The ecological crisis known as civilization can only be tackled holistically, through a radical reorientation of ourselves to nature.
It is our responsibility to enact this work in our own lives. But certain children of the machine have developed a new approach, which requires very little of them, while enabling them to claim all of the narrative potency of “saving the planet,” whatever that means.
The line goes like this. I’m just a kid with no power. But the ocean is filling with trash and the forests are burning; the biosphere is in crisis and the stakes couldn’t be higher. I have to do something. To save the world. But since I’m just a kid with no power, the best thing I can do is contribute my voice to the chorus of concerned souls telling the people in power to change course.
It would be sound, but for the axiom “I’m just a kid with no power.” This is a death trap. It encourages its holder to take on a stance of utter impotence, and thus becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Indeed you become powerless, you never grow up; all you do is eat and complain.
As long as you’re complaining, you’re doing all that you can. You are under no obligation to grow your own food, volunteer in your community, or even eschew Amazon. After all, none of these actions can hope to Save the Planet. It is a better use of your energy — more bang/buck — to bitch at the Adults. Compared to this all-encompassing object of Saving the Planet, doing what you can in your local community seems trivial — almost irresponsible.
It is based on a grave misunderstanding of the world. There is no council of Adults calling all the shots. Adam Mastroianni writes:
Science works the way it does because of millions of people making millions of decisions all distributed throughout a big, convoluted network controlled by nobody in particular…This is how most of the world’s problems work. There is no manager to speak to, no master switch that can turn the bad thing off, no Committee on Problems who could decide to discontinue this particular snafu. You cannot vote to abolish traffic or petition to end hunger — or, you can, but it won’t do anything other than give you the warm glow of appearing to solve a problem without actually solving it.
Maybe we learn this authoritarian model of the world when we’re kids and then we never unlearn it. When you’re little, grown-ups can reshape your world at a whim. If you want a later bedtime, or permission to wear your Power Rangers pajamas to school, or dinosaur-shaped nuggets instead of nugget-shaped nuggets, petitioning an adult really is your best bet. Many of us remain in little adult-governed pseudo-realities until we’re 22 or even older, and so we get used to the idea that solving problems is merely a matter of pleasing the right big person — find the right gatekeeper, fill out the right paperwork, send the right email.
Illich talks about this. Our conception of childhood is a modern invention. Across cultures and time periods, children have had some measure of autonomy and ample opportunity to contribute. We alone recognize this category of childhood which is harshly demarcated from all meaningful, practical human activity. A side effect of this artificial schism is that childlike play is all but banished from the adult cosmos, with disastrous consequences for mental health and community feeling. And this is all enacted through the institution of school.
Only with the advent of industrial society did the mass production of “childhood” become feasible and come within the reach of the masses. The school system is a modern phenomenon, as is the childhood it produces.
The teacher is the ultimate “big person,” in Mastroianni’s phrase. In the teacher is invested absolute spiritual and temporal authority. The student is ever under their teacher’s supervision, instruction, and guidance.
School, by its very nature, tends to make a total claim on the time and energies of its participants. This, in turn, makes the teacher into custodian, preacher, and therapist. In each of these three roles the teacher bases his authority on a different claim.
The teacher-as-custodian acts as a master of ceremonies, who guides his pupils through a drawn-out labyrinthine ritual. He arbitrates the observance of rules and administers the intricate rubrics of initiation to life. At his best, he sets the stage for the acquisition of some skill as schoolmasters always have. Without illusions of producing any profound learning, he drills his pupils in some basic routines.
The teacher-as-moralist substitutes for parents, God, or the state. He indoctrinates the pupil about what is right or wrong, not only in school but also in society at large…and thus ensures that all feel themselves children of the same state.
The teacher-as-therapist feels authorized to delve into the personal life of his pupil in order to help him grow as a person. When this function is exercised by a custodian and preacher, it usually means that he persuades the pupil to submit to a domestication of his vision of truth and his sense of what is right. The claim that a liberal society can be founded on the modern school is paradoxical. The safeguards of individual freedom are all canceled in the dealings of a teacher with his pupil. When the schoolteacher fuses in his person the functions of judge, ideologue, and doctor, the fundamental style of society is perverted by the very process which should prepare for life.
This relationship to the teacher as the incarnation of absolute authority sets the tone for all of life.
It is no coincidence that these movements come out of the schools, and are rarely so radical as to reject the broader value system which the schools represent. They readily decry pollution and exploitation, but they still do their homework, dutifully playing out the role of “child” to which they have been assigned.
They walk out of the schools — and then they go back in.
They will even — and this really irked me as an adolescent — advertise their environmental activism on their college resume.
The university graduate has been schooled for selective service among the rich of the world. Whatever his or her claims of solidarity with the Third World, each American college graduate has had an education costing an amount five times greater than the median life income of half of humanity…The modern university confers the privilege of dissent on those who have been tested and classified as potential money-makers or power-holders. (Illich)
They seek the same comfort and status as everybody else. They are ultimately functionally indistinguishable from everyone else. They eat from the trough just like the ignorant right-wingers of their scorn.
And it costs nothing for them to beg The Adults to Do Something, and take them to task for Destroying The Planet. They don’t have to give anything up. They get to have it both ways.
The author (right), saving the planet (the pipeline was duly built)
Besides the above, the only climate protest I ever attended was at the University of British Columbia, where I happened to be living at the time. I went to a dorm event for making signs the night before, and met a girl to whom I would later lose my virginity. I made a couple other friends and we all arranged to go together to the protest with our signs. It was a perfectly pleasant social gathering.
The protest itself largely consisted of loud self-congratulatory noises. It wasn’t really my scene; I got nauseous and went to take a nap, but an hour was more than enough to get the gist.
The protest’s only specific stated goal was to get UBC, the institution, to divest from fossil fuel corporations. And a little while later lo and behold UBC did indeed divest from fossil fuel corporations and everyone patted themselves on the back. Obviously, it was only a symbolic victory. The reallocation of one Canadian university’s pocket change did not move the oil companies’ stocks even one decimal point, did not affect the salary of even one oil executive, did not prevent even one drop of oil from being extracted. The great machine which we were training to represent runs on oil. And so the oil will come out and be used up with no regard for anything beyond the short term kick. Our civilization is an addict strung out on its own mistakes.
Can we change course? I certainly believe so. But the climate protests are worse than useless. Paradoxical as it may be, I’m sure they foster complacency. Their true social function is not revolution, but giving the disgruntled adolescent masses a harmless outlet for their frustration. The young radical learns to associate passion with inaction. The resultant feeling of stagnancy feeds the fire, which can only turn in on itself and grow evermore indignant.
Think of how angrier these kids are than the hippies or beats — and yet how better behaved.
The modern climate protest fits snugly into the machine — this is why Greta Thunberg was invited to Davos. Greta naturally was able to stir herself into a Dionysian ecstacy of self-righteous indignation on command, and in so doing she believed herself to be subverting the order which put her on the stage. But how could she have been? They knew what they were doing when they sent her up there; she dutifully played out her script.
And then they get to murmur amongst themselves well yes we certainly are The Adults and perhaps we should Do Something. Now, how to integrate this new and noble goal of Saving the Planet while also maintaining Economic Growth?
Even if you did manage to convert The Adults, it wouldn’t create the change you crave. Hell, they’re already well and converted, for all intents and purposes. The world’s governments and corporations are spending trillions a year on greenhouse gas mitigation, renewable energy technologies, raising awareness, and all the rest.
Top-down approaches are doomed to fail. The only way for us to improve things is to build stronger relationships with others and find some way to serve our local community. A new paradigm must emerge here. There is nowhere else.
The mistake has to do with preferring a large symbolic victory over a small real one. I don’t know how many hours of effort went into making UBC divest from fossil fuels, but I do know it could have made a kick-ass community garden.
Enacting a new story of our species’ relationship to the Earth does not happen by decree of some billionaire or committee. It emerges from the interrelation of many awakening souls. It is surely a grave error to neglect one’s own unique part in this unfolding, in favour of demanding that some elusive authority flick some nonexistent switch, already.