Fear and environmentalism: semi-conclusion

Reason. Compassion. Forbearance. Selflessness. These are not the hallmarks or our time.

Posted by David Roberts at 3:06 PM on 28 Aug 2006

(Fifth in a series; first part here, second part here, third part here, fourth part here.)

Reason. Compassion. Forbearance. Selflessness. These are not the hallmarks or our time.

We live in an ascendant cycle of fear, anger, violence, and reprisal. (To see it all summed up in one small, fetid package, read this.) But progressives should not pretend that the cycle is of any use to them, or that its force can be marshaled to more noble ends. We might gain some short-term victories by scaring the crap out of people, but a population in fear will always tend toward authoritarianism and violence.

Reason, compassion, forbearance, and selflessness are the building blocks of true progressivism. If they have been driven underground, the progressive response should not be to resort to reactionary macho posturing, but to revive them.

How? That's not an easy question to answer -- Kevin Drum touches on it somewhat tangentially, making reference to recent thoughts from both Robert Wright and Caleb Carr -- but it is the crucial dilemma of our time.

The immediate priority is triage: to reduce the direct loss of life from war and conflict, and to blunt the forces pushing for escalation. In a fierce column, the NYT's Frank Rich claims that the politics of fear are no longer working. I think he's right -- people are burned out from all the paranoia and hatred.

But the larger, more important goal is to outline an alternative, and inspire people to pursue it. We need a new vision, and a politics of moral courage to help realize it.

The trick is that any genuinely progressive movement requires a commitment to people that are distant in time and space. It's a strange notion, when you think about it: that comparatively tiny individual actions can accumulate to the benefit of people far away and not yet born. It requires a certain faith, or at least an abstracted, intellectualized compassion. It means extending, not retrenching; throwing ourselves into the future, not hoarding what we have now. It means acting without the promise of immediate, tangible reward. It means believing in karma: when we increase the sum total of good in the universe, good finds us in turn.

That's moral courage. These days, courage is associated almost exclusively with willingness to advocate or engage in violence. But contrary to common current claims, moral courage does not mean mustering the will to kill foreigners. It often amounts to the opposite: the courage to refrain from vengeance, to opt out of the cycle of violence even when one would be perfectly justified in joining it. The right thing is frequently not the satisfying thing.

Moral cowardice also manifests in a kind of sterile techno-intellectualism, which musters facts and calculations to convince us that the right thing is too risky. Discussions of sustainability seem to be dominated by these kinds of concerns with short-term self-interest. We can get off of fossil fuels as long as we can do it without hurting the economy, as long we can be sure that alternatives will cover the gap without damaging or degrading our current lifestyle. We'll fight global warming as long as it won't hurt the economy and we won't have to restrict people's choices about what to drive or where to live. We'll slow the loss of biodiversity as long as it doesn't slow international trade or restrict economic development. Etc.

Faced with these kinds of concerns, environmental advocates go out of their way to demonstrate the immediate benefit of green living. You can be hip! Your business can make money! You can reduce your energy bills! Green is the new black!

I've got no problem with that. I'm not going to reject anything that creates momentum. I'm not going to reject the good in favor of the perfect. Do what you can with what you've got, I say.

But still. In the long term, a genuinely sustainable society can only be built by those willing to make themselves vulnerable, those determined to leave their children a better world even if it means taking risks -- unquantifiable risks. Bean counters won't get us there. Eventually there's going to have to be a moral (or if you prefer, spiritual) component: we're going to do what's right because it's right, not because we've calculated away all the danger.

We live in an Age of the Glands, addicted to hot bursts of fear and anger, tribalism and vengeance. The underlying dynamic is covered over with a veneer of cold, selfish intellectualism, but it's there for anyone willing to scratch the surface.

We -- the earth, humanity -- cannot succeed on those terms. It's time to reawaken our hearts and our faith. We should recall the lesson of every great spiritual leader: let go of the ego. Let go of pride. Live humbly in service of something larger than yourself. Like The Man said:

Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the LORD.

Those who seek a compassionate society -- who would bequeath their children a country and an earth in better condition that those they inherited -- must always work against fear. They must always embody the sublime joys of reason and compassion.

For story: Fear and environmentalism: semi-conclusion
6 Comments | Post a Comment

Yes

Just read through the whole series. Nicely done.

It ought to exist somewhere as one article.

Can It Happen Here?

by janinsanfran at 1:16 PM on 29 Aug 2006

Fear IS effective

David,

With all due respect, and I do mean this as your writings always inspire me, I have to disagree with you on this one.

First of all, you seem to equate fear with violence. There is no direct connection. Certainly, one can make a jump from one to the other and back, but one can do that with any two states of beings. There are myriad threads that connect all actions. Fear does NOT imply violence. Rather, it can compel cowardice, heroism, anger, sadness - you name it.

More importantly, David, you must rememeber that we are running out of time to make changes. We should not rule any weapon out of our arsenal. Our greatest leaders, from Ghandi to Malcolm X all used fear, in some way or another, as motivators. The fear of falling behind, the fear of being usurped, the fear of the consequences of failing to radically rebel against an oppresive system. Not to get too political, but this is the failing of Dems and their pocket orgs, like MoveOn - they don't use all of the tools because they don't seek to lead the citizenry. Rather, they seek to coerce and co-opt. Understand that I'm far to the left of the Dem party and MoveOn, so I don't judge them for their failings, they are, to me, ineffective and will play no large role in the coming economic and lifestyle revolution that we will either engineer or will be forced upon us by nature. As with the equal rights movements of the 20th century, the Dems did not propel either, they simply followed along when the public pressure became too great. By this time, far too much suffering had transpired. My point, FEAR can be a proactive agent, can inspire radical change. I FEAR what my son will live through, and his children as well. I FEAR not doing my part to right things. I FEAR many things that are very much worth fearing, and this keeps me active and on my toes, both intellectually and physically. This is not to say that I live my life in fear, but fear is certaily an essential component among my daily motivators.

Do not cast aside fear. Do not fear fear. Yes, it is often wielded recklessly, but this does not mean that it is a faulty mechanism. Again, our greatest leaders provide concrete examples of proper useage. Look to them, not the Republicans, for examples of how to use this tool.

Again, David, thanks for your writing on the subject. It is a very necessary item for us all to analyze.

by Tod at 1:43 PM on 29 Aug 2006

future environmentalism

Read WHEN THE RIVERS RUN DRY, exceptional book. Europe has gone back to allowing flood plains for their rivers after the extraordinary flooding in the past years. Dam problems are clearly identified: silting, overstating of enery production, elimination of thousands of productive fields flooded by the retainment pond, unnotified release of waters during flood to save the dam, methane dissemination over decades, not years, etc. Huge water diversion projects: Khadafi's Great Man Made River, the diversion of river waters to create crops for export profit at the expense of traditional crop methods.

The answer is a return to the local, the small and managable as in the Indian tankas, the quants, the formerly productive shallow wells that were destroyed when tube wells were sank by the Peace Corps, non-profits, at the direction of the World Bank. Huge rises in fluoride and arsenic poisoning due to this thoughtless procedure. A return to catching the monsoon rains into ponds, rooftops are necessary.

Never has the gap between the stated goals of capitalism and its actual results been so clearly identified.

This 'beating of the drum' for a new alternative smacks of the same tired old argument of the next 'new thing' in education. We do not need any more experimentation, surely that is plain. We do not need more management, we need less. We do not need to lable things as either brave or cowardly. We need only to see clearly that profits have created the destruction of our families and the land we so desperately need to work in harmony with.

And, Yes, we are manipulated by fear, by patriotism, by any number of our human failings. but, as the damage clearly seen by the sinking of the tube wells, by the 'green revolution' that need more and more fertilizer, by the GM crops that appear to yeild large but in truth lack the essential minerals smaller, non genetically modified crops do have, by our quest to improve things we have done as much damage as the wars of the world.

We have taken the prevailing view of the dominant culture (first Britian, then America) and applied what works here to there and the results are dismal. Even in trying to help.

Do you think it is because of the "we know best" mind set? It's their land but we know best how to dam the river that in their land carries essential silt to fertilize their river side fields. And of course, we make a profit of selling the dam technology and coincidentally we site our American mining firm next to the dam to use the electricity that was advertised as a way to instill a productive economy-------and on and on.

We have yet to work with Mother Nature and seem destined to end our days as a footnote of yet another failed civilization that the future will delve into to explore why we failed----silted up canals like the Kymers, salt encrusted fields such as the Aztec, over use crop land without maintainence of crop rotation, etc.

And the most damaging--------endless wars.

by katesisco at 2:02 PM on 29 Aug 2006

Excellent Piece

I agree that fear inspires little or nothing in the way of positive action because it more often than not saps hope and will. Survival as a short term goal takes precedence over long term goals. What progressives, especially in regard to environmental issues, need to focus on isn't fear per se. Reality is frightening enough and every truthfully scary message needs to be accompanied by hope and steps for action.

by redjenny at 9:00 AM on 30 Aug 2006

Even moderates use fear tactic

This country's political divide, Right vs Left, has an artificial dividing point, republican on one side, democrat on the other. The truth is that many issues near the center of the political spectrum are shared by both and even most political persuasions.

My political strategy for reaching obstinantly closed-minded republicans is to find those commonalities, and convince them that their leaders are not fairly representing majority interests, including their own.

To be such a moderate is like climbing this dividing wall and becoming a target for attack from both sides.

For exampls: When I'm trying to explain the complete futility of hydrogen fuel cell cars, those on the Left who've placed their hopes in such technofixes, will not hear it and may suspect such viewpoint as right wing propaganda. Those on the Right may be surprised to learn pertinent facts about Bush's fraudulent advocacy for hydrogen, but may be disuaded from in depth examination because the intellectually incurious on the Left matches that of their own.

I have a small, measured amount of optimism that the industrial age can reduce its toxic impact. But, if the Left remains as closed-minded as the Right, the fear of an inappropriate technofix is a reasonable and legitimate political tactic.

by Wells at 11:44 AM on 31 Aug 2006

Fear

What a thoughtful series ... well done. Inspired us to this post, with a mild dissent:

http://www.theagitator.net/index.php?/archives/266-What-I...

We think fear is a given of the human condition. We've got to acknowledge & deal with it. The challenge for communicators and advocates is to channel it constructively (while not promoting it ... an important distinction).

Tom Belford TheAgitator.net

by tbelford at 8:20 AM on 08 Sep 2006

ADVERTISING POLICY

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