Fighting Fires - in the Hills of California, and in the Hearts of Men
Calling Dante – Fighting Fires in the Hills of California, and in the Hearts of Men
‘Firefighters are battling a series of out-of-control wildfires in Los Angeles, Ventura, and San Diego counties, and the blazes are showing no signs of slowing. State officials say more than 138,000 acres throughout the region are burning from five major blazes. Over 5,000 firefighters have been deployed to combat the fires, and authorities have closed major highways, canceled school, and ordered close to 200,000 people to evacuate.’
‘The first and largest blaze, the Thomas Fire, started Monday night in Ventura County. The Creek Fire near Sylmar and the Rye Fire in Santa Clarita broke out in the early hours of Tuesday morning, and the Skirball Fire, centered on the wealthy Bel Air neighborhood in Los Angeles, started Wednesday morning.’
“Just recently we saw a wall of flames that had to have been 300 feet or higher.
“The LA fire burn index is the highest it has ever been projected, an extreme reading is 162. You know what it is today? 296.” A California fires map shows where wildfires have taken hold in Ventura County, just north-west of Los Angeles on the West Coast of the USA.
The shocking map reveals the rampaging Thomas Fire is now closing in on Ojai - a city loved by spiritual seekers, health enthusiasts and celebrities.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/889421/California-fires-thomas-fire-map-skirball-fire-fires-in-california-southern-california
‘While the flames only directly endangered a sliver of the sprawling Los Angeles area, people across the city shared stories of loss as they went about their days beneath thick smoke and an orange haze.
“Everything is covered in ash. All of our eyes are watering,” said Betsy Burnham, a 55-year-old interior designer whose home is safe for now. “None of us can believe” that the fires have encroached so closely on city’s affluent west side, she added.’
For some, this has been too great an opportunity for recrimination to miss. Climate change is now encroaching upon the affluent! To me, this brings the problem home. First of all, you identify with people under threat and in need of help. Then you get into causes and preventative measures. And then widen it out into an understanding of the environmental catastrophe unfolding on the planet. What you don’t do is immediately exploit this for any political advantages. Which is bad enough. To throw even those away by expressing a vicious pleasure in the plight of people on the receiving end is nothing short of diabolic. It’s the infernal retribution of Dante’s Comedy at its worst – the punishment that occurs in a way that is far, far removed from God’s mercy and forgiveness. But, of course, we don’t believe in God these days, do we? They are indeed godless times. God is not here, and it shows.
I’m only surprised that we are not seeing the usual ‘Dante’s Inferno’ headlines.
Maybe we are beyond even that. (Here’s one from July 'Dante's Inferno':Massive fires in California and Arizona blazing out of control )
I just feel uncomfortable with reducing Dante - and the California fires - to a cliché. In truth, the pit of Dante’s Inferno is a frozen wasteland, where Lucifer, the most beautiful of all the angels, is petrified in his sin. Fire is a heavenly symbol, rising up to the Holy Spirit. But I don’t want to split hairs here, lest my boiling anger be tempered, and my plain message get diluted.
San Diego, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, The Getty, Bel Air, Riverside – I’ve been to all these places.
Now I see the area going up in flames. And I am witnessing the unedifying spectacle of more than a few who claim to be environmentalists barely concealing their pleasure at the fires raging in California. I point to the immorality, and affirm the unity of each and all, and am treated to a) abuse; b) lectures on how these folk "deserve what they get"; c) lectures on climate change (what it is, how we got into the mess and what we need to do to get out of it - gee, thanks folk, I never knew, having spent three decades slogging away for the Green cause, neglecting my own financial, physical and emotional well-being in the process). I was trying to make the point that "doing something" effective with respect to climate action involves getting into the motivational economy of real live flesh and blood men and women, something more than techie solutions and abstract plans. But, no, people are no more than ideal types, to be moved around and manipulated at will and whim. The abuse is evidence of a vicious streak that we should be very wary of in politics (and people are, the Left consistently struggles for support for a reason). It is the hectoring and lecturing that is worth further comment. Given that I've spent more years than I care to spend promoting the climate message, it is telling that people should feel the need to give me lessons on this. I would have thought that they could presume that I would know the points at issue and that, maybe, I was trying to get them to see further and more deeply into climate crisis as a moral and existential issue. But no, I received lessons on the obvious, and noted how deaf the same people were to the points I was trying to raise with them. That told me that the people who bleat endlessly about crisis and the need for action are stuck in a groove, and are themselves a part of the institutional and psychological inertia that is blocking movement. I can say this, I didn't appreciate the hectoring and lecturing, and I can guarantee most people out there don't either. Stop treating people as though they are idiots, they are immune to your charms for a reason. I'll tell this stripe of environmentalist to up their game big time, get out of this endless cycle of reporting on crisis and calling for action, and actually engage people and address institutional, systemic and - again I insist on this - political and ethical questions with the seriousness they merit. Because that is where the failing is - we know what the problem is, and we have the solutions within financial and institutional reach - what we lack are the human springs of action. But it is evident that you think ethics is just a series of value judgments at best, and a repression of freedom and pleasure in the main. And that, I am afraid, will seal the fate of civilization - but I see that many of you don't care for that either, indulging primitivist fantasies of local resilience (try it, if you think the rich and powerful you loathe are going to go away, and leave you alone if and when collapse comes, then you are deluded). I'm presuming here, of course, that such people are serious about transformations and transitions. It could be that they are such misanthropes that the only pleasure they have lies in writing the obituary of the human species. If you think I’m exaggerating, he is a claim I read only today with reference to the 80% loss of flying insects in Germany's parks. The environmentalist raising the issue – and he is right in his concern with the loss of biodiversity – states that because humans don’t like flying insects, they exterminate them, even though ‘they are much more crucial to the biosphere than the exterminators.’ I hear this kind of thing routinely amongst environmentalists, not only downgrading human beings in relation to other species, but denigrating them as greedy, rapacious and destructive. In other words, the focus is on the worst of human qualities, not the best. This is not biology or ecology, this is a demonology. The rejection of anthropocentrism and speciesism all too easily slides into an exterminism with respect to the human species, ecology as a death-cult looking forward to the collapse of civilisation and the extinction of the human species. Everything is an agent in nature, except humans. Everything is much more important to Nature than humans. Let's be blunt, in terms of politics - and that's where the numbers are - this kind of thing is never going to win a popularity contest. So what, so long as what we are saying true. The 'so what' question matters if we are serious about acting practically on any truth. The misanthropy must have some appeal, however, since they do it day in and day out, when there are any number of practical initiatives underway out there that they could actually join, support, promote. It could be a psychic prison they are in, preparing for the Hell on Earth that, they keep telling us, is sure to come.
As Dante said, it's best not to speak of these hopeless souls, just look away and move on. They like my words when I repeat the flaming obvious about the state of the planet. When I take it further, they look askance. I may as well write in hieroglyphs for all that they understand with respect to the field of practical reason. I get the distinct impression they really want an environmental dictatorship in which people just passively do as they are told. They expect nothing of people, see them as dumb and deluded, and therefore cut off environmental politics from the greatest creative resource available to us. Hopeless!
Which begs the question as to what, precisely, global warming has to do with these fires.
The answer from my friends on the environmental left was so clear cut that I felt like a ‘denier’ for even raising the question. The jump from large car use to global warming to fires was so clear and direct for a number of them that they simply shouted over the issues I was trying to raise. And those issues weren’t even to do with the science in the first place! In other words, the California fires were being used to treat the world to another lecture on the end of the world (and seized with undisguised relish by some, who patently dislike certain countries and certain kinds of people, and others who just despise humanity in general).
The answer, if we take the question seriously, is nowhere near as clear and obvious as some seem to think. Rather, the fires in Southern California are driven by a mix of forces, with only some of them have a clear connection to global warming.
“These fires are not immediately emblematic of climate change,” said John Abatzoglou, an associate professor of geography and climate at the University of Idaho, in an email. “Yes, California did have the warmest summer on record. But the big anomaly here is the delay in the onset of precipitation for the southland that has kept the vegetation dry and fire-prone.”
In other words, late-fall and winter rains would normally end California’s fire season in November. Because those rains haven’t yet arrived, the blazes continue.
Scientists don’t see a strong climate trend in the ongoing fires around Los Angeles.This must be climate change at work, right?
Yes and no.
‘Scientists have found that human-caused climate change is increasing the frequency and size of wildfires for much of the United States, particularly in forested areas like those that burned in Montana in September and in Northern California in October.
But as with the 2017 hurricane season, it’s hard to tease out the influence of climate change in any individual fire.
And in the case of the Southern California fires, the signal is weaker.
Massive December fires are unusual around Los Angeles. But when it comes to humanity’s role in the destructive blazes, scientists say our habit of building in harm’s way may be a bigger factor in the fire’s devastation than rising temperatures due to burning fossil fuels.’
I tried to offer the qualifiers, and was shot down in flames. The worst part of this was the lack of compassion and the high handed moral tone. And this from people who think little of ethics, by the way, given the way that they are normally to be found referring to ‘nature’ in the vaguest of terms, a combination of some ancient tribal, mystical, wisdom and modern natural science (oblivious to the flagrant contradictions, fallacies and inanities involved, but that’s another issue). It’s a pick-and-mix approach that wouldn’t withstand even the briefest analysis (the rejection of modern civilisation as ‘alien’ for instance, is combined with celebrations of recognition in law of the ‘rights’ of ‘Mother Nature.’ The ontological status and historical emergence and codification of rights, here, would reveal something about the relations between nature, culture, ethics and civilisation that would quickly subvert facile notions of ‘Mother Nature.’ And begs questions of the precise character of this nature. Ask Monod or Dawkins, and they would see nothing but blind, pitiless indifferent, something very different from notions of a doting parent. Which makes it significant, I think, at the almost celebratory, vindicatory (and certainly vindictive) tone of those who speak of ‘nature’s revenge.’
This is not helpful, not at all. Apart from being immoral, it is utterly counter-productive and makes people sceptical of the political bullying. It is a lamentable way to do climate politics, and that will be to the detriment of all of us. As this article makes clear, ‘Worse fires are probably in store for Southern California because of climate change.’
‘In fact, some researchers project that fires driven by Santa Ana winds, and the fires that occur earlier in the year in Southern California, will burn larger areas by midcentury in part due to rising temperatures.
But the current fire devastation in California does suggest interventions, like better urban development, that could reduce the harm from fires in the near term.
“There is a lot we can do if we stop with this inordinate focus on climate change and focus on people,” Keeley said. “Global warming is very remote. Population growth and land planning — these are things we have control over.”’
I’m very far from ‘denying’ global warming and climate change here. I’m arguing for the case to be presented reasonably and persuasively, in a way that recognizes individuals as active, conscious, choosing and willing citizens of a public realm, not empty heads to be informed, instructed and ordered. That’s not how people behave, and it’s certainly not how government and politics works.
Here are general views, with which I am in broad agreement. But it’s in the details and dis/agreements that the bridge between theoretical reason and practical reason will be built. General is neither here nor there.
The recent cycle of drought and deluge in California led to major fire risk. Climate change makes that cycle worse.
I’m interested in the politics and the ethics of this. Because there is a clear attempt to press science into doing the job of practical reason, and in place of citizen discourse, interaction, will and consent, there are certain non-negotiable facts. There are any number of problems with this. Three in the main:
Science cannot do the work of politics, fact be substituted for value;
Even if the science is right in all fundamentals, and the connection with climate change is clear, people do not like being lectured and hectored, spoken down to, ‘educated’ from on high, given orders. As active, informed citizens, individuals come together to decide the terms on which they are to be governed; citizens are rightly suspicious of ‘arguments’ issued in the form of imperatives driven by notions of truth equated with facts;
And in any case, the science of the matter is far from clear cut. People who live in California know this, and have been telling me this. People will science backgrounds, too. To hear environmentalists committed to a political cause talk over them, appropriate an emergency for political ends, and indulge in some sweeping generalisations with respect to the science, causes people closer to the events, more knowledgeable of the terrain, and capable of reasoning independently of the dogs growling at each other in the political fight, to see those shouting the loudest as ideologists with particular concerns of their own. If this is going to be fought as politics, then fight it as such, and stop relying on science as argument enough to silence opponents. It makes people … sceptical.
This was the moment I saw a clear clash between the different people I know, seeing why, despite a climate message I do indeed support, certain kinds of environmentalism are wielding science as a form of necessity, circumventing the arguments, discursive interaction and creation of will and consent that is the very stuff of politics. I have known this for a while, as when I saw people laughing and cheering John Oliver when he asked the value of what people think about statements of fact. I am very glad to say that I checked that statement, pointing out that fact does not trump the opinions of the people. Opinions do not change fact, of course (although worldviews and social contexts do shape research agendas and the facts we consider significant). But how we address facts and act on facts is most certainly politically open and negotiable, pointing to the all-important area of practical reason. However strong they may think themselves on the science, on theoretical reason, environmentalists have been cretinous in the field of practical reason, and show no inkling of what it takes to educate and move people from within the citizen body. The education comes from the outside. To qualify that remark quickly, there are transitions underway, and there are various initiatives that look to equip communities with the tools to lead their own transitions. Those people I exempt from these criticisms. We need much more of this kind of practice.
I have pulled myself clear of this debacle, it is a nonsense and an obscenity, which ought to at least embarrass, and I’d go much further to say, should outrage, any environmentalist with an ounce of decency in them. I have made my objections known and withdrawn from contact with these people. I would suggest to them that, at this stage of an unfolding ecological catastrophe on the planet, we need to keep reaching out to people, in the hope that all the years of hard work in spreading the climate message, hoping to win people over to the cause of effective and concerted climate action, may start to pay off. The last thing we need is people sneering and jeering, pointing recriminatory fingers at victims of environmental disasters, almost celebrating the destruction of life, property, and happiness. And not being too concerned about the accuracy of their statements, either, merely using 'global warming' as a big club to beat down people they don't like. That, I would politely suggest, is likely to entrench divisions, confirming all the suspicions people have had over the years that environmentalists are a bunch of self-satisfied, sanctimonious, misanthropic whiners who, for all of their (self) presumed intelligence and expertise, you wouldn’t trust to run a whelk stall.
This will never win adherents to the environmental cause, merely entrench popular antipathy towards it. But, above and beyond the rank bad politics and psychology involved, it is plainly reprehensible behaviour. Let’s say it plain – it is immoral and inhuman. There is a complete lack of compassion with respect to those threatened by the fires which makes me nervous of the company I keep. I’ve tried to bring a moral depth to this question, but this crowd don’t want to know. Would you want to empower such people politically? Would you trust such people with power and authority? The lack of empathy makes me deeply suspicious of them. And I’m not alone. With all the wealth of science, reason, evidence and ethics on their side, environmentalism as politics generates numbers that are miniscule. And no wonder people are sceptical. The world doesn’t need such would-be environmental dictators, least of all when they harbour such seething resentment towards so many people for their failure to bow down to their far-sighted, all-knowing wisdom and expertise of their betters.
I’m remaining quiet in public in the main. But I’ve been involved in several angry exchanges, which is the last thing I need for health reasons. So I have withdrawn from social media. But I’m putting it on record here, I am severing connections with this strand of environmentalism. It’s like talking to spoiled and peevish children. Trust them with power? I wouldn’t send them out for a loaf. Not only are they incapable of actually running anything and doing anything, they hold real people in contempt. They love their idealized humans of their infantile fantasies, but not real folk. They can’t face up to the demands of civilization, and try to pull out of the challenge-and-response of human historical development by indulging in regressive demands. People see them and reject them as impossibilities, of course, and are admonished for so doing. There’s a lot of revenge going on here. And a lot of resentment. It’s a declaration of impotence. I don’t need to be associated with these characters. I’ve tried my best to get them to up their game, but they are stuck in their infantile dreams, the endless stating of ideals utterly unattached to the means of their realization and, most importantly, to popular constituencies. They are relishing seeing people suffer, that’s clearly the only delight left to them in a world bereft of hope. I find these characters utterly hypocritical. They are the first to excoriate religion for its obsession with judgment and punishment, yet here they are pointing accusing fingers and taking an obscene pleasure in the damage that natural disaster is wreaking on the lives of real people. And I’m stating this bluntly because I want no ambiguity, no hiding behind clever worlds and arguments, no possibility of misunderstanding – I find these people utterly reprehensible and am pulling what I understand as environmentalism well clear of their misanthropic, immoral, infernal judgment and punishment. I’m away from social media, because I’m afraid there are far too many people who are as hopeless there as they are clueless, and I’d be wasting my energies getting angrier and angrier at their myriad stupidities and immoralities. People are crying out for public community. The problem is, having lost the capacity to constitute such a community, they simply cry. Endlessly. And turn on people for not responding to them and picking them up. You tell me that ‘somebody should do something’ – you propose that something and begin by remembering that you are that somebody.
The photograph is of me in Santa Barbara. I selected it for a reason. I could have picked any number of dramatic photographs of the fires in California. A quick search on Google will reveal any number of horrific images on the ‘Dante’s Inferno’ theme. It’s horrifying enough, but is becoming all too familiar, dulling the impact. Instead, I want to appeal to some kind of normalcy, to indicate an 'ordinary' world of real folk that is threatened by the fires engulfing the place, but which also indicates a coolness, a calmness, and a determination to look reality square in the face and carry on. Put another way, I am sick to the back teeth of dramatic images which are all too often taken up as invitations to cry, whinge, scream and panic, as well as in pointless 'I told you so' exercises in self-justification. I don’t panic easily. And I keep a smile on my face. And I’d suggest you do the same. And instead of whingeing and cringing on the side-lines, living in constant fear of the end of the world, I’d suggest you pitch in where you can. Show some leadership. And start actually relating to people, instead of lecturing and hectoring from the outside (electronic communication is an absolute blight in this respect), demonstrating your superiority and berating the inferiority of others - not least because a) it doesn’t work, and b) it isn’t true. I can sit down and talk with anyone. I have done. The people who refuse to be stampeded into climate action are not stupid, and in your words - which are nothing short of immoral - you are confirming their worst suspicions. They will stay away. And the world will go to Hell. And you will say we told you so. Is that what you really want? I find on electronic media, people just want to moan and abuse and whine. And I’m gone from it. The photo makes the point that I will sit down, face to face, in person with anyone of good will, whatever their politics and religion, and seek to reach out to them as well as, hopefully, listen. The threats and abuse I experience on social media are of exactly the same calibre as the promises I see made there - idle. Let's get real, and start to give words some flesh, person to person. Abstraction invites and entrenches division over idle words. We can test the reality of those words over a drink in a civil manner. I don't have rows with people in person. On social media, I don't seem able to avoid them. I've been having to bite my tongue for long that I have practically eaten it. I can't keep curtailing my message hoping that people take the little hints I offer, little invitations to think deeper and go further. They just carry on reinforcing their own prejudices.
Having taken the climate message to California, and been given a hearing – as well as having seen the environmental efforts that are being made there by techies and engineers (the place is far from being backward when it comes to environmentalism) – the very last thing we need is self-styled environmentalists leering and jeering on the electronic outside, taking some kind of vindictive pleasure from the pain and suffering of those on the receiving end of environmental disaster. ‘They’ve had it coming.’ That’s right, let’s just keep stoking the divisions and doing everything we can to obstruct the unity we need to confront the challenges we face. You would almost think some folk are so bereft of meaning and purpose in life that they are looking forward to the end of the world, it’s the only thrill they have in life, and the only way they see of settling accounts with their political enemies. Try engaging in some serious politics, and making your case so plausible, with constructive, feasible models capable of commanding popular assent, much more difficult than pontificating from the sidelines, but much more worthwhile and enduring.
This farago tells me that there are still too many environmentalists who are political naifs who are not serious about transitions and implementations, in that they don't have the first idea of what it takes to win a constituency for a political programme within a public platform; if they have a programme, beyond prescriptions dictated – and I mean dictated – by science and technology, then they don't know how to win legitimacy for it by winning people over. And I mean winning people over, something that involves people, in the sense of self-assumed obligation, a very different notion from instructing and obligating people in some monological sense. These folk are prophets armed only with ideals stated in abstraction from real people and communities, and utterly lacking in a belly-to-earth horse sense that you need to address the realities as they are lived by people. That's great if you are happy being a self-righteous minority happy to keep saying 'I told you so, but you didn't listen.' History is full of such prophets, and a useless and miserable bunch they are too. Environmentalism will remain small in number just when we need a mass movement of people. I'm not interested in the politics of permanent protest, constantly rehearsing the defeats that are certain to come. It's a poor leadership that never actually succeeds in leading people anywhere. And a poor politics. The left has been blighted by it. They love democracy, they just draw the line at the ordinary folk who compose the demos. Admit it, you don’t think people are up to much at all, and are really hankering after an environmental dictator that legislates and engineers from above the kind of society the right kind of people like, your kind, that is. Be careful of what you wish for. Because the age of ecological necessity is closing in quickly and necessity is now, as it has ever been, the tyrants plea. But it won’t be the tyrant of your miserable heart’s desire that you will get, trust me. I saw something nasty and spiteful this week, a delight in the misfortune of others, which is understandable, if still distasteful, as a ressentiment expressing a lack of power and capacity, but as indicating a self-righteous arrogance which, in power, is a menace to life, liberty and happiness. There is a mentality of hostility here which starts by being directed against political enemies but which, for want of knowing how to establish and realize a viable goal, starts to see enemies all around, turning in on itself, eating up the revolutionary spirit from within. For the umpteenth time, I call upon those who wish to transform the world to take politics and ethics (including economics as a branch) seriously and engage in some serious institution-building, fashion the tools of reconstruction and, above all, involve 'ordinary' people as agents of change, rather than as so much passive, inert material to be engineered this way or that as mere passive clay in the hands of the potter. There are reasons why people respond to the endless calls for action, and they are to do with the existence (or otherwise) of viable means and mechanisms of effective action (institutional, ethical, psychological) which command respect and legitimacy, inspire and obligate, and win positive support. It is easy enough to state the ideal in the abstract. If you fail to furnish the transition and implementation strategies, as well as the social relations, forms and identities, the institutions and the systems that bridge the real and the ideal, all within overarching visions and values that give coherence to the parts and roles in terms of a scale of values, then in demanding transformatory action you are demanding something that people cannot take - it lacks social relevance and proposes a social identity and moral capacity you have singularly failed to provide. Hence my fear that, to compensate for the lack of serious engagement with politics, ethics and economics - treating individual men and women as knowledgeable change agents - you will revert to the age-old 'solution/evasion' of the educational dictatorship. Reality - and the people composing it - will have to be bent into shape from above and from the outside. I've spent decades trying to ween the political Left away from this model. People are sceptical of the Left in politics for this reason. The capital system is in crisis, and the planet is unravelling, you repeat this message over and again. The world of science is well-nigh unanimous that 'human activity' is the principal cause of global heating. If you cannot win people over in this context, and if you cannot propose a viable alternative economic model that commands widespread support and commitment, then take a good hard look at yourself, because you are doing something badly wrong. And don't give me the usual cop-out that people are brainwashed, greedy and deluded. People are not dumb, and they don't want to exchange something that has some kind of viability for the vagaries of a socialist paradise, least of all when the claims are made on the basis of necessity, the tyrant's plea. Human activity? Which humans? Let's get into social relations here, and see how divisions and interests and patterns of behaviour are structured, and what needs to be done with respect not only to the moral and psychic springs of action, but also the structural and organisational capacity to act - or do you just think statements of fact, logic and reason are going to cut it? - get serious in terms of practical reason!
Angry? I am blazing. The above is mild compared to what I’m saying in person. And I need to calm down and put my own fires out. I am, to say the least, disgusted with a certain stripe of environmentalism. If the world does go up in flames, we should take a good look at the failure to take politics and ethics (including constructive models of alternate economic systems) seriously. And that involves looking at how to constitute mutual relations of respect between people, building trust and solidarity. To labour together in love means precisely that - and I mean the Greater Love that enfolds, nourishes and sustains each and all. Do you even know what that means? Take some time to answer that question, and give your environmentalism some real moral and psychic depth. Or do you think your machine gods will save us? Or some vague 'Nature' which, under the most cursory of examinations, turns out to be the latest fashion in science, a human construct with no reality beyond conceptual tools, or a regressive fantasy that doesn't solve any of the problems we face, merely evades them? We are out of Eden. Grow up!
Enough. I have been looking upon this Hell for long enough. I now take my leave, and pass on in silence. There's a better to be had.
As usual, my little church put it all into the right perspective. (But we don't believe in God any more, do we? And we are all too smart for religion and its myriad stupidities, prejudices and repressions, aren't we?)
The second reading from the mass at my church, St Thomas of Canterbury, St Helens, this week
‘Since everything is coming to an end like this, you should be living holy and saintly lives while you wait and long for the Day of God to come, when the sky will dissolve in flames and the elements melt in the heat. What we are waiting for is what he promised; the new heavens and the new earth, the place where righteousness will be at home. So then, my friends, while you are waiting, do your best to live lives without spot or stain so that he will find you at peace.’
The second letter of St Peter 3: 8-14
It’s as simple as that, said my priest. Do your best to get on with people, have your falling out with them, but don’t harbour grudges and let differences harden into irrevocable splits, because when you do, you become separated from God and from your own self. Wait, prepare and enjoy. Such is life in all its abundance. And, he emphasized, it is for all humankind. All – rich and poor. I speak up constantly for the poor and against poverty. Let’s challenge inequality as a socially structured condition and work for viable institutional and systemic alternatives. And that means resisting the temptation to take shots against the rich and powerful, however much you think they’ve had it coming, and however much you may think that the poor, the marginalised and dispossessed are suffering as a consequences of their selfish and iniquitous actions. May. The rights and wrongs are worked out practically in politics. Respect that. Or do you really think that it’s all just a power struggle? In which case, cast aside the mask of morals you wear. There are two problems with that. Firstly, I don’t think much of your chances of winning. Secondly, there is nothing human to win by such an approach, and everything to lose. Power wins by definition, success in imposing one’s will and interests is its own justification. Whether that you and your kind, or others, makes no difference – once we lose the common ground and highest good that unites and exalts us all, then rich and poor, the powerful and the powerless, the prince and the pauper, have all lost their rights and their humanity.
The priest ended with the prayer after communion:
Replenished by the food of spiritual nourishment, we humbly beseech you, O Lord that, through our partaking in this mystery, you may teach us to judge wisely the things of earth and hold firm to the things of heaven. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Judge wisely earthly affairs and hold firm to divine justice. And remember that morality is about experiencing and giving thanks for the abundance you have been gifted. And keep well away from vengeance, it is always infernal.
"Bind in one the hearts of all mankind
O bid our sad divisions cease,
and be Yourself
our king of peace.
Rejoice! Rejoice"
That does mean 'all humanity', like my priest said.
I cut this comment from my Facebook page. It is angry. The anger was justified.
I've had enough of finger pointing doom-mongering misanthropic "environmentalists" on FB. And I’ve had enough of those who so easily dismiss civilization, as though the problems of living together anything less than difficult. I take the problems of public order, civics and institution building seriously, and I suggest environmentalists do likewise, instead of peddling fantasies and delusions of an unmediated natural spontaneity – that ideal is now what it always was, and what it will always remain, an infantile desire, a regression, and a political and moral evasion on the part of people who lack what it takes to build and sustain new modes of governance and economic provision. It leaves a supposedly political movement politically and organisationally disarmed, projecting an ideal with absolutely no chance of realization, inviting a lurch into moralizing, resentment and revenge.
Day after day I wade through the doom and gloom of climate news – it has to be faced, there’s no evading realities – but there comes a point when we have to either get involved in movement away from the catastrophe to come or, if that really is impossible to avoid, even mitigate (it isn’t), then make our peace. The latter is much more difficult to do without the transcendent source with which to make peace with. Our soul needs a resting place, somewhere outside of the ego. If we don’t do either of these things, then we are merely engaged in the endless writing of our obituary as the planet unravels. Jesus wept, this is debilitating – the fact that we are in deep, deep trouble is hardly news. Last year I was nearly worn down and finally out with the endless "time for action" calls in my message boxes heaped up on top of the actions I was indeed undertaking. It's time for something, something deep. How real do people want it? The physical facts are the obvious stuff, and hardly bear repetition once, let alone year in year out. People need direction, organisation, viable modes of effective action. And there are indeed people who focus on tools and transition strategies, and those people I salute. They are doing what needs to be done in focusing energies, skills and resources. But … Knowledge and know-how give us the ability to act, they do not make us want to act - this is not a new insight, it is written clearly in St Thomas Aquinas' "Summa." The springs of action are the key. Let's make it modern and call it the motivational economy, and how socially structured patterns of human behaviour relate to the means and mechanisms of individual and collective action/responsibility (institutional, systemic, psychological and - I hardly dare say the word - moral).
I shall return to the Dante, and if people look askance, then good, they are clueless and will go to their end. I have my problems with Dante, he is awkward in very many ways. There's plenty I could do without. But there's plenty he has right - plenty that we are missing. People should start hearing the bells and hear them properly, instead of emitting the same old tuneless noise. (I’ll give people a Dantean clue here, they are singing Hell's tune, and there's no way out of that place. They're already at home, petrified, at a time when we need movement).
Are we to remain paralyzed with fear in face of the horror?
Or are we to get the purgation underway, start moving and transition towards self-knowledge and salvation?
If the former, then we are consigned to the hopeless state of Hell.
If the latter, then we find the transcendent hope that lights the path, and invites us to follow.
But we don't like hope, do we. 'Hopium?' Don't make me laugh. ‘Men as gods’ as authors of their own undoing, and the scarcely concealed relish some take in that undoing. There are times when I think some are in the grip of a death-cult, either by deliberate choice, or through a collapse of hope, through severance from the transcendent source of life and meaning. They are narcissists who give themselves the right to pronounce death on the planet. Give 'em hope and they reach for a revolver. I'm giving praise for the gift of life, and for knowing people who have the root of the matter in them. We're doomed! By what reckoning? In other words, I’m out of the endless doomsterism of a certain strand of environmentalism.
There seems to be an unhealthy obsession with staring “Hell” in the face and engaging in infernal retribution by pointing the finger at others. The punitive character of Dante's Hell is one of many reasons why people find him anathema. But remember, this is a place without God and without music - this is the world of human justice, a world of endless cycles of revenge and retribution, and Dante, when he is in Hell, is caught up in it. It is a world far removed from divine justice, from God's mercy and forgiveness. And heaven knows we need this now more than we ever have. I'm not liking what I see with respect to the way people are referring to California's Inferno. My priest insisted upon making peace with "all humanity" at the weekend, and that means precisely what it says, resolidarising bonds as well as resolidifying realities on this planet. Mention Dante and ethics and universal authority, government and law, and some people run a mile back to some Edenic world that if ever was, has long gone, and is never to return. Lamenting the world that is beyond recall, they go back to staring at Hell and restating the problem in its most obvious physical forms. We’re in trouble, take it as read, and stay informed. But I don't need to hear impotent wails and laments on the hour every hour, still less do I need the evident delight and relish and sense of revenge people express when environmental disaster hits parts of the world considered affluent and powerful. We need a climate justice without revenge and retribution, a true justice that embraces each and all. Revenge and retribution keep us trapped in the power struggles afflicting this planet and, indeed, driving climate crisis. I make my peace in other (more effective) ways. The latest report says we are on course for x degrees of heating. Oh, but that's conservative and it’s so much worse than that. I’ve heard it every day for years now. Heard it too many times, I find it completely unmoving now. Yeah, we are all deniers. In the midst of life ... Did you think your machine gods would grant you eternal life?
There's not much solace to be had for anyone in this sorry debacle. Global warming is for real, and it looks like we are on the brink of runaway climate change, and those who know the most on this have failed to bring the issue into the hearts and minds of the people. And then they denounce people as stupid and greedy. Human beings are what they've always been, and have risen to challenges and done great things in the past. If you find them unmoved by your appeals, check the ways in which you do the appealing. The odds are that you are doing it wrong.