Essay by Eric Worrall
“… We need to leave the age of fossil fuel behind, swiftly and decisively. But what drives our machines won’t change until we change what drives our ideas. …”
‘If you win the popular imagination, you change the game’: why we need new stories on climate
So much is happening, both wonderful and terrible – and it matters how we tell it. We can’t erase the bad news, but to ignore the good is the route to indifference or despair
by Rebecca Solnit
Thu 12 Jan 2023 17.00 AEDTEvery crisis is in part a storytelling crisis. This is as true of climate chaos as anything else. We are hemmed in by stories that prevent us from seeing, or believing in, or acting on the possibilities for change. Some are habits of mind, some are industry propaganda. Sometimes, the situation has changed but the stories haven’t, and people follow the old versions, like outdated maps, into dead ends.
We need to leave the age of fossil fuel behind, swiftly and decisively. But what drives our machines won’t change until we change what drives our ideas. The visionary organiser adrienne maree brown wrote not long ago that there is an element of science fiction in climate action: “We are shaping the future we long for and have not yet experienced. I believe that we are in an imagination battle.”
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To change our relationship to the physical world – to end an era of profligate consumption by the few that has consequences for the many – means changing how we think about pretty much everything: wealth, power, joy, time, space, nature, value, what constitutes a good life, what matters, how change itself happens. …
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There’s yet another narrative that’s persisted at least since the invention of compact fluorescent lightbulbs and the Toyota Prius: that we must renounce abundance and enter an age of austerity. It’s all in the telling. To consider our age an age of abundance, you have to be counting sheer accumulated stuff and ignoring how it is distributed. That is, we live in an age of extreme wealth for some, and desperation for the many. But there’s another way to count wealth and abundance – as hope for the future, safety and public confidence, emotional wellbeing, love and friendship and strong social networks, meaningful work and purposeful lives, equality and justice and inclusion.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/jan/12/rebecca-solnit-climate-crisis-popular-imagination-why-we-need-new-stories
I think what the author is trying to say is if we embrace climate communism, can we feel better about our stuff being redistributed.
I think I’ll keep my toys. If poor people want their own toys, they should get off their butts and work for them.
Significantly, this view has been discredited over and over again. Each and ever variation of it, be it socialism, communism or whatever has proven to be an utter failure. The only exception, Communist China, has essentially survived by turning the productive means of their society over to effective capitalists, while keeping the most abhorrent aspects of communism in place for the rest of their society. Meanwhile, they steal our ideas and use
?resize=720%2C459&ssl=1 slave labor to sell cheap products back to us, while enriching their “Capitalist” sector at the expense of the masses. Idealists, such as the one writing this article are almost always sequestered in an academic cocoon of circular thinking that keeps spouting out this nonsense. Perhaps the only way we can rid ourselves of this menace is to experience the true effects of socialism in America. Then we might realize that what we had in the first place was the best we could expect to have as mortal, imperfect beings that we are.
Actually they haven’t kept their nose out of business. They have encouraged foreign trade at the cost of developing their home market. It’s looking like we are going to enter a world recession and when we do, China will see a serious collapse of their market because they will have nobody to buy their products. The world won’t be be able to afford them and their people won’t want them.
Also they were only able to experience the growth they have seen because of technology theft. If they had to do their own development and pay the cost for that, their growth would have been far less because they money would go into R&D instead of developing the means of production.
China is a government controlled market place but it’s unlike anything that has been tried before.
Well said. China is really a hybrid monster. There is also talk now about China’s economy collapsing; as if we really don’t have to worry anymore. I think that is very wrong thinking. Because their government the CCP doesn’t care how much the people suffer and they have created the tools to control them.
So they as a nation have more “staying power “ to weather a long economic storm than we do. Hard to compete against a country like China where every citizen is potential slave labor.
Michael Ledeen wrote that China was the first mature fascist state, based on it embracing corporatist capitalism directed by the state. This is something he first noted 20 years ago.
https://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen/2011/01/20/china-the-first-mature-fascist-state-n187147
“We are shaping the future we long for and have not yet experienced. I believe that we are in an imagination battle.”
Pretty sure she spelled “imaginary” wrong.
What a lot of phsycobabble á la the codswallop from Jean Paul Sarte. The sad part is these people take themselves seriously.
I once read a story by Jean Paul Sarte. It was really quite execrable.
Reading this woman’s list of recent articles and books, and her biography that hides her education and experience, except to say she is a product of California public education, one can only conclude that she is batsh.t crazy. She knows nothing about anything, but vomits words onto the page with ease.
“But what drives our machines won’t change until we change what drives our ideas. …”
Here is the ‘thinking’ of someone who has absolutely no clue about what drives ideas! It is not a centrally planned thing.
Uh, no. To solve the climate crisis, we just need to ignore it. The climate crisis doesn’t exist. It’s not real. Just ignore it, and it will go away. Like magic.
Weather page still has 350ppm CO2 as the ‘safe level’. Poor saps.
As I’ve noted before, that number came from a robust consensus …
….. of the voices in Bill McKibben’s head.
Rebecca’s essay is replete with first person plural pronouns: “we need” “we can” ” we urgently need” etc.
Who is she referring to, all Solnits, all Guardian writers, all ‘masters of journalism’, all feminist activists?
She doesn’t appear to be living like your average Bolivian.
To solve the climate crisis we simply need to ignore the Guardian (and its BBC offshoot).
Correction. …… how we think about other people’s wealth.
Her little leftist diatribe indicates that she, being a true believer, thinks that better stories (i.e. indoctrination) will get people to stop looking at scientific reality and thus make changes to diminish everybody’s standard of living significantly, while happily chanting marxist slogans. Obviously, Marxism is the opiate of the dumbasses.
You go first.
The usual socialist song&dance that’s guaranteed by the Guardian and BBC, among others, but it’s a safe bet that few people, governments, industries and businesses will pay much attention.
Every crisis is in part a storytelling crisis.
“Once upon a time……………
……….. and they all lived happily after.”
” … and friendship and strong social networks, … “
Well, there goes ‘smart phones’.
If we all wish hard enough, Tinkerbell will come back
one look at all the private jets at davos shows what a joke this is . people like john kerry don’t want the common folk cluttering up their planet
This is one person’s opinion that we should abandon our natural tendencies to try and thrive, reproduce and increase the quality of our lives. I suppose everyone has the right to believe what they want and act on their own inclinations but no-one has the right to force me or anyone else to do the same. NO ONE. It doesn’t matter what fictional stories are concocted about chaos, emergency, climate breakdown. The truth is the truth and no one has measured and proven any deleterious change in our climate let alone shown that we as a civilization are driving such a change.
I will say to the guardian what I say to everyone that mentions the phrase “climate crisis ”
What climate crisis?
Rebecca Solnit’s remarkable article contains: “For too long, the climate fight has been limited to scientists and policy experts. While we need their skills, we also need so much more. When I survey the field, it’s clear that what we desperately need is more artists.“.
I think that means that in spite of having onside virtually every scientific organisation worlwide, every major political party in the western democracies, nearly all the mainstream media and all big business including the tech giants who control social media, they are still losing the argument. I don’t think that adding artists will turn that around. I hope not, anyway.
Why is it that “Greed” is accepted as an excuse by those suffer from “Envy” to take what others have?
Neither are desirable qualities no matter your bank balance.
It is the natural, intrinsic nature of the parasite.
“To consider our age an age of abundance, you have to be counting sheer accumulated stuff and ignoring how it is distributed. That is, we live in an age of extreme wealth for some, and desperation for the many. But there’s another way to count wealth and abundance – as hope for the future, safety and public confidence, emotional wellbeing, love and friendship and strong social networks, meaningful work and purposeful lives, equality and justice and inclusion.”
First, it isn’t “counting sheer accumulated stuff”. The words betray the meme’s behind this. As anyone working at a thrift store, a food bank, a Good Will store, or the Salvation Army can tell you it is the *sharing* of that “accumulated stuff” that works. Not *forced* sharing as Marxism envisions but voluntary sharing. You “accumulate stuff” to make your own life easier and then when you don’t need it then you share it with others. This quote betrays the author as believing human kind is greedy, crass, and selfish – and only Marxism can cure this. It’s a false view of humankind.
Second, “hope for the future, safety” means “accumulating stuff” that contributes to the future and safety via higher productivity by the individual. Again, the words betray the meme’s behind the author’s world view. Ask the plumber or electrician if accumulating the special tools that allows them to do the job with higher quality and shorter work times is a good thing or a bad thing. This applies across the board, even if it is the accumulation of wealth that can be used to invest in productive ventures.