Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
By stepping outside of the conventional frames of discussion about climate change, Latour opens up a rich, grand structure for thinking about the future of politics in the Anthropocene. Now if only we can build out this new third attractor. Let us call it the Terrestrial Commons!
But what is the human story behind these injustices? How can we raise consciousness and create change? In other words, how does one communicate this information in a meaningful and impactful way?
With art you can get underneath the narrative matrix and speak to an unguarded part of an audience that hasn’t been armored up by layers of establishment narrative.
Perhaps the biggest challenge is that we may have to actually change our superstructures — our values, beliefs, and expectations for the future—and our socio-political and economic structures first in order to have an infrastructure that supports a functioning and sustainable community.
To conclude, in most places globally there were the natives and now there are the newcomers. The current migrants into Europe are yet another such wave. No matter one’s ancestral origin, we must all learn to live a deeply natural way. It is the path to authentic hope.
We have this remarkable ability as human beings to conjure things in our imaginations, and design them, when they’re not in evidence in front of us, but we can do that.
I don’t know what will happen, because what will happen is what we make happen. That is why there’s a global climate strike. This is why I’ve started saying, Don’t ask what will happen. Be what happens. Today, you are what is happening. Today, your power will be felt.
The fact is, there is no “best thing” and there are no easy little tweaks that will amount to mitigating climate change. We each have to do a lot.
It is time for us baby boomers to honestly acknowledge what we did and didn’t do with the gifts given to us by our forebears and be clear about our legacy with which we have saddled the next and succeeding generations.
With creative determination and relationship building, we can model the systemic transformation of trade and economy from one based on the exploitation of our ecological and human relations, towards one based on care, reciprocity, and the regeneration of life. And it is happening!
Let us do what we do best – write, swim, play tennis, sing, throw parties, mate, run businesses, teach, fight – for the benefit of all. Let us dedicate our actions not to assuring the best outcome but to assuring that whatever the outcome, we gave it our best.
A new paper by a long-time sustainability academic and consultant says that minor tweaks in our current system won’t help us. We are likely headed for societal collapse and need a radical new way of thinking about the future. The first necessary casualty is hope–hope that we can keep things largely the way they are.
