Transitions—the 215th podcast in a series from Last Born in the Wilderness—is an exposition and deeply personal sharing about what to do in a time when nobody has a clue. Words are insufficient to express the significance of this conversation, so I ask you to listen, really listen, to what Barbara Cecil and Dahr Jamail have to say.
You’ll want a quiet mind to take this in—a safe space, maybe a cup of tea would help. This essay is only my attempt to assimilate wisdom shared, to not let it fade, to help with my own thinking and not to impose anything on anyone. Unless noted otherwise, all quotations are taken from the interview.
the terror
An ‘apocalypse’ is literally “an uncovering, a disclosure, a revelation.” What’s happening to our world now is something “we can’t think or act ourselves out of.” That statement is the apocalyptic revelation we will never hear in mainstream media because (deep down we know) we are all utterly unprepared, mentally, physically and spiritually. Cultural denial is easier—and not only about climate—including the “soft denial of the left”. In fact, the rapidly evolving catastrophe is so hard to talk about in our culture that Barbara just comes out and says it:
[There’s] some kind of terror about actually taking in what he actually said [in an infamous New Yorker magazine article by Jonathan Franzen] and listening to what was underneath it. A failure to ask ourselves, ‘What was it in me that just went crazy listening to this thing?’
In the original version of the article, explained by Vox, Franzen states, “The consensus among scientists and policy-makers is that we’ll pass this point of no return if the global mean temperature rises by more than two degrees Celsius (maybe a little more, but also maybe a little less).” The revised version of the article on the New Yorker website states, “Some scientists and policymakers fear that we’re in danger of passing this point of no return if the global mean temperature rises by more than two degrees Celsius (maybe more, but also maybe less).” This is an important factual edit, but Barbara’s rhetorical question still stands firm. “What was it in me that just went crazy listening to this thing?”
beyond grief
About grief in transitions, Barbara says,
Underneath, there’s this fear that if you go into the grief you’re going to get stuck, that there’s nothing on the other side of it… [We’re] terrified of the feelings.
Why are we terrified? I learned recently that this attitude is apparently echoed in Stoic philosophy: “The emotions of grief, pity, and even affection are well-known disturbers of the soul. Grief is the most offensive; Epictetus considered the suffering of grief an act of evil. It is a willful act, going against the will of God to have all men share happiness.” Willful? Not in my experience, but that’s merely an opinion.
Stoic or not, Barbara makes the case for something on the other side of grief:
[There are] people who are out there doing every possible thing they can, with their lives on the line, knowing that they’re going to hit a wall, and [with] the realization that this is too little too late—incremental change isn’t going to do it, political action in the way they’ve seen it isn’t going to do it. And when you hit the reality of that, there’s usually some level of depression and that’s when we really need one another, that’s when our spiritual fiber is needed, and that’s where some level of just real living—everything that’s not important just drops away—there’s a quality of intimacy and love between people with the Earth that begins to show itself amidst the waves of realization and the continual [bad news] if you’re paying attention at all.
And there’s a kindness and an understanding and a beauty in the intimacy that’s possible here. And strangely enough, some level of fulfillment, because instead of just doing this and fixing that and flexing our muscles, there’s a quality of listening and being that starts coming into the picture where a deeper part of our nature begins to come out and I believe that that part of our nature rests more easily in the web of life, that our mental supremacy begins to fade as we realize that we can’t think our way out of this or act our way out of this, a humility begins to set in, and then there’s some sense of a new kind of belonging, a new sense of time, and a new sense of connection to ancestors, and a new experience of what it means to be human.
beyond hope
There are clichés. “Choose hope over fear,” or “Keep hope alive.” And a new noun: Hopium (n.) — Irrational or unwarranted optimism. And then there’s Kafka, “There is infinite hope, just not for us”—that’s the subtitle of the podcast.
Barbara again:
Hope is an avoidance of an essential risk that needs to be taken… If hope somehow relates, in any way, to the continuance of business-as-usual, we will not see the risks we need to take to change course.
Here, I think she means risks (and actions!) that make us better people and that changing course won’t save anything other than our essential humanity. But doing that is hugely important and meaningful.
Dahr Jamail:
We have people in the climate movement that are making a killing selling hope, and I think it’s the worst kind of snake oil at this point. And it’s robbing people of the deep experience of to really understand the gravity of the moment and then let that inform whatever actions they’re going to take. Because if it was done in the proper context—these marches in the climate strike and the students and what they’re doing today—it’s magnificent and it’s beautiful and it’s powerful, and it’s hey, these people are wanting to go out on their feet. They’re going to be able to look back at this and say ‘Yeah, we knew what was going on and this is what we did. And we did it because we knew that things were probably already all lost, and we did it anyway, because it’s the right thing to do.’ I mean, that is the height of morality. That is the height of dignity and integrity.
I imagine that Dahr, as a former war correspondent, has a really good grasp of human morality, dignity and integrity—the best and the worst of what we’re capable of.
Countering the narrative of ‘hopers’:
I think the majority of the people even in the climate movement… don’t really get what it means… How many of these kids [school strikers] are doing it because they think, ‘Oh, there’s still 10 years because Naomi Kline said so’, or ‘There’s still the Green New Deal and there’s still hope.’ When the Green New Deal is just capitalism with a green leaf on it, which is still the system that’s brought us to this point of extinction. So there’s this huge divergence really, of philosophical and perceptual difference that’s amazing to be on one side of it and looking at the other side of it. And they might feel as amazed. So I get accused of being a doomer when all I’ve done is tell the truth.
Hopium (n.) — Irrational or unwarranted optimism.
there’s work to do
Getting beyond grief and hope does not equal ‘doomism’. It’s only doom for those who can imagine little or nothing beyond comfort, privilege, capitalism, and consumerism. That world is doomed. Adding another voice who shares the view that we’re probably not going to ‘make it through this’, Dahr quotes Joanna Macy, “I [do this work] so that when things fall apart, we won’t turn on each other.”
Not if. When. That’s our deep fear, isn’t it?
Dahr:
With all my analysis and everything I’ve learned from my climate reporting, it’s really hard to see how humans make it through this. And that’s the kind of stuff we all got to get our head around, and so it comes down to how then shall we live. How are we going to use this time? We’re still here. We all still have work to do. And how are we going to use that time?
Barbara continues and Dahr echoes,
I know what I’m craving right now is space to feel and think together. I have this great big aversion to words right now.
Everything that I have to offer to contribute to this topic [of climate and ecological collapse] is in the book [The End of Ice]… I’m finished being a journalist. I just don’t feel like I can contribute more in that way and it’s time for me to do something different.
So, 16 years in the business with an established reputation and following and he’s just walking away from it. He should get the last word:
[Ask yourself] what is it now that I most need to do more than anything else in the world given that we have this extremely finite length of time left? Yes, and it means considering our own deaths, honestly.
Whew.
