The link below opens up an article that gives us some interesting essays on what we can do to address the environmental crisis that besets us. Naomi Oreskes talks about freeing the energy market. There's essays on population (I still say that if we get the other things right, then population will be right, but hey). David Keith says "embrace geoengineering". I'm sceptical. I'll go with reinventing the city.
http://www.vice.com/read/sos-0000653-v22n5
But there is no one solution, just lots of solutions. But we do need an overarching framework.
For me, scientist Ken Caldeira hits the nail on the head in his essay.
"The central question facing us is how to transform societies composed of self-interested people into societies composed of people who act to further the public good."
Music to my ears. This is the age old problem of politics and the problem I've studied all my life. And it's a big one to crack. Historically, our political institutions and laws have supposed to be the embodiment of that public good. The problem is that the state has been little more than a surrogate community, with particular interests succeeding in institutionalising their power under the cover of the general interest. We need to reclaim our public realm, and value the "things of the public", res publica. And those "things" obviously include our life support networks and ecosystems. And doing that requires more than definitions and political principles, it requires social practices, forms of self-socialisation, the creation of new solidarities - commonality and universality need to be forged in the bonds of a transformed civil society, a civil society that has moved beyond competitive and instrumental social relationships.
I am working on the concept of "ecological virtue", and if the virtue tradition may sound a little ancient and moralistic, it isn't. It concerns how we create the qualities for successful living on the planet. It would yield a "change of behaviour", certainly, but would do so not as result of social engineering or behaviourism, but from a value centred perspective that recognises human beings as moral and social beings, capable of both autonomy and solidarity. The word "character" now has some unfortunate connotations, associated with moralistic imperatives that just make the rich and people feel better and the poor and powerless feel like failures. No. "Character" is about creating an integral human personality in appropriate social relationships so that we become able to respond to and act upon the scientific, moral and rational appeals that are made for the good. Yes, I do believe in "the good life", but not as some abstract moralism. The content is supplied by creating a social identity that connects each individual with all others, and transforming social relationships so that we go beyond structures of behaviour patterned on human beings as "homo economicus", self-maximising atoms.
This is the key question. The scientists have played a blinder. We have a wealth of research on the climate in the climate system. We are not short of knowledge and technologies, it's what we do with them that matters. We have to up our game in the field of practical reason. How we can create a social identity that takes us beyond the dualism of altruism and egoism is key. At the moment, self-interest is the more rational choice on the part of individuals, whilst sacrifice for the long term public good that benefits all is not rational. Both scientific and moral appeals lack social relevance as a result. People are locked into patterns of behaviour which means they cannot respond effectively to what the science is telling us.
We have a wealth of means, but a confusion of ends. Or, rather, we have social arrangements which prevent us from living in accordance with ends we set ourselves. Ends we should be setting in light of ecological constraints.
My point is that we need to link up ‘knowing that’, ‘knowing how’ and ‘knowing why’, bring means and ends together, and embed our scientific knowledge in psychic and ecological realities. Climate change has thrown up all that we once thought certain up into the air … and as it all comes crashing down, we are forced to look at ourselves.
‘We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and to learn what is good for it. We must learn to cooperate in its processes, and to yield to its limits. But even more important, we must learn to acknowledge that creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.’ (Wendell Berry).
I am currently trying to get various people to see the need to transform social relationships and patterns of behaviour so that we develop the qualities for right living on the planet. Many are sceptical and are looking to some kind of institutional tinkering, government decree and technological fixing. We can do all of this, and some of it is no doubt necessary. But it will all fail if we continue to evade the big questions of ‘who’ we are and ‘where’ we are - Being and Place. Knowing that, knowing how and knowing why go together in an integral society.
Gandhi spoke disparagingly of ‘dreaming systems so perfect that no one will need to be good’. I agree with this concern with human character. But systems matter too. We should learn W. Edwards Deming’s lesson that ‘a bad system will beat a good person every time.’ That’s the problem we have today. So many people do have the ecological sensibility required for living well on the planet. We are failing not merely for lack of will. The problem is that we are located within patterns of behaviour which mean that we cannot act as we know we should. Our actions are constrained by the structures in which we are located. The problem is, in Deming’s sense, systems failure.
In my work, I place the focus upon the formation of moral character in terms of the cultivation of ecological virtue and the development of ecological citizenship.
'To use ecological terminology, virtues may be thought of as character traits, modes of being which help us to find the best adaptive fit between the individual and her interests and the environment (both social and natural) she inhabits. The importance of green virtues for the green position resides in the necessity of self-restraint, prudence and foresight so that long-term (i.e. sustainable) well-being is not sacrificed or undermined by desires to satisfy immediate self-interest.' (Barry 1999: 35).
The ecological virtues counteract certain human frailties, such as the tendencies to give in to immediate wants, and serve to strengthen the will to act so that there is a direct relationship between knowledge, belief and action. Many people would agree that we should consume less, recycle more, etc, when it comes to addressing the environmental crisis. The will (energy, courage), however, is lacking. The stress on character and virtue is about creating the will to act as we know we ought:
'the cultivation of the ecological virtues, the creation of ecological character and dispositions, help create and maintain a proper balance within social-environmental relations. The emphasis on character stresses the importance of cultivating dispositions and modes of action which will discourage acting from wantonness or ignorance.' (Barry 1999:67).
A focus on ecological virtues in building moral character and creating habits in society strengthens the will to act and develops patterns of behaviour which are respectful and non-harmful of nature. In principle, virtues like prudence, respect, care, moderation, self-control, tolerance, balance or activities and awareness of limits to growth and material welfare, seem to be of vital importance here. We need to translate these ethical conditions of successful living into the language of an ecological morality, conceiving a renewed spirituality through the recognition of the unity and interconnection of all things on the planet, socialising and ecologizing values by seeing right conduct and right living in relation to the Earth’s community of life, and forming character and defining appropriate behaviour within forms of living, being and doing. This would be to become active eco-citizens in the commonwealth of virtue.
We don’t have to change.
‘It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.’
W. Edwards Deming
If we think that ‘being good’ is irrelevant or ineffective or that our individual efforts are so small and inconsequential as to make no difference, then we won’t make the effort to change. And, as a result, there will be no change. And we will go inexorably to a well-deserved demise.
“If you assume that there is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, that there are opportunities to change things, then there is a possibility that you can contribute to making a better world.”
― Noam Chomsky
Such a view makes sense in the context of the atomisation of society and the corruption of politics and public life. But it is the attitude of those who are cynical, beaten and hopeless. We should be grateful that the people who fought for and won democratic advances, rights and liberties, fought against slavery and racism, against great odds and at great personal risk, didn't take that approach. We should be grateful that past generations had a greater grasp of human possibilities. We, the beneficiaries of their efforts, seem to lack the nerve and nous to stand together in a common and just cause, and keep the doors open for the generations to come. That's how civilisations collapse, they become exhausted.
But we can identify the nature of the problem we face in the dissolution of our public life, and do something to remedy it.
"Periclean Greeks employed the term idiotis, without any connotation of stupidity or subnormality, to mean simply 'a person indifferent to public affairs.' Obviously, there is something wanting in the apolitical personality. But we have also come to suspect the idiocy of politicization—of the professional pol and power broker. The two idiocies make a perfect match, with the apathy of the first permitting the depredations of the second."
― Christopher Hitchens, Prepared for the Worst: Selected Essays and Minority Reports (1988)
So I argue for the recovery of citizen democracy and the public realm. For the Ecopolis and the socio-ecological transformation of 'the political'. For a civic republicanism that proceeds in light of ecological realities. And I argue that we can make the progression from being individual voters in an atomistic mass to becoming eco-citizens who can join together and dig in and grow the eco-public.
If you think it can't be done, then the odds are, it won't be done. But don't be surprised at the moral, social and ecological wasteland we will suffer. It's already on the horizon. You don't have to do it. But if you want some semblance of a civilisation, I suggest you join with others and see how it could be done.
We can keep reporting the science and writing our own obituaries in the process. But a ‘change in behaviour’ or a new way of life, the things which eminent scientists like Chris Rapley are now talking about, concerns much more than some impotent moralistic urging. Here, we get into patterns of behaviour, we examine how human beings think and act, the ways in which these are constrained and structured by specific social relationships, we get into cognitive psychology, social epigenetics, social structures and institutions, and we look at what can be done to transform behaviour from within. Because that is what it is going to take if we are to address the social and environmental crises we face. Oh, and we can look at good old fashioned virtue ethics. And before we dismiss that, have a look at the role it played in big political changes in the past, including the foundation of the United States of America. We are institution building. That may be boring. But as Kenneth Clarke said, the dreary fact remains that it is institutions that make civilisation work. If we approach the question right, ‘making people better’ involves so much more than an abstract moral appeal for people to ‘be good’. Such an appeal does indeed fail for want of social relevance. The reason that people and governments have been slow to respond to what the science has been telling us, and keeps telling us, is that we have a social system that locks us into certain ways of behaving. Adapting politics to climate realities does indeed imply system-wide changes. Very big changes, granted. But this is a big problem we face. However improbable, I do think these things are possible.
All who love the Earth must, at this time of crisis, assume responsibility for her well-being. The call is made now on a daily basis, and we must respond to it. It’s an all hands on deck moment on planet Earth. But our individual and collective response, as expressed through government, has been week and ineffective. The problem is not so much lack of will as appropriate modes for effective action.
We see the problems besetting the planet, we hear the television and radio news, we read the reports, and demand that something should be done. We call on others to do something. When we demand the same thing of ourselves … we suddenly see where the blockage is. It’s easy enough to say that it is time for action. It’s when we try to engage in effective action we suddenly realise why the much reported problems of the world are going unchecked. The social relations within which we are located constrain us and limit our choices. Our will is not free. And we lack the mechanisms that enable us to act as we know we should. On an individual level, these social structures keep us acting in set patterns, often implicating us in the destructive behaviour we are seeking to end. We do not freely choose to do what we want to do and what we know we ought to do. Instead, within social relations, we are locked into patterns of behaviour that have us repeating the actions that, in their cumulative effect, are bringing about the very social and environmental crises we are seeking to end. In this pathos of unconstrained individual actions producing a collective constraint, structure continues to win out over agency. Confronted by and experiencing these collective forces, we rationalize our individual culpability by saying that ‘we have no choice’. And in so doing, we reinforce and perpetuate the destructive patterns of behaviour that are sending the planet to hell in a handcart. ‘We are not responsible’. And that’s the truth. The entire system of collective forces is irresponsible, anonymous, no-one is in charge. All we have is ‘the system’ and its imperatives.
Well, we do have a choice. Those collective forces which constrain us are our own powers in externalised form. We are charged with the duty to associate together, resume control of those powers and assume conscious, collective responsibility for them. That is a collective endeavour. But we also have an individual voice.
Real social involvement is moral involvement. For although a great political movement that seeks to shape the world in its own image is called to life by the world's needs, and though its fundamental direction is determined by the development of social relations, nevertheless each individual's participation in any specific form of political life is a moral act for which that individual is wholly responsible.
No one is relieved of either positive or negative responsibility on the grounds that his actions formed only a fraction of a given historical process. A soldier is morally responsible for a crime committed on the orders of his superior; an individual is all the more responsible for acts performed—supposedly or in fact—on the orders of an anonymous history. If a thousand people are standing on a river bank and a drowning man calls for help, it is almost certain that one of the spectators will leap in to save him. This quasi-statistical certainty concerns a thousand people, but it does not eliminate the need for a moral evaluation of the specific person, that one in a thousand, who does jump into the river. Experience can assure us that one such man will be found in the crowd; and this certitude is analogous to those rare historical predictions that occasionally come true. But to be that precise person who, out of a thousand potential rescuers, carries out the prediction, which was based on large numbers, one must perform "by oneself," as it were, an action subject to moral judgment. By analogy, if there exists a social system which requires criminals for certain tasks, one can be sure it will always find them. But it does not follow that every individual criminal is absolved of responsibility, because in order to designate oneself for the role of such a tool of the system one must be a scoundrel "by oneself," one must voluntarily perform a specific act which is subject to moral judgment.
Thus we profess the doctrine of total responsibility of the individual for his deeds and of the amorality of the historical process. In the latter we avail ourselves of Hegel; in the former of Descartes. It was he who formulated the famous principle, whose consequences are not always visible at first glance, "There is not a soul so weak that it cannot, with good guidance, gain an absolute mastery over its passions." This means that we cannot explain away any of our actions on the grounds of emotion, passion, or the moral impotence to act differently, and that we have no right to transfer the responsibility for our conscious acts to any factor which determines our behavior; because in every instance we have the power to choose freely.
This assumption—which, as I have mentioned, can be accepted without contradicting the deterministic interpretation of the world—must also be extended to all the justifications we find for ourselves in historical necessities and historical determinism. Neither our personal, supposedly invincible emotions ("I could not resist the desire"), nor anyone's command ("I was a soldier"), nor conformity with the customs of one's environment ("everybody did it"), nor theoretically deduced exigencies of the demiurge of history ("I judged I was acting for the sake of progress") —none of these four most typical and popular rationalizations has any validity. This is not to say that these four types of determination do not actually occur in life, but merely to state that none of them releases us from individual responsibility, because none of them destroys the freedom of individual choice. Individual action remains in the absolute power of the individual. We walk the main roads of our life on our own:
Not I, not anyone else can travel that road for you You must travel it for yourself. . . .
—Whitman
Leszek Kolakowski, Marxism and Beyond, 1969: 161/162
To say ‘I have to’ when acting against one’s will is to evade choice and abrogate responsibility. And that is precisely why our individual actions take alien collective form. Of course, authorities, bureaucracies, officialdom pass the book and say ‘not us’, ‘we are not responsible’. They are mere functionaries of the system which, in Max Weber’s words, proceeds ‘without regard for persons’. This is true, to an extent. Alasdair MacIntyre exposed the extent to which such rationalisation is a bureaucratic and managerial ideology. It serves powerful interests for power to be rendered neutral, impersonal, inevitable and unalterable. But it is only persons who can restore regard to its central place in social life. If not you, then who? The bureaucrats and the managers are the beneficiaries of the impersonal system. But what about those caught within its circles of dependency? What about you? In saying, ‘I choose’, we reclaim our personality. Saying ‘I choose’ opens the world up to a wider set of possibilities. If we can choose together, we reclaim our social power. Assuming responsibility for social and ecological health, we are standing up and declaring our intent to make conscious choices. This is not a question of being a martyr to the cause or being willing to be a victim of the system. Kolakowski’s ethic of responsibility is quite stern, and leaves the individual having to confront huge social and political powers. The ethic of responsibility I am seeking to define has no need of martyrs, saints, messiahs, to lead the way, that’s just another form of evading responsibility. In affirming our power as choosers, we step out of constraining structures and define ourselves as active agents exercising our freedom and our will. We do this as individuals, but we also need to do this together in a public life that is able to constrain the accumulated collective force of our individual actions. And when we do this, we go beyond the model of human beings as autonomous choosers. Not everything in the social and ecological world in which we live is a matter of choice. This world is not made by a matter of conscious choice by individuals in this sense. We don’t create our reality in this way.
In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), Karl Marx wrote that: ‘Men make their own history, but not of their own free will; not under circumstances they themselves have chosen but under the given and inherited circumstances with which they are directly confronted. The tradition of the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the minds of the living.’ This can be read as a demand that we do come to make history as a result of our own choosing, overthrowing the ‘nightmare’ of our own social powers taking alien form and oppressing us in the shape of political oppression, economic crisis or environmental degradation. But Marx is more sociologically subtle than this, going further than individual will and choice to address the collective mechanisms of social control. That is an important point. In a world in which we are dependent on others in society and dependent upon nature, an individual doesn’t ‘choose’ to be poor, or oppressed, or hungry. These are the impacts and effects of a wider social system, and changing that requires collective action. At the same time, joining with others remains a matter of choice…
The forces ranged against us seem so overwhelming as to block our attempts to assume responsibility. We fail to respond to the call because we don't know what to do, and feel powerless or inadequate given the paucity and weakness of our institutional means. As individuals, separated from each other in face of overwhelming collective forces, we walk around like Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings, carrying the burden of the ring, with only a vague idea of how we will get to our destination. The wise elf reminds Frodo that ‘even the smallest person can make a difference.’ Each time we act in service of what we love, we align our creative, positive energies with those of the world, and we strengthen our personal power. And as the path before us starts to clear, we see the allies we need to reach our destination, and they see us. So maybe ‘the little people’ will come to our rescue, coming out of the underworld where, known as ‘Aes sidhe’, they have been consigned, since their legendary defeat somewhere in the mists of time … But maybe we are ‘the little people’ coming to claim our rightful place on the Earth.
But overcoming atomism in society and politics is crucial to success. As individuals, we are confronted with vast impersonal powers and collective forces that will be unmoved by assertions of our will. The temptation, then, is to do nothing. The words of Edmund Burke are apposite here. ‘Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.’ Every little counts. And if all as individuals make a contribution, that little could turn into a lot. But here is the problem – this is already what we do, and we see the results of our incremental actions all around us in the shape of economic and environmental forces that seem out of our control. Out individual actions need to be coordinated, we need to develop our own forms of social self-mediation. In short, we need to concentrate our power as our own collective power. Another of Burke’s arguments is highly significant in this respect. ‘To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind. The interest of that portion of social arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those who compose it; and as none but bad men would justify it in abuse, none but traitors would barter it away for their own personal advantage.’ (Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution.) Every little counts all the more insofar as individuals are members of these little platoons. Here is where the public realm is given active social content.
We make a great error if we believe that our individual choices and actions will be enough to change the world. The problem is that we live in a world in which our uncoordinated and unconstrained behaviours have produced collective forces beyond our control and comprehension. We see, with respect to climate change, that we have created a system of supra-individual, collective forces that not only constrain our freedom, but threaten to destroy the very basis of civilised life. The task before us is to create appropriate collective mechanisms of social control so that we may associate together and exercise some conscious collective power of our own. Our unmastered praxis is self-destructive, with so many large-scale forces and self-reinforcing cycles at work that only collective organisation and action has the potential to check the damage, restore health and transform the whole social metabolic order.
So, to pause and take stock here, my argument is that individual choice and will are important in recovering and affirming personality and assuming responsibility, but not sufficient in themselves to overcome an impersonal system of collective supra-individual force. Change is required on a larger scale for choice and will to be effective. We need to develop social organs, forms of common life and collective mechanisms which will enable us to make effective choices together in support of the social and natural communities to which we belong .
‘First question is “As individuals what can we do?” – the answer is: practically nothing! What could be done and always has been done in history is by people who are organised. The labour movement, civil rights movement, women’s movement, anti-war movement, environmental movement. These can do things. And that’s one of the reasons why powerful systems are so intent on atomizing people.’ (Noam Chomsky).
That's the solution to the big question of politics - how, in a world of supra-individual forces, we can exercise control and achieve freedom. By developing solidarities and social practices and collective mechanisms that enable us to reappropriate, control and exercise these forces as our own social powers. We are the agents of those powers, and if we can identify them as our own, then we will know what to reach for, take responsibility for their impacts, take them into our own hands, and establish extensive connections with each other. By associating together we can shift the balance back toward life. Self-socialisation = the creation of new steering media, new forms of the common life. And this is what is key in creating new behaviours, a new character, that takes us out of the instrumental relationships of present society, into a new social identity that enables us to act for others and for a long range greater good whenever we act for ourselves.
“Underlying all forms of utopianism is the conviction that optimistic, imaginative thought and action are capable of bringing about a change towards not only a new social existence, but a better one. The sources of such optimism are, in the last analysis, difficult to define, and it may be that the only logical justification for optimism is that optimism seems to be a characteristic of the individual’s psychology and (arguably) biology. What would life be like if optimism were eradicated from the individual's personality and his creative imagination? And what, furthermore, would be the consequences if optimism were eradicated from our attempts to comprehend and mould the society in which we live? In this book we have tried to show that a certain kind of optimism is a precondition for a worthwhile earthly existence. As long as man has the capacity to identify evil, then he is likely to feel the urge to transcend evil and seek goodness and beauty in his personal relationships, his artistic creations, his religious life and his social and political organization. Historically, beginning in the civilization of the ancient Greeks, the study of politics first emerged as a rigorous method of assisting man in this quest for the good life. Consciousness of the difference between existing reality and a non-existent, but potentially existent, future - a morally desirable future - was one of the most important ingredients of this quest. Unless we feel absolutely confident that we have now reached the limits of our capabilities and creativity that we have advanced to perfection already, to dispense with utopianism would be to renounce a large part of what it is to be a political animal.” (B Goodwin and K Taylor, The Politics of Utopia 1982 Hutchinson).
I argue for a ‘change in behaviour’ as integral to developing a politics fitted to the new environmental realities. Call it a biospheric politics which practises ecological virtue, there are various names by which it could be called. It is all about developing the qualities for successful living. The basic idea is fairly simple. The lives of individuals are socially structured and patterned around systems of behaviour, institutions, norms and values and ways of life. Through its institutions and practices, society develops the traits of character it requires for its successful reproduction. So the traits needed to live successfully will differ. At present, these traits are (self) destructive. What used to be called the cardinal virtues now stand condemned as sins against the Gross National Product. And so, too, are ecological virtues.
Mark Everard, Common Ground
Valuing the natural world; valuing all who share it
“Whether in economic terms or simply in recognition of the broad range of dependencies that humanity and all of its activities have upon land, landscapes and broader ecosystems, valuation of ecosystem services is fundamental both to their sustainable stewardship and as a basis for sharing. Recognizing our complete reliance on the many functions of the natural world, whether in their wild state or concentrated through agriculture, water supply infrastructure or other management practices, we are also forced to confront the implications of their loss, degradation or annexation by competing interests.
An implicit morality stems from the biophysical reality of our sharing of common pools of ecological resources, broadly consistent with the 'golden rule' of not doing to others that which we would not have done to ourselves. Ecosystem services then provide us with mechanisms not merely to rethink what is implied by sustainability and how this ultimately serves our own best interests, but also requires of us increasingly equitable values and behaviours such that we learn how to share indefinitely that which makes life possible, profitable, enjoyable and fulfilling.”
http://zedbooks.co.uk/node/20918
If we are to develop an effective politics in light of climate realities, then we do need to reclaim some of the ancient or republican sense of ‘the political’ as creative human self-realisation and flourishing. That sounds grand. It means, that big problems require big changes. Every major turning point and advance in history has been accompanied by a concomitant change in society and the individuals in it. So why on earth is a ‘change in behaviour’ treated so disparagingly in some quarters. ‘Science is the only news’ Stewart Brand asserts in Whole Earth Discipline. ‘Human nature doesn't change much; science does, and the change accrues, altering the world irreversibly.’ (Brand ch 7 2009). Brand here denies human beings a history and so therefore abolishes the future. Human beings are not the creative agents of the historical process. Human beings it seems do nothing. It is ‘science’ that is the change agent. My point is not that human nature changes ‘much’ but that human beings create their own history within specific social relationships, expressing and realising aspects of their nature through the social forms they engender. And under the relationships of the capital system, we have a certain social identity and a certain human character – one that makes individual or sectional self-interest a more rational choice than any notion of sacrifice for a greater good. Each individual may benefit from a collective consideration of all individuals, but social identity in a market society means that the individual is locked within a dualism of egoism and altruism. To serve the one is to lose the other. All we have is the ‘invisible hand’ by which public good emerges if each and all follow their self-interest (something that Adam Smith only argued for in the context of small communities locating individual within trust relations and shared values).
We need a common ethic and the practice that goes with it to counter global stress and turn actions in a positive direction. An ethic in itself does not and will not resolve the social, economic, political and ecological problems of the world, that is not what is being proposed here. My argument recognises the futility of moral exhortation. Appeals to the common good are heard all the more in its absence and denial in the practical affairs of human beings. Such appeals are declarations of impotence. A common ethic does, however, supply the moral framework which is capable of giving direction and guiding individuals away from despair, inspiring them into the concerted actions required for the realisation of the good society. At the same time, the spaces and opportunities for such effective action must also be available at the level of social practices and relations. In other words, to appeal to the common good presupposes the existence of a social identity which enables individuals to respond practically to such an appeal, an identity that connects individual self-interest and social interest. Failure to create such a social identity means that we remain paralysed within the old dualism of egoism and altruism, the former dominant, working to dissolve collective bonds, the latter abstract and irrelevant. Everyone believes in the common good; the problem is that we are incapable of practising it given the arrangement of society around the pursuit of individual self-interest. It may be moral to respond to calls for the common good, but it simply isn’t rational for an individual to act for the common good when the distribution of rewards and opportunities in society depends upon putting immediate self-interest first and foremost.
So my argument is no mere moralistic urging for people to “do good” or “be good” but addresses character formation in the context of social identity and transformed social relations. Without the appropriate social identity, moral exhortation is no more effective than rational appeals to the scientific evidence. So, we return, as ever, to the necessity of social transformation, developing new forms of socialisation and social relations that are based on new traits and qualities, new patterns of behaviour. And, of course, it is a major challenge. I’d just ask, which major change in history hasn’t been accompanied by the replacement of old ways of life, norms and behaving by new? If we are serious, we are talking about the transformation of the whole social metabolic order. If we are not, then what exactly are we doing? A bit of institutional tinkering? A little external pressure to get governments to shift a little here and there?
I could go on, but I won’t, because I am going to be returning to this theme time and again. We can call it creating capabilities, body-building our social, moral and organisational capacities. At present, scientific appeals to evidence and moral appeals to act are ineffective because they lack social relevance. They appeal to a social identity that doesn’t exist.
Throughout history, at every major turning point, human beings have decided to challenge certain established norms, identities and practices, engaging in social struggle and political action to abolish certain iniquities and oppressions, expanding the space for freedom and the cause of democracy in the process. When we look at the ills which have beset us in history, these are not to be explained by some unchangeable human nature, but by the nature of specific social arrangements. We are constantly being told about ‘the real world’, the need to ‘get real’ and acknowledge political realities concerning business, competition, foreign policy and war. Whenever those words ‘get real’ are uttered, they are certain to be followed by some scarcely reasoned justification of necessity in the service of some false god or other – the corporations, the City, the markets, fracking, nuclear power…. Just follow the money and you will find them. But these are not necessities at all, they are what philosopher Stuart Hampshire calls ‘false fixities’, imperatives not of nature but of particular institutions and systems in a particular time and place.
“In previous ages of which we have record the fallacy of false fixity, as it may be called, is almost always at work, disguising the injustices attached to particular ways of life. It should now be possible to assess the particular costs in injustice of present ways of life and present conceptions of the good from a comparative point of view and without self-protecting blinkers.” (Hampshire Innocence and Experience1992: 57/8).
“That an absolute monarchy leads to injustices; that it is unfair and exploitative to exact a day often hours’ labour in filthy conditions from factory workers; that slavery is a grossly unjust institution; that it is unfair that women should not receive equal pay for equal work—these are all propositions involving the concept of justice which most people in the 1980s will confidently assert to be true. There have been long periods in the past when reasonable persons would not have been confident about them, and would not have endorsed them as certainly acceptable. Neither monarchy, nor factory labour and its conditions, nor slavery, nor women's rights were considered matters up for rational judgment as either just or unjust. Substantial, non-procedural conceptions of justice were embedded in ways of life, each with its distinctive conceptions of the good and of the necessary virtues, and no place was left for debate on institutions which were assumed to be the inevitable background to the prevailing way of life.’ (Hampshire 1992: 58).
So there, be careful about arguments for virtues and the good life, because they can rationalise some very iniquitous and exploitative relations and practices. Virtues can very easily become ‘false fixities’ designed to protect particular ways of life. But the main point here is this, that human nature and human societies are far more plastic than maybe we think, that, in the title of Jesse Prinze’s book, we are ‘wired for culture’, and that we are quite capable of transforming ourselves as we transform our societies. Making history, it is called. One of my most favourite books is E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class, characterised by the author’s passionate, informed argument that in making history, working people made themselves. He went for the word ‘making’ in order to depict ‘an active process, which owes as much to agency as to conditioning’. Thompson shows how the events of history are saturated with creative human agency in the context of social relations.
Stewart Brand asserts a strong technocratic utopianism, deifying various technologies as he proposes to address the environmental crisis. ‘Science is the only news’ he claims. ‘Human nature doesn't change much; science does. (Brand ch 7 2009). Engineers are being hired in droves. They don't know or care much about environmental traditions, causes, or romantic attitudes. Because they are interested in solving problems, not in changing behavior, technology is the first thing they reach for when looking for a solution. (Brand ch 7 2009).
And there, in a sentence, is the reason why technocratic utopians achieve nothing. For all of their top talk, they achieve nothing because they have ruled change out from the start. If human beings do not change themselves, then they change nothing. If human behaviour doesn’t change, then nothing changes. All we get are the same problems on a scale magnified by new technology. There are many clever men who ‘know the most’ (in the words of the engineer Stewart Brand), but without the ‘root of the matter in them’, all their knowledge comes to naught. They achieve nothing, they win no victories, they lack the company of men and women.
I make these points because I wonder how serious we are about politics. I get criticised by people coming from different perspectives on this, people who take a “spiritual” view and prefer the purity somewhere out there in the ether, and people from the world of science. This is significant, I think, and suggests a continuation of that age-old dualism of spirit and matter. You may line up on either side, and in the process lose the connection to the other. There is a denigration and devaluation of politics as a world of murk and bias, corruption and selfishness, careerism and mediocrity. Well, there is evidence enough to support such a view. But I think we cheat ourselves when we think that this is all there is to politics. Mediation must take place, there is no pure, pristine knowledge, whether holy or profane. And politics is key to that mediation. In my view, spirituality and politics are not separated and not opposed to each other. The fact that they have become separated is to our detriment. Human beings are social beings, and politics is where we meet, contest, cooperate, argue, decide, determine. It’s messy and frustrating. I mean, how dare other people have different views when I have presented the clear facts and figures of the case! When I have given them the one and incontrovertible moral truth! This estrangement from politics is not accidental. Our social relations and economic arrangements, our science and technology, are rooted in our separation from our own selves. The loss of our body politic stems from the loss of our own bodies.
So, to all those who rule out a ‘change in behaviour’ and asserting that human nature doesn’t change much, I ask – what precisely are you demanding? Responding the climate realities demands big changes and social transformations. If you rule those out with respect to human nature, then all that is left is institutional tinkering, technological fixes and, in desperation, some form of eco-dictatorship. The price of an absence of politics in touch with its human roots is an eco-imperialism.
But I say this, the capital system itself rests upon a transformed human nature, a distorted human nature; it has changed human behaviour to fit its productive requirements. By drawing attention to the substantive irrationality of capitalist rationalisation, Weber points to the possibility of a deeper critique which, possibly, he denied to himself in affirming the inevitability of capitalist rationalisation in embracing most areas of human life.
'In fact, the summum bonum of this ethic, the earning of more and more money, combined with the strict avoidance of all spontaneous enjoyment of life, is above all completely devoid of any eudaemonistic, not to say hedonistic, admixture. It is thought of so purely as an end in itself that from the point of view of the happiness of, or utility to, the single individual, it appears entirely transcendental and absolutely irrational. Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life. Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means for the satisfaction of material needs. This reversal of what we should call the natural relationship, so irrational from a naive point of view, is evidently as definitely a leading principle of capitalism as it is foreign to all peoples not under a capitalistic influence.'
Weber 1930:54/5 in Seidler 1994:47/8.
It is not too much to ask for a regimen that corresponds to and enhances the human ontology rather than contradicts and inhibits it.
Capitalist production makes our bodies far more productive in a narrow, specialised sense, but less responsive in other respects. The production process reorganizes our senses for speed and flexibility rather than psychic depth, persistence or emotional intensity. “Marx considered that by turning even our senses into commodities, capitalism had plundered us of our bodies. In his view, we would need a considerable political transformation in order to come to our senses.” (Eagleton, After Theory 2003 ch 6).
To change politics in response to climate realities would be to change the underlying basis of society. And that certain implies a change in behaviour. How could it not? Any response that falls short of this is mere half-measures. No amount of institutional and technological power can make up for the loss of the human change agent, the very content of any ecological transformation. And that implies politics.
“Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you. ”
― Pericles.
“The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn’t hear, doesn’t speak, nor participates in the political events. He doesn’t know the cost of life, the price of the bean, of the fish, of the flour, of the rent, of the shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn’t know that, from his political ignorance is born the prostitute, the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician, corrupted and flunky of the national and multinational companies.”
― Bertolt Brecht
The solution to bad politics is not no politics, it is good politics. And if you think that that isn’t possible, ask yourself why not. Because politics is about you. Think about the great struggles in history, the great achievements, the men and women who fought and died for freedom, for rights, for democratic advance, for some kind of health and well-being for all, for some kind of common control of the forces that shape human life. We are being called upon today to win some such political victory. Instead, many look elsewhere. This may well be the greatest victory of the neoliberal takeover of politics, it has made politics so repulsive and repugnant to so many sane and sober people, that the terrain is free to be occupied by the most selfish and stupid amongst us. We live in a condition of political disarmament. We have been robbed of our public realm and our public life. And that means that we are ill-equipped to struggle against the forces of oppression and domination, we lack the political means to resist. The collective will has been broken up.
I make these points because, in arguing for a change in behaviour as an integral part of addressing the crisis in the climate system, I am told that such a change is “improbable”. This may be true. Well so what? The greatest changes in history have all been “improbable”. There hasn’t been a major event or turning point in history that hasn’t be “improbable” before it was brought about – by human agency, by new behaviours, values, patterns, politics. Every big transformation in our way of life has been brought about by men and women with the root of the matter in them. If we are going to sit passively and calculate odds of success and failure prior to action, and rule out every proposed positive eventuality as “improbable”, and as a result do precisely nothing, then nothing will change. Are we serious about change or not? Are we serious about making history? Or have we lost our collective nerve? Along with the expropriation of the global commons, we have been estranged from our political commons, and it seems we lack the wit to make common cause and claim it back. I think we can do it. It is within our power.
We see here the danger inherent in the way that a quantification of objective probabilities with respect to current trends and tendencies can lead to the neglect of subjective possibilities with regard to human action. Thomas Schelling has written of "a tendency in our planning to confuse the unfamiliar with the improbable. The contingency we have not considered looks strange; what looks strange is thought improbable; what is improbable need not be considered seriously" (quoted in Hayes, 1974).
If it’s just probabilities that impress you, then you can leave out the human factor and ignore human beings as change agents in history, and just look at objective trends, tendencies and trajectories. They are not good. But even there, it depends on what you look at. When astronomer Martin Rees wrote a book on threats emerging from scientific advances, he entitled it Our Final Century? However, Rees's British publishers didn't find that quite frightening enough, so they dropped the question mark. That wasn’t frightening enough for Rees's American publishers, so they changed 'century' to 'hour.' Fear sells.
So how long do we have left? Longer than the publicity would have us think. Rees is much less gloomy than his marketing. He points to the dangers of nuclear weapons, but considers it important to acknowledge the astonishing bounty science has heaped upon us. ‘We are safer than ever before,’ he says. We should be concerned by the real threats that confront us, but we should appreciate the fact that ‘for most people in the world, there's never been a better time to be alive.’ We are better fed, better educated, longer lived, than at any other time in history, and in greater numbers too. ‘Proof of this fundamental truth can be found in countless statistics and reports. Or we can simply spend an afternoon reading the monuments to our good fortune erected in every Victorian cemetery.’ (Gardner 2009 ch 12).
Dan Gardner, Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear 2009 Virgin Books
“Where there's fear, there's power.”
Against this optimism, however, are the countless statistics and reports on climate change, and we can spend our time observing the very visible impacts that this phenomenon is having on our current lives and ponder the shadow of the future under which we live.
Tim Flannery acknowledges that we are living at a time ‘when hope that humanity might act to save itself from a climatic catastrophe seems to be draining away.’ He is not, however, without hope: ‘for I believe that as we come to know ourselves and our planet we will be moved to act.’ (Flannery 2010).
My argument is that we need to do more than ‘provoke’ action. And we need more than scientific knowledge. All the knowledge in the world and of the world will not be sufficient to motivate action. Knowledge as such is not a virtue, in that it is not appetitive and does not stimulate action alone. To be moved to act requires the right qualities. To be inspired by knowledge, we need have acquired the right virtues which make us disposed to act in light of knowledge and thus do the right thing in response to arguments, evidence, crises, opportunities etc.
The failure to connect fact and value is leading us to confuse objective trends and tendencies with inevitabilities, and to dismiss subjective possibilities as 'improbabilities'. We need to affirm the unity of the subjective and objective factors in 'making history'.
I shall argue for an environmental pragmatism, eco-praxis and citizen science, for a need to form an eco-public on the basis of ecological virtue and citizenship. We need to look not merely at what constitutes the common good but at how that good is constituted through civic involvement and democratic participation.
Some are utterly without hope. This could be a realistic appraisal of our predicament, it could be chronic crisis fatigue, or a defence mechanism, shutting out realities about which we think we can do nothing. I argue for hope.
“Without food man can survive for barely thirty days; without water for little more than three days; without air hardly for more than three minutes: but without hope he might destroy himself in an even shorter time.” (Lewis Mumford, The Conduct of Life 1952: 30).
We are not the first generation to be confronted with an apparently hopeless situation, and we won’t be the last. The subjective factor is the factor that changes the direction of objective trends and tendencies. “Reason often has told man he was defeated: why should the prisoner, the slave, the corrupted and the deformed and the ailing all go on with so few exceptions to their dismal end?” (Mumford 1952: 30-31).
Pushed too far, reason undermines life at its source. For Lewis Mumford, only the acceptance of a mystery beyond the compass of reason keeps human life from becoming devaluated and the spirit from becoming discouraged over the reports of reason. (Mumford, The Condition of Man 1944 ch 1).
I’m not interested in any of the determinisms that have infested history, whether economic, biological or environmental, all which diminish agency and separate us from our future through notions of necessity and fixity. Even the great rationalist Kant has his utopian side, affirming the moral and political capacity of human beings to see through and break through socio-historical constraints upon freedom.
'What the highest level may be at which man must stop, and how great therefore is the gap which necessarily remains open between the Idea and its realisation - that is a matter which no-one can or should determine [in advance] precisely because it is Freedom which can transgress any assigned limit.'
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Norman Kemp Smith trans 1965: B 372-74
In light of the transgression of planetary boundaries, such notions of human freedom need to be revised. But it wouldn’t worry me at all to be placed on the side of the mystics, utopians, visionaries and impossibilists. I’m happy to carry on sailing with the Captain, Jacques Cousteau, for whom “the impossible missions are the only ones that succeed.” In the current context, they are the only ones worth doing.
‘Politics is the art of the possible, creativity is the art of the impossible’ – Ben Okri
More than ever before we need to be creative in politics. In chaning our behaviour, we are being asked to do the improbable. In addressing the crisis in the climate system, we are being asked to do the impossible.
Let's dig in, and take it from there.
I want to be with people who submerge in the task, who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row and pass the bags along, who are not parlor generals and field deserters but move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out. The work of the world is common as mud. Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust. But the thing worth doing well done has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident. —Marge Piercy, "To Be of Use"