To be pieces of the solution
The Big Picture - Poem by Sandra Brennan
We don't see the big picture
But, maybe we aren't meant to,
Or aren't ready to, yet.
I think God gave each religion,
Each race, a piece of this puzzle.
And ignorant as we humans are,
We each think that one piece, we possess,
Is all there is.
I wonder if God is just biding his time,
Waiting for us to figure it out,
To put it together.
To realize no one people or religion
Has all the answers.
That only when we work together,
Will the pieces fall into place.
That's when the big picture,
Will be revealed.
I like the word "collaboration". Its Latin derivation is a combination of co- com- or col-, meaning "with" or "together", and laborare, meaning "to labour." To collaborate, then, is to work together with others. We are attempting to reclaim out natural, ethical and political commons by constituting the common good.
To be pieces of the solution
"Changing the world is a team sport, and there's a spot on that team for every person on the planet, though finding our spot can be damn hard. Learning what we can do is not easy in itself, but discovering what each of us feels called to do, in a way that only we can do it, is one of the hardest tasks life has to offer. In these times, the question "What will I do?" is one of the toughest we may ever ask ourselves."
- Alex Steffen, World Changing, 2008 Abrams New York
It's easy when we see the big picture. But that's the problem, at present the pieces don't relate to one another equally, but exist within asymmetrical relations of power and control. So much so that private goods trump the common good. Caring for the Earth is caring for the common good. It has reduced our politics to a maximization of our individual freedom and choice. We have forgotten the common good as we have our common home, the earth.
As one family, we should care for each other and take responsibility for each other. A home is something we all depend on, physically and emotionally. A home is something inherently worth maintaining and protecting.
The world is in pieces. How do we put the pieces back together? How do we see the necessary connections? In the first place, we can start by seeing ourselves as pieces of the solution. We come together to work together, make the necessary connections, network, engage in joined up thinking and acting to put the pieces in place. And then, and only then, will the big picture be revealed.
I've been re-reading "Laudato Si: on Care for Our Common Home", and it has lost none of its power. Pope Francis has got the moral framing right:
"...there has been a growing conviction that our planet is a homeland and that humanity is one people living in a common home."
"...our common home is falling into serious disrepair."
"Humanity still has the ability to work together in building our common home."
The climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all.
The "Common Good" frame is about individuality and interdependence, personal responsibility is something that can only be realised within a collective responsibility, and individual efforts only make sense within a shared benefit.
"Human ecology is inseparable from the notion of the common good, a central and unifying principle of social ethics."
We can protect our ‘common home’ effectively only if we share our home in common in the first place. A common problem requires common solutions that embrace all, something that demands practical compassion for the three billion people living in poverty. With this 'integral ecology' or relational environmentalism set within a holistic framework geared to the common good, all the pieces will fit together, checking tendencies to social breakdown and overcoming global inequality:
“the notion of the common good also extends to future generations. The global economic crises have made painfully obvious the detrimental effects of disregarding our common destiny, which cannot exclude those who come after us. We can no longer speak of sustainable development apart from intergenerational solidarity”.
Laudato Si is inspiration for those who want to be part of the solution. If you don't think there is a solution, then it's all pointless anyway. There's nothing to see here, move on, we will see for real soon enough.
So why have we responded collectively to the crisis in the climate system with mostly a shrug?
I'm with Kevin Anderson on this.
"Because we are not prepared to question our current economic and political paradigm. We have this particular way of viewing the world and that has become so dominant, it is more important than physics and maths. It's almost set down by God, this is how the world has to be and you must not question it. Scientists feel constrained by the fact that they feel they can't really question this, they will always try to find certain sets of assumptions to make sure it delivers within the current political paradigm."
Anderson speaks well on the gap between what is politically feasible and what is necessary.
"I don't think we will succeed at this. We cannot guarantee that we will fail. Because we haven't tried. If we tried, we may well find that we don't succeed. But if we don't try we are guaranteed to fail. And therefore, although you say it's a huge political void, if we are serious about 2C, we have to acknowledge that and say we are going to deal with it. Otherwise, let's be honest and say we are not going to aim for 2, or 3 or 4, and just tell the poor people elsewhere in the world, forget it, we are not worried about your future."
Kevin Anderson on The Unforgiving Math For Staying Under 2 Degrees
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUgd5kUjTj4
I’m with Noam Chomsky too:
"Prevailing systems are particular forms of state capitalism. In the past generation, these have been distorted by neoliberal doctrines into an assault on human dignity and even the "animal needs" of ordinary human life. More ominously, unless reversed, implementation of these doctrines will destroy the possibility of decent human existence, and not in the distant future. But there is no reason to suppose that these dangerous tendencies are graven in stone. They are the product of particular circumstances and specific human decisions that have been well studied elsewhere and that I cannot review here. These can be reversed, and there is ample evidence of resistance to them, which can grow, and indeed must grow to a powerful force if there is to be hope for our species and the world that it largely rules. We have two choices. We can be pessimistic, give up and help ensure that the worst will happen. Or we can be optimistic, grasp the opportunities that surely exist and maybe help make the world a better place"
http://www.truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/34369-why-i-choose-optimism-over-despair-an-interview-with-noam-chomsky
Too radical? Anderson is right, the only options available to us now are radical ones, for good or ill.
But have a read of Chomsky talking about that ‘dangerous radical Aristotle’. Aristotle, of course, was a moderate man of the 'middling sort'. They say politics is won on the centre ground. I think we have lost that centre ground and pushed to extremes in which private goods trump the common good. Chomsky's talk was entitled ‘The Common Good’. Aristotle's conservative politics do indeed have radical implications in the context of asymmetries in power and wealth.
“I started from the beginning, with Aristotle's Politics, which is the foundation of most subsequent political theory.
Aristotle took it for granted that a democracy should be fully participatory (with some notable exceptions, like women and slaves) and that it should aim for the common good. In order to achieve that, it has to ensure relative equality, "moderate and sufficient property" and "lasting prosperity" for everyone.
In other words, Aristotle felt that if you have extremes of poor and rich, you can't talk seriously about democracy. Any true democracy has to be what we call today a welfare state—actually, an extreme form of one, far beyond anything envisioned in this century.
(When I pointed this out at a press conference in Majorca, the headlines in the Spanish papers read something like, If Aristotle were alive today, he'd be denounced as a dangerous radical. That's probably true.)
The idea that great wealth and democracy can't exist side by side runs right up through the Enlightenment and classical liberalism, including major figures like de Tocqueville, Adam Smith, Jefferson and others. It was more or less assumed.
Aristotle also made the point that if you have, in a perfect democracy, a small number of very rich people and a large number of very poor people, the poor will use their democratic rights to take property away from the rich. Aristotle regarded that as unjust, and proposed two possible solutions: reducing poverty (which is what he recommended) or reducing democracy.
James Madison, who was no fool, noted the same problem, but unlike Aristotle, he aimed to reduce democracy rather than poverty. He believed that the primary goal of government is "to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority." As his colleague John Jay was fond of putting it, "The people who own the country ought to govern it."
Madison feared that a growing part of the population, suffering from the serious inequities of the society, would "secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of [life's] blessings." If they had democratic power, there'd be a danger they'd do something more than sigh. He discussed this quite explicitly at the Constitutional Convention, expressing his concern that the poor majority would use its power to bring about what we would now call land reform.
So he designed a system that made sure democracy couldn't function. He placed power in the hands of the "more capable set of men," those who hold "the wealth of the nation." Other citizens were to be marginalized and factionalized in various ways, which have taken a variety of forms over the years: fractured political constituencies, barriers against unified working-class action and cooperation, exploitation of ethnic and racial conflicts, etc.
(To be fair, Madison was precapitalist and his "more capable set of men" were supposed to be "enlightened statesmen" and "benevolent philosophers," not investors and corporate executives trying to maximize their own wealth regardless of the effect that has on other people. When Alexander Hamilton and his followers began to turn the US into a capitalist state. Madison was pretty appalled. In my opinion, he'd be an anticapilalist if he were alive today—as would Jefferson and Adam Smith.)
It's extremely unlikely that what are now called "inevitable results of the market" would ever be tolerated in a truly democratic society. You can take Aristotle's path and make sure that almost everyone has "moderate and sufficient property"—in other words, is what he called "middle-class." Or you can take Madison's path and limit the functioning of democracy.”
Noam Chomsky, How the world works, The Common Good, Hamish Hamilton, 2012
But then there is this.
‘The people are getting what they want, and what they want is to have their idiocies and their discontent beamed back at them. Trump is clearly more than a media construction. He’s everything dumb and regressive about our political culture distilled into a single candidate. And he exists only because a sufficient number of Americans want him to – that’s the problem.
The Founders of this country were Enlightenment-era elitists. They represented everything Tea Partiers and Trumpites abhor – free inquiry, progress, science, and reason. Humans being high primates, they wondered whether the average citizen could be trusted with a democracy, whether the fury of the mob could be contained. They were wrong about a lot of things – race in particular – but a Trump nomination, perhaps more than anything else, would be the ultimate vindication of their concerns.’
Plato’s old criticisms of democracy spring to mind. Are the individuals composing the demos capable of exercising a principle of self-limitation for the public good? We will get democracy when the demos become capable of governing themselves. And that means the individual members composing the demos becoming capable of leading themselves by the nous instead of letting other organised groups leading them by the nose. They need to come together to form collaborative blocs and networks.