greta, et al
Over the past seven decades, millions of environmentally aware individuals and hundreds of campaigning organisations have been determined in their endeavours to make a difference, both in their own lives, and in promoting the awareness of climate change and other pertinent ecological concerns. And in that regard, they have succeeded in putting the global crisis firmly in all our minds: ‘There is no planet B’.
Unfortunately, the planet doesn’t have a voice, let alone an opinion. The fact is that the Earth doesn’t care what happens to it, it just responds with the same natural processes, both organic and inorganic, as it has for the past 5 billion years. If it ends tomorrow by colliding with a giant asteroid, or at the hands of humans, it just won’t bat an anthropomorphic eyelid. So to speak on behalf of the planet is not really relevant. The crisis is the result of human activity. The only real victims are humans, because nothing else has the capacity to judge our destruction of the Earth in terms of our own values.
It is better to emphasise that the Earth matters, because it matters to us. Without the Earth, we cease to exist. If the Earth, and all that describes it, is destroyed, it is of no consequence to anything but ourselves. The placards should read ‘save the humans’. Of course, that sentiment is implied within many campaign slogans, but saving the whale, the rain forests, the oceans, the snow leopard, etc., are distractions. They are the unavoidable ramifications of our (cultivated) selfish attitude, and so we should invest our energies in changing that attitude, not dwelling on the fallout.
Recognising that our continued existence is absolutely dependent on the Earth’s delicate ecosystem is fundamental in how we go forward from this defining moment in our evolution.
It’s worth remembering that the many groups like WWF, Friends of the Earth, Extinction Rebellion, the Sunrise Movement, Greenpeace, and campaigners like Greta, and so many more, who, although absolutely spot-on in promoting this awareness, exist as reactionaries to the capitalist system. Because they engage with it, it makes them part of the system, rather than an alternative to it. Despite the outstanding work of Team Greta, for example, in presenting the uncompromising data that details exactly what the state of the climate is in, and it’s trajectory, by making the messenger the subject of the issues, is no different that the personality politics we have always had. People vote for personalities, not the substance of their message. That is just one of those unfortunate aspects of us being so childlike.
The solution we need has to transcend the ego-driven personality politics that titillates our juvenile appeal for an ongoing drama. If we are to save ourselves, we can’t waste any more time trying to modify the dysfunctional system we have, we need something new.
The hope that we might turn people from the primitive, selfish, short-termist, greedy, destructive organisms we have been made into, by presenting us with the overwhelming evidence of our collective stupidity, is not a realistic plan. If it were, the crisis would have already been averted, but the situation is just getting worse.
If we were nurtured with the clear intention to develop our currently untapped higher brain functions by having the social and educational structures in place to do so, we would become ‘natural humans’ with a character that would not be violent, selfish, or greedy. If that were the case, the environmental issues that we’re now dealing with, just couldn’t happen. We evolved to be caring, altruistic, reasoned, generous, and egalitarian; the attributes which are deliberately suppressed by the current system, reducing us to immature, narrow-minded, selfish idiots. If we do not utilise this understanding and re-educate ourselves, the crisis will be managed with the same selfish and violent attitude that brought us to this point. Fix us, and we fix the problem. Just getting on with our lives – as they have prescribed – and hoping that ‘they’ will find solutions is misinterpreting the situation, they are the problem.
Hope is nothing more than secular praying – a means to avoid doing something, when doing something is exactly what’s needed.
March 2023