A series I find wildly inspiring is Years of Living Dangerously. It’s not because it ever teaches me anything I don’t already know. It’s that it takes a camera into the meeting room where climate activists discuss details and field questions from the masses. You can begin to peel away much of the nonsense that obscures why there is or isn’t action taken and the, in my view extremely hopeless, mental pits people fall into to protect their views.
A basic premise I assume when I go into an argument or approach learning about some topic is that everything is connected. When Wikipedia first arrived I remember clicking though every word I didn’t know and being fascinated about just generally learning and reading in no specific direction. To fluidly access windows and doors into worlds I’d never seen before held little utility but to keep me intrigued or distracted, but it’s a shared window that analogizes how our brains work.
A gentleman holds a presentation to talk to Texans about climate change. Their concerns are that “Tax feels like someone’s taking something away from me” and “If the oil companies’ costs go up isn’t it going to cost Texas jobs?” One person pointed the finger at China. The presenter’s father said, “We need fossil fuels” ten seconds before saying he’d absolutely use renewables yet does not have access to them.
Without fail, people think small and selfish yet don’t draw from the larger world to help fix their true concern. You can’t only care about your little farm and your oil industry job. The deeper truth, in the scheme of things, is that your job isn’t secure and the planet you inhabit will eventually force your hand. The gentleman whose conception of taxes resembles that of a child is going to have an even harder time dealing with these conditions because his feelings are always going to be in the way.
I suppose for me these scenarios make me think of hypocrisy. I’m every ounce of an armchair humanitarian. I try to move my mind into spaces that I think might shed light on better ways forward. I look at the motivated and urgent students holding meetings for their townsfolk and think it’s generally in vain. Stupid and insecure people have never been fixed with logical discussion of hundreds of variables to consider. They just have their feelings. In that the presenter brought his family along maybe spoke to his only real impact in that they’re sympathetic to him if not the world of facts.
To extend this further, this is why I always blame people for their silence. Your family and friends are moved by you. You’re responsible for them. When I write, even if I bitch until the day I die about not seeing your impact reflected in the social media space enough, I have to believe you take something with you into the rest of your worlds. In actuality, I could set up a table and grab a megaphone and recite statistics and urge people to care, but I’ve never seen the problem as a lack of that kind of quasi-activism.
The problem is that we don’t concern ourselves with the whole. We pretend one area of our lives is off limits. We think there’s dignity and safety in cordoning off the parts we’re scared or ashamed of. If I think I’m perhaps a hypocrite in how I exercise my time, now you’re hearing about it. If I’m seeing a connection about my concerns regarding fascism, ignorance, laziness, and quickly evaporating time and spirit, you get to know the roots of my disappointing study attempt. By allowing yourself a holistic view of your problems and place in the world, while you carry more weight, it’s also more powerful when you try to swing it around.
Maybe then you’re not just poised for “dumb internet fights” you’re protecting shared intellectual space from complicit ignorance. Maybe you’re not busy and hopeless, but invigorating the mundane with your heightened awareness. For that, I think of the last concert I went to. An hour and a half was spent by most of the crowd waiting for the band to show up. I read articles and listened to a podcast. Yes, it was weird and yes I stood out, but staring at an empty stage for that long seemed even weirder. Much of what I think a person consists of is as much what they’re prepared to do and are aware of that they can do. I can read and listen and then rock the fuck out and then have a salient conversation about ethics on the walk back to the car. The superficially different realms are connected by my agency.
This means it’s always the right time. You can respond to this blog and we can talk for a solid week digging up sources and making plans. You can share this with your more motivated and talkative friends. You can seriously consider in a deeper way things you may feel hypocritical about or afraid of. Every moment, right now, the world is ours to engage with or ignore. If you’re not even aware of your larger obligation, let alone the endless utility you can derive from engaging as such, you’ll be the lowly conservative cliché who only knows how to feel their way about in the dark.
Guilt seems key. Do you wait for something external to force you and then try to cope and change? I suppose it’s anyone’s guess if you invite the pain in now if you’ll be able to alleviate it. I’m perhaps a standing example of that. I’m worried about the conversations I’ll be having with myself at 40 or 50 about my actions or lack thereof. Does my writing ever suggest I’m particularly happy or healthy lol? Of course I am, but I don’t take to the page to wax about butterflies. I think I’m better at coping and continually talking about soul-crushing and harrowing things, if only because of the visceral reactions I get from all the people who aren’t.
Or maybe you are, so do it even more. Maybe you have your own roundabout way of fixing something you see as integral to the general cultural problem, so let me know about it. I’m with Jordan Peterson who says the religious underpinnings, the moral truths and motivations that bound us together have been blown apart and it speaks to why we’re ravenous for Harry Potter or Marvel stories to help realign us. I love the idea of music being disparate harmonies speaking to something transcendent and spine tingling. That’s how I can retain respect for story tellers and musicians; when you tie your work to your honest struggle for an individual voice and perspective that retains all the humanity that birthed it.
Perhaps the myth is that there’s no telling your impact. I’m telling you your impact every time I write. It’s frustration. It’s loneliness. It’s denial. It is pain and death and fear that are hardly hidden by the next celebration. Part of me wishes it would at least be idealism so we could respect that an idea was even represented. If you hate to “fight” and “debate,” then just talk. Talk to your secret followers and admirers. Talk yourself in and out of emotional and intellectual holes. Talk to show yourself that you have something to say or shed some light on why you don’t.
