While it probably won't make any difference to nature or the biosphere, what we do will influence those around us and perhaps even encourage them to make different choices as well. 

Notice that despite the title of this article, I have not outlined any specific plans. This is because (as I outlined in the previous paragraph) it probably doesn't really matter. Our species was destined to innovate - it is what we do and who we are. It is precisely how we arrived at this point in time. While there are some humans who choose not to follow the Maximum Power Principle, it is a biological imperative that all species tend to follow when conditions allow. In this book review by Alice Friedemann, Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen call the MPP our human-carbon nature, quote:

"Surplus-and-hierarchy predate agriculture in a few resource-rich places, which produced what anthropologists sometimes call complex hunter-gatherers or affluent foragers. Human nature is variable and plastic. When living under conditions that generate surpluses over which people might struggle for control, it’s within our nature to abandon the egalitarian features of our gathering-and-hunting history and create hierarchies. It’s all part of human nature, all connected to the scramble for energy-rich carbon that is at the center of life on this planet. That is who we are."

An Inconvenient Apocalypse obviously contains a treasure trove of poignant facts designed to get us to think about the predicaments we face from a different perspective. As a result of this combined with the facts I have compiled into my last 15 articles or so, coming up with ideas on what we should do is best left to each individual, based on his/her condition, his/her local conditions, his/her strengths and weaknesses, his/her ethics, and his/her spirit. War is most likely coming to us all anyway, as the mad scramble for the last resources begins in earnest and is, indeed, already underway in some parts of the world. I have previously recommended reduced technology use and continue that recommendation. However, this will happen whether we want it to or not, so learning how to live without modernity now will make things easier down the road when one has no other choice.

Now, while I'm not making any specific recommendations for what we should do now given the circumstances I have spent the last three years highlighting (other than to reduce our dependence on technology use), there are countless other people who have taken the time to begin figuring out for themselves how to accomplish living without modernity; including cars, fossil fuels, electricity, and even money! One such group is actually a family who runs the Possibility Alliance in Belfast, Maine. These people and groups will be the ones who most likely will be the most resilient as time moves forward. 

So, in conclusion, we can choose to experience joy and look at our situation from the bright side of things or we can be miserable and stay locked in grief. In practice, I find it difficult to stay on the bright side of things continuously, but manage to accomplish this frequently while exploring. Exploring usually involves some aspect of learning, although I use it mostly to describe my adventures in nature on trails, in parks, and within forests. My recommendation is to get out in nature and explore regularly!