The problem with the collapse of our ecology (and the collapse of our future) is it forces us to deal with existential questions that were always there, we just used to have good ways of keeping ourselves distracted.
Every society has developed systems of meaning and value to help us individually deal with the fact that we will die and nothing we will have lived for matters. For many societies the future and present where not all that interesting. These societies typically focused on worship of ancestors, and focused on how their daily actions connected them with their past. This develops into more complex systems of religion and spirituality that help give us meaning.
Industrial society has increasingly abandoned these with a new system of meaning: progress. Much of our personal meaning is derived from things like career, contributions to society, our own projects, personal fame etc. We belief we are playing our small part in the future of humanity and that gives us meaning. But now, as that future starts to come into question, so do these essential sources of personal meaning.
The trouble is that we can't trivially go back to older systems. This is the crisis of nihilism we see across America, and people will beat on the empty symbols of blind nationalism, religious extremism etc trying to resurrect lost meaning. This is what Nietzsche was trying to warn us of in his frequently misunderstood "God is dead" aphorism. We have destroyed our old systems of meaning but the new ones we have he correctly saw were fragile, and when they break he knew there would be a crisis.
The comments to view this as grieving are in many ways correct. You can see the stages of grief everywhere:
- denial: "climate change isn't real" or "climate change won't be so bad"
- bargaining: "If we just recycle more, development more green energy, etc we'll be fine!"
- anger: "It's those damn republicans! they did this!"
- depression: "what's the point of doing anything if we're going to lose everything"
The trouble is that getting out this grief isn't as simple because there's no return to normal. The loss is part of our world. One approach is study what the existentialists have talked about, their immediate post-WWII felt similarly lost. My HNers like the stoics which is another path to explore. But either way the long term project is to work on establishing systems of meaning that work for you... else you risk falling into a feverish insanity which I think we'll see more and more common place.
The stages of grief you describe are something you go through after a change completely out of your control. But stoicism and acceptance in the face of climate change is NOT what we need! We have to act. The status quo is murder, and it’ll keep getting worse without action. We, collectively, do not have time to grieve while our house is on fire and we can still put it out. We must act!
> The status quo is murder, and it’ll keep getting worse without action
I'm in full agreement with you here, but the time to act was at least 20 years ago. The changes necessary at this point to make a dent in climate change are things that I have gotten downvoted for so much that I realize if the HN community can't be convinced then the rest of the world surely will not.
We made tremendous progress in reducing carbon emission in April 2020. If we were serious about a serious last ditch effort to correct the issue we would have decided to remain at the April 2020 level of economic activity, and cool down from there. Instead we collectively could not wait to get the economy humming again.
The only "solutions" people take seriously are things that require more industrialization and more energy. Certainly green energy can be part of the solution, but only after we massively reduce carbon emissions... which have only gone up.
People can't even collectively agree to wear masks or get vaccinated. Pandemic is wildly easier to solve than climate change, and wildly easier to reason about see and understand, but we absolutely failed. We also collectively learned nothing from pandemic.
A few decades ago people where just as enthusiastic about "Green" movements, and we have seen things only escalate. I understand that bargaining is part of grieving so continue doing what you're doing, but for other out there I think it's important to be honest about the situation.
This is an important point. It's not fruitless to continue to pursue mitigation, but complete mitigation in the sense that we can expect our future lives to look anything like present day is a pipe dream. At this point mitigation is simply damage control. Short of completely miraculous technology, there will be no rewinding this situation. So what that leaves is adaptation and preservation. Learn new ways to live and things to live for, like you were saying before. Preserve what we can of the natural world, even if all that boils down to are fancy zoos and aquariums. Save the genetic code of as many creatures as possible, and freeze it in a vault next to the South Pole. We already have a seed vault but we need more, and that one has been subject to melting and flooding already so we need to do better. It's only when we can clearly admit the scope of the problem that we can pursue the most effective actions at this juncture.
Every society has developed systems of meaning and value to help us individually deal with the fact that we will die and nothing we will have lived for matters. For many societies the future and present where not all that interesting. These societies typically focused on worship of ancestors, and focused on how their daily actions connected them with their past. This develops into more complex systems of religion and spirituality that help give us meaning.
Industrial society has increasingly abandoned these with a new system of meaning: progress. Much of our personal meaning is derived from things like career, contributions to society, our own projects, personal fame etc. We belief we are playing our small part in the future of humanity and that gives us meaning. But now, as that future starts to come into question, so do these essential sources of personal meaning.
The trouble is that we can't trivially go back to older systems. This is the crisis of nihilism we see across America, and people will beat on the empty symbols of blind nationalism, religious extremism etc trying to resurrect lost meaning. This is what Nietzsche was trying to warn us of in his frequently misunderstood "God is dead" aphorism. We have destroyed our old systems of meaning but the new ones we have he correctly saw were fragile, and when they break he knew there would be a crisis.
The comments to view this as grieving are in many ways correct. You can see the stages of grief everywhere:
- denial: "climate change isn't real" or "climate change won't be so bad"
- bargaining: "If we just recycle more, development more green energy, etc we'll be fine!"
- anger: "It's those damn republicans! they did this!"
- depression: "what's the point of doing anything if we're going to lose everything"
The trouble is that getting out this grief isn't as simple because there's no return to normal. The loss is part of our world. One approach is study what the existentialists have talked about, their immediate post-WWII felt similarly lost. My HNers like the stoics which is another path to explore. But either way the long term project is to work on establishing systems of meaning that work for you... else you risk falling into a feverish insanity which I think we'll see more and more common place.