A
problem which I have not really covered in this column, but which is sort of
like the metaphorical elephant in the room of modern terrestrial society, is
that of climate change. I must admit
that for a long time I had difficulty connecting climate change up with the
principal topic of this column which is the effects of modern technology on
living environments and the effects of those transformed living environments on
human behavior. But lately I have begun
to see how strongly these two problem areas are related. In previous articles,
I have discussed how many people who live overly frictionless lives try to find
ways of creating intensely abrasive friction in order to pull themselves out of
the numbness they experience as a result of this excessive
frictionlessness. Among these ways are
actions leading to physical self-harm and even suicide.
Nowadays
we see how harmful the way we have developed our modern technological society
has been to our living environment. And
we are at the threshold of paying the price with the growth of extreme weather
events that are so destructive to natural landscapes, physical property, and
human lives. Yet with so much evidence
coming in from scientists all over the globe, why is it that human beings are
so slow, almost reluctant to take the appropriate steps to stop or at least
significantly slow down the progression towards this destruction.
Some
people will say that fighting climate change will significantly harm the
world’s economies, that we need fracking and rapacious mineral extraction and
despoiling of forests and manufacturing plastic products and high energy
consumption among other economic phenomena in order to maintain our comfortable
standard of life and maintain the jobs that many workers need in order to
participate in this comfortable technology-based standard of life. For me, this is basically a
rationalization. There is no reason why
workers can’t transfer from the extraction of oil and coal and natural gas and from
working in nuclear power plants to so-called clean energy: solar, wind, and
biomass. To some extent this transition
is occurring now, but it is not occurring fast enough. And there is no reason that forests in the
Amazon have to be razed to convert land that was not meant to be cattle ranches
or soybean farms into these inappropriate uses.
Similar despoliation is occurring in Indonesian rainforest, only there
the land gets converted to palm oil production.
And one must not forget that the wood itself from all the beautiful
tropical forests is itself a major economic commodity.
But there are ecologically sound ways of exploiting
the resources of the Amazon without destroying them. For instance, harvesting the forest plants
from the Amazon, plants that, in many cases have marvelous medicinal
properties. And, of course, there are
many edible plants in the Amazon, many fruits and vegetables. So the Amazon doesn’t have to be destroyed to
provide enormous benefits. But the
present president of Brazil is supporting the economic rampage that is
occurring in his country, just as the president of the U.S. is supporting the
economic rampage that is occurring to some of our wilderness areas.
So what
is going on here? Is it simply the
desire to reap economic benefits that is leading so many people all over the
world to destroy the nature that sustains us? The Amazon, for instance, is a crucial
producer of oxygen for the planet.
I
would suggest that the ground reason for this destruction is the need to pull
out of the numbness that is created by our frictionless vacuumized living
environment. Destroying our natural
living environment is another way of committing self-harm. It is like cutting our wrists or overdosing
on recreational drugs. It is like
committing suicide. In order to fight
the living death of numbness, one has a big bang short period of feeling alive
in the process of killing oneself.
Because, if we continue to destroy nature the way we are doing now, we
will create a climate with so many extreme climate events that it will become
very difficult for humans and other life forms to survive. The pleasurable kicks of unbounded economic
exploitation of our natural environment will be followed by the unavoidable
pain of extreme climactic instability.
Some of these events, like the recent Australian fires, are already
happening.
In
previous articles, I have discussed this phenomenon of an existential situation
of a living death in modern times leading to an urge to carry out an abrasive
explosive destructive action to jolt a person out of his numbness. For instance, sometimes a person pulls out of
his numbness not so much by directly harming himself, but rather by directly
harming others. All what I have called
in the past the crimes of numbness, and, in particular, the senseless random
massacres of innocent people. In the
case of these massacres, the abrasive pain is not felt directly by the perpetrator,
unlike all the different cases of self-harm. But it certainly is felt indirectly. In truth, in the case of harm carried out on
natural environments, everyone is directly affected in the long run: the
perpetrator, the people around him, the animals around him, the vegetation around
him and ultimately the planet earth as a whole.
In the long run, to the extent that all the acts of destruction against
nature lead cumulatively to the destruction of the planet earth as a tolerable
living environment, we can say that these acts have the most serious long-term
consequences for human beings. I say
long-term, because, unlike self-harm, suicides, homicides and massacres, the
negative effects to the health and lives of human beings are not usually
apparent with any one given act of destruction against nature.
Nevertheless,
it is our growing feelings of numbness, as a result of our lives becoming
overly frictionless from all the modern technology in our lives, that are a
major cause of the three increasingly random modern forms of destruction
perpetrated by humans: self-harm, harm to others and harm to nature. And the only way we can prevent these
different forms of harm from destroying us is by getting in touch with the
nature in us again. Instead of using
more and more devices to make our lives more and more frictionless, we should
move away from mediated experience, which makes us increasingly numb, and
develop the ability to absorb the stimulation again of directly engaging the
world with primary experience. We must
develop our capacity again to absorb organic stimulation as the mammals that we
are, and, in particular, to tolerate the organic friction - the difficulties,
the resistance, the stumbles – that have been a part of every traditional life
narrative. This is distinct from the abrasive
friction of technological tension-pockets and our recreational kicks which are
sensory distortion, forms of stimulation that humans are not built to absorb
very well.
I know all this sounds
very nebulous, very abstract, but the changes we need to make in ourselves are
very subtle. And yet only after we make
these changes can we truly get back into a meaningful human narrative: making,
receiving and preserving organic imprints, living vibrant lives, and preparing
for death with surrogate immortalities.
Only after making these important changes can we develop the capacity to
absorb and appreciate more traditional natural living environments which will
make us want to more effectively preserve and cultivate them. Which will pull us out of our numbness and
diminish our predisposition towards destructive actions directed against
ourselves, others and nature. And, in
particular, maybe we will be able to save our planet from the worst effects of
climate change, and maybe we humans, as well as the animals and vegetation,
will be able to survive.
© 2020 Laurence Mesirow
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