I'm not outraged, and I am paying attention

When I was in high school, a friend of mine introduced me to the statement, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” My three-minute Google search for the origin of the phrase didn’t give a conclusive source, but someone typed that they saw it on a bumper sticker in the 70s.

The problem with that statement is that it constrains the believer to a specific emotion - outrage - based on some outside stimulus - the source of outrage. It says that the only valid response to inequality, injustice, and any other wrongness is strong negative emotions. I disagree. I believe that we should feel free to respond to injustice any way we’d like, and that one emotional response is not necessarily more right than another. In other words, I may not always express my reaction to systemic racism or sexism as frustration, but it doesn’t mean I’m not committed to a safe, equitable world for all. (Feel free to argue that this is a privilege as a result of my male whiteness.)

I’ve committed myself to the well being of all life. I’m nearly 39 years old, but I’ve just come to see that, for myself, my commitment needn’t require despondency, anger, or inner torment. I’ve finally come to understand that I can enjoy in wonder and satisfaction, ease and appreciation the subtle and the deep of this life, and still have space for compassion, empathy, and action. Experiencing existential satisfaction in being alive, and giving a shit about others and the world, are not mutually exclusive.

I fully stand for a safe, enjoyable, and fulfilling world for all of us, and I’m standing with all the enjoyment, wonder, and appreciation with which I am committed to experiencing my life. And I want my students and colleagues to know that we are never actually constrained to feel any specific way no matter how the world and its people and things are showing up to us. We don’t need to be outraged to prove that we're paying attention.

I don't think I'm being Vulcan here

In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into representation.

- Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle 

A video of Greta Thunberg speaking to the UN this week blew up for a few days on my Twitter and Facebook feeds. When I first started seeing them, I thought that it was because people were judging her as angry, immature, and too emotional. What I saw instead is that a lot of the people on the left that I follow were proud of her for getting angry. One climate activist that I respect tweeted that "Rage-filled Greta is actually my favorite Greta."

I'm a bit perplexed by this. Her anger and rage are fine, but that it takes her getting so emotional to make such ripples is sad to me.

I'm not trying to be Vulcan about it and saying that we shouldn't get emotional. I'm saying that we're simply not using our imagination enough if it takes a kid to get angry for us to listen. Her getting angry doesn't make her any more right (or wrong).

Like the burning CVS, I'd like to think that anger is okay if it gets people to listen, but I don't think that it gets us to listen any more than we were already. It gets us turned on to the spectacle of it, but likely no more committed to a future that works for all.

I'm amazed at her thinking and articulation and maturity. And I think it's fine that she got angry. This isn't an indictment of her self-expression. It's an indictment of the culture that turned her message and self-expression into a spectacle. I'm feeling sad that anger seems so meaningful to express, when devastated homes, hungry bellies, the 6th mass extinction, and mass migration aren't enough to call us to action.

Just because you're offended doesn't mean you're right!

- Ricky Gervais

That's how the light gets in

Anthem by Leonard Cohen
(Lyrics copied from here.)

The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government --
signs for all to see.

I can't run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.

What being pro-life feels like

Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 

- Jesus, in Matthew 18: 3-4 

What do you mean, "Why?"
Tonight at dinner, I asked the boys what I should write about for my blog. My older son said that I should write about the Bahamas [recently ravaged by a hurricane]. I asked him why, and he said, "because they were destroyed." I asked him why that matters. He said, "What do you mean?! The Bahamas were wiped out!" And why does that matter? He couldn't get why I was asking such a preposterous question - in his world, it obviously matters that people are getting hurt and will get more hurt by the impacts of climate change.

My younger son said that I should write about littering and pollution. I asked him why. "Because it's a problem." Why is it a problem? "What do you mean?! Of course it's a problem!"

The older students that I typically teach can dig deeper when I ask those questions - keep peeling back the layers of our thinking and beliefs. I like the exercise because it's fun and kinda enlightening, but I also find that it's a powerful experience for me and them to get in touch with the things that really matter to us. At some point, we say: "Because I care about it!" And there's no deeper layer, because our caring about it doesn't need a reason, it doesn't need an argument, it doesn't need a justification.

We hit that level very quickly tonight at dinner. My kids are pro-life. They care about other people and animals, automatically and unequivocally.

This is a pro-life movement

At the end of the documentary, Chasing Coral, that I watched in a couple of my classes last week in preparation for the climate strike activities, one student came up to me at the end and said, "That's so sad." I think she's pro-life, and that's why she found it sad, but I'll find out. (25% of the world's species live in coral reef ecosystems, over 1.25 billion people survive on them, and we're likely to lose all coral reefs by the end of this century.)

I'm pro-life: I want all people, animals, plants, fungi, etc. - all of it - to have a fair chance at living full-out, satisfied, and fulfilled lives. And I hope to grow in my wonder at life, its mysteries and beauties, that my kids have reinvigorated in me these last 11 years. The climate and environmental movements are pro-life movements, and I'm excited to see young people starting to fill the leadership gap.

Source: a friend took this image at the DC climate strike.

Smoke signals from a burning CVS

I likely wouldn’t have known about Freddie Gray at all, or the depth of continuing issues of U.S. racism, if that Baltimore CVS wasn’t set on fire.

At the time, I was teaching high school engineering and physics at a private school just north of Baltimore. Another teacher at school mentioned that she was going to be discussing in her classes the death of Freddie Gray and issues of police violence and systemic racism, so I decided to find a couple videos to watch in class to lead us into discussions. It wasn’t a topic I felt very comfortable discussing with students in class, but it seemed important enough to bring the conversation up, follow my values, and see where things went.

I found the following video; after watching it a couple times, something clicked for me.

My initial perspective on the Baltimore Uprising was that what happened to Freddie Gray was wrong, but destroying property was not the way to make things better. In the video, Wolf Blitzer tries to get Deray McKesson to condemn the acts of destruction. However, Deray stands focused in attempting to bring Wolf back to understanding the why behind the destruction: people are in pain, people are angry. And then it clicked for me.

Smoke signals from that burning CVS woke me up to severe well-being issues that I was ignorant of. What’s some damaged property compared with the real suffering of people?

I’m grateful for those smoke signals, because it opened me up to new levels of understanding, compassion, and commitment in my life.

I don’t want the transformation of our environmental awareness and actions to also necessitate the destruction of property, this time at the hands of the climate and damaged ecosystems. I'd rather us solve these problems without calamity.

New Orleans, Houston, Puerto Rico, the Great Barrier Reef, and others. These are smoke signals. Are we waking up yet?

What’s the smoke signal you think will get the fossil fuel industry (and the politicians on its payroll) to wake up?

How sad to think that nature speaks and mankind doesn't listen.

- Victor Hugo, 1840

A formidable question

We can’t build what we can’t imagine. We can’t build what we can’t imagine. I’ve said it again and again, but please, let it really sink in. It’s the most important fact on our planet right now: We can’t build what we can’t imagine.

- Alex Steffen, Climate Activist, in his essay Heroic  

Tonight I got to do something that I love to do - sit around a fire with people that I'm close to.

I shared with my friends a little about attending the Climate Strike in Baltimore yesterday, and a friend asked me, "Are we *screwed*?" (That's not the actual word that he used...)

Many of us ask that question, and I too wanted to know the answer to it. I haven't asked it in a while, but I feel mildly drawn to it still, or at least the portentous story that often follows. Tonight, trying to put my finger on why I've asked the question, though, I think it's because it would help guide me in how to feel. 

"Yes, we're screwed" would give me permission to indulge in grief and then resign myself to a sad, unavoidable future (or ignore the problem altogether). "No, we're not screwed" would give meaning to my actions - good, so my actions won't be for nothing!

My thoughts about the future are initially cynical. So when my friend asked me that question tonight, I said, "Yes, I think we're screwed. But I'm still going to do everything I can to build a different, better future." That's meant to be inspiring, but really it's just cynicism protecting me from feeling like I failed, or feeling like I'm fighting a losing war.

In retrospect, I wish I had thought a little bit before I spoke. 

Here's what I'd say to him now: "What kind of future do you want for yourself, for your kids, for others?"

That question is the one I mean to ask others. That question is the one we need to ask each other more often. The strategy, the game plan, can't be developed until we've created what it means to win. Otherwise, we'll just be playing the game of survival, and we know how that game goes. Us against them. Anger, fear, frustration, resignation.

I want a world of laughter and compassion and freedom and ease. Of health and well-being, of enjoyment and satisfaction. Clear oceans and thriving ecosystems. Clean, renewable energy. Games in the sunshine and naps in the shade. All of life would have an equitable, feasible, fulfilling access to the kind of life that it's drawn to.

Try it out: What future do you want? 

The follow up question, of course, if anyone is willing to ask it, is "What can we do now to get there?" But that question isn't where we need to start.

So answer that first question, to me, to a friend, to yourself: What future do you want?

If we want a thriving, prosperous, sustainable world we have to imagine it, first...

- Alex Steffen, Climate Activist, in his essay Heroic   

Sometimes it's messy

A letter to the faculty of my school on the eve of the global climate strike:

Though it usually feels like I’m doing way too little for the environmental movement, I’m committed to a future that works for all life.

The past couple weeks at school, with regard to the climate strike today, have been messy. Since [a couple students] presented to the school about the strike a couple weeks ago, to some extent we have all wondered what’s happening, how much we should assist/guide the students, and how to best support the climate movement in general. We’ve probably voiced or at least had judgments about the students, how they’re handling it, about each other, about school admin, about ourselves, and about the movement itself.

In 50 years, they won’t care how awkward or messy this planning may have felt. They won’t care whether we went to DC or Baltimore or stayed on campus. They won’t care whether we wanted to help or not, whether we really meant it or not, or how many people showed up to march.

In 50 years, they’ll care whether they have clean air, clean water, healthy food, healthy relationships, and a stable society. They’ll care whether ecosystems have the chance to live or die on their own.

No matter how messy this planning has been or how awkward or thrilling or satisfying or scary or frustrated or meh our experience at Friday's climate strike may be, it’s worth it. Building a world that works is worth all those feelings, and it’s going be messy. Revolutions are messy.

As eco-activist Derrick Jensen wrote, “Nothing matters but that we stop this culture from killing the planet.”

Thank you for participating in this movement, however you’ve chosen to join it on Friday.

P.S. I recommend that you read this excerpt from activist Derrick Jensen’s essay, “You Choose.” And I also recommend Greta Thunberg's TEDx talk, which kicked off our school movement a couple weeks ago.

What the hand is pointing to

We're pointing somewhere
I really enjoy conversations with my nieces and nephews. I like hearing about their lives and their thinking, and I like sharing stories of my experiences with them. Their creativity, thoughtfulness, passion, and care for others inspires me. I nearly always find that I could've listened more and talked less.

One of my nephews is studying to be a Catholic priest. He's clearly going to be a phenomenal priest, and I appreciate our friendship and our conversations. Though we share a similar language due to our Catholic/christian upbringing, we have different beliefs when it comes to religion, spirituality, and the meaning of it all. Regardless, our conversations seem to be stimulating to both of us on an intellectual and spiritual level.

Today we had a conversation about a human experience of God, and the conversation curved towards what effect a belief in God may have on one's moral actions. While I still don't think that a belief in God necessarily provides much support to one's quest to make the world a better place, I left the conversation clear about my nephew's commitment to others' well-being.

My nephew and I are both pointing forward to a better future for life, an improvement in well-being and fulfillment. Our conversation, however, was mostly about the hand that's pointing there.

Our hands are pointing there
His hand is the hand of a Catholic, one studying to be a Catholic authority on fulfilling on that future. Though we didn't get to the means in our conversation today, I suspect that his means of arriving at that future are different from mine, including an after-life.

My hand is the hand of an athiest, one studying to be ethically effective at fulfilling on that future in this lifetime. I think that the path to get there includes minimizing our negative impacts and maximizing our positive ones, supporting other life in getting its necessities, but also challenging myself and others to find greater depths of satisfaction, fulfillment, and enjoyment in the fundamental experiences of being alive.

It's enjoyable and stimulating to talk about the nature of our pointing hands, and I look forward to seeing more about his and mine as we move along.

What we're pointing towards
What's more important right now to me than the nature of our hands, though, is the future our hands are pointing towards. A future where life is healthy and fulfilled at all levels of its being. 

I wonder how many of us share such a vision, despite what our hands look like. (Probably many, many, many more of us than we think.)

Gratitude
I'm grateful to be surrounded by people in my life who care for others and their well-being. For the pointing hand insight, I'm grateful to Michael Neill, author and teacher (I highly recommend his Inside-Out Revolution book). And I'm grateful for your taking the time and energy to read this - thank you!

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You might be interested to read a previous post of mine, Pointing forward, that expresses my breaking through resignation at my political dissatisfaction last year - pointing my finger forward instead of pointing it at others.

None but ourselves

The mythology of your culture hums in your ears so constantly that no one pays the slightest bit of attention to it. Of course man is conquering space and the atom and the deserts and the oceans and the elements. According to your mythology, this is what he was BORN to do.

- Daniel Quinn, Ishmael

The water we're swimming in
For the past two weeks, I worked on a project with a handful of colleagues at school. We discussed and created the beginnings of an interdisciplinary program. As an example of taking a big question and looking at it through different lenses, one morning we addressed the question, "What makes the climate crisis so hard to solve?"

We each took a couple minutes and listed out the various thoughts that initially came to mind. On my list of about 10 thoughts, the one that stood out as most impactful was the dissociation between the consumer and the producer - that we, as western consumers, have lost touch with those producing our products, where they are, what the raw materials were, where the raw materials were from, and what actually went into making these things. Capitalism works a lot better when we're close enough to relate to the producers.

We are consumers, and we live in a consumerist culture. That's a fact. And it's such a part of our lives that mostly we're oblivious to it and how it impacts our thinking.

Mental prison

The world of the Takers is one vast prison, and except for a handful of Leavers scattered across the world, the entire human race is now inside that prison.

- Daniel Quinn, Ishmael

At some point in our conversation at school, one of us used the phrase "freedom from consumptive thinking." I like that phrase. It's a reminder to me that we must in fact be constrained in our thinking by the culture of consumption in which we're living.

Maybe it's just fine to be constrained in our thinking in this way, but what might become possible if we free our minds and actions from the grip of the culture of consumption?

Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, was a powerful book for me when I read it sometime in college. I recommend that you check it out too!

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our mind.

- Marcus Garvey. Source.

The way things are. Or not.

If you suffer from the misconception that most of the world is still too poor to buy anything at all, you risk missing out on the biggest economic opportunity in world history while you use your marketing spend to push special "yoga" pads to wealthy hipsters.

- Hans Rosling, Factfulness 

We're Failing Capitalism: Part 5 of 5
Despite very real and appreciated successes, the way we do capitalism is failing us. The most devastating failures are the growing momentum of climate change, other environmental concerns, and wealth inequality. Either these challenges will destroy capitalism entirely in the end, or we need to modify our approach to capitalism to solve them.

The five parts to the series are:

1. The source of the world's problems?
2. Some of capitalism's successes
3. The winning formula
4. We're failing capitalism
5. The way things are. Or not.

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While capitalism has provided many benefits to the average person over the last 500 years, it is ostensibly failing many of us in obvious ways; with escalating climate forces and other environmental degradation, it will increasingly fail more of us. I used to think that capitalism itself is to blame, but capitalism isn't a living thing, and it only operates according to the conditions that humans specify.

I've felt a bit overwhelmed by the task of distilling all relevant information on this topic to a single blog post offering some realistic solutions. So I've decided to stick with a couple that I really like and find myself sharing most often with people in conversations. I hope you find the following ideas helpful and practical.

Impose costs on negative externalities

The market dynamics in capitalism do not provide any mechanisms in themselves to prevent this behaviour; it requires some forms of non-market intervention either by state or by organized social forces.

- Masoud Movahed, writing for the World Economics Forum

Climate change alone is already costing countries hundreds of billions of dollars each year. To ensure that markets absorb those costs as markets rightly should in a capitalist economy, carbon and other pollutants should be taxed.

Currently, governments pay for capitalism's environmental effects. If governments tax carbon and other pollutants, the costs are put into the market that caused the debt in the first place. "I actually think a carbon tax together with rebates is, in some sense, the most conservative way to deal with climate change" (Greg Mankiw, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President G.W. Bush).

This thinking can be applied to all our major issues. Antibiotic resistance, for example, can be handled in the form of taxes on the meat/agricultural industry so that the market itself adjusts in light of this externality. "Although the majority of antibiotic use occurs in agricultural settings, relatively little attention has been paid to how antibiotic use in farm animals contributes to the overall problem of antibiotic resistance" (source).

Educate ourselves and each other

The learned ignore the evidence of their senses to preserve the coherence of the ideas of their imagination.

- Adam Smith

As a teacher, I have found over the years that when students ask a question on a topic that I haven't recently read up on, I tend to give answers that I heard when I was a high school or college student 20 years ago. If my teachers then were repeating what they learned in school 20 years prior, then the information I'm speaking about is at least 40 years old. That's really old information!

It's especially old considering the drastic changes in the world in the last 30 years. As we saw in the second post of this series, Some of Capitalism's Successes, poverty, education, hunger, life expectancy and other areas have seen breakthrough transformations in the last few decades. However, if we're not educating ourselves and others about the current state of the world, we're not going to make informed choices.

Until we are educated on today's "what's so" and making educated decisions on how best to move forward, we're just living out high school teachers' views of the world from half a century ago or more.

Or not

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it. 

- Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

I had a picture of the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field image in my old classroom, and I now have it at my desk. I find it calming to zoom out from my personal life sometimes, and this image helps me do that.

Source.

I don't need reason and logic to know that I love my kids, but reason often helps me shake off frustration and anger faster than they'd leave on their own. I don't need reason and logic to feel compassion and empathy for other people and other life, but reason helps shift my perspective to remember to be open to it. Likewise, viewing the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field image has a feeling to it as well as a reasoning to it, to me.

We're headed towards some changes - technological, social, and environmental. Nearly everyone I talk to about climate change and other environmental challenges, let alone the topics of psychological and social impacts of our modern living, pretty much agree that we're screwed and there's nothing we can do about it. That perspective is quite reasonable, and it's quite convenient.

It's easier to not try. It's easier to not get invested. It's easier to get wrapped up in everything else we deal with in our day-to-day lives than to consider the future. Saying there's nothing that can be done is certainly easier than struggling to find something that can be done. I agree!

But all it takes is to say, "Or not." We're screwed...Or not. There's little hope...Or not. There's no way we can turn things around...Or not. Or not opens a door a little bit. We might not know how to get there yet, and we might not know what role we can play, but maybe there is another way.

(A close friend of my wife and me likes to say "Who says?" in response to limitations. Who says you can't have dessert before dinner? Who says we can't transform society so that everybody wins?)

Rethinking how we do capitalism and how we engage with our capitalist system is worthy of the grander vision - one where people and non-human life are respected, valued, free, and fulfilled. I much prefer the vision of a world that works for all life than the resigned perspective that this is just the way things are and the way they'll be. 

The view that this is just the way things are and the way they'll be affects how we do capitalism, and either capitalism will die or we'll learn to use it to manifest a world that works. Our impact on the world will be remade either way - life's wonders are worth it.

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I hope that this has been worthwhile reading for you. It's taken me much longer to complete this series than I anticipated! Changing jobs and getting confronted in my writing were a couple hurdles, and I'm glad to be back in the game. Please leave a comment if you have anything to say!