ELEVEN. April 1st 2020
I’m surprised to note that about 3 months has gone past already since I last found the energy or inclination to post. A by-product of life as a more-or-less full time activist seems to be a very poor sense of time passing, so that in the main the last 15 months period seems to have taken about 15 years. But as things actually slowed down in the new year when I stepped back from some things in recognition of being seriously ’burnt out’, time apparently began to pass faster.
This was all before the coronavirus crisis started up properly, which has inevitably put the brakes on even more, as it has for most people. Although I’m enjoying the peace, quiet and slow pace for now, I’ve a feeling this could start to be a lot more difficult for all of us eventually , so I guess it will be good if I am able to retain the sense of time passing quickly while there is not so much to do.
Curiously enough, as the world and its systems of maintenance teeter on the edge of collapse and breakdown, I’m feeling quite a lot healthier. This might well be a simple coincidence of timing, but then again it might not. It could be that, as the anxiety and the sense of urgency and alarm typically felt by activists (or climate change activists, at least) is more widely experienced, albeit for other reasons, we calm down a bit. It was definitely my view as a therapist that the disturbance exhibited by individuals is often the outcome of unacknowledged and unaddressed dysfunction in their environment and that if this could be resolved – or at least identified and named – their chances of getting better would improve.
I’m not saying that coronavirus has anything directly to do with the climate and ecological crisis but I certainly think it is revealing some worrying realities; for instance about the lack of resilience in our globalised society and the speed with which trouble and chaos can be created and spread from natural occurrences about which we hadn’t worried and for which we hadn’t prepared as much as we should have done. It is also pointing up some potentially cheering evidence that people are, after all, perfectly able and willing to act as if there is an emergency and to stop flying all over the globe and burning fossil fuels in various ways like there is no tomorrow when they feel sufficiently motivated and shown a modicum of political leadership. (And a modicum is all we are getting).
I think that the virus has possibly freed me and some of my colleagues in various ways; aside from the obvious one of being able to have a bit of a rest because mass demonstrations aren’t a good idea for the foreseeable future. There was a bloke called Bradshaw who wrote about family systems and highlighted the role of the “problem holder”, who tends to cause quite a lot of trouble and to become the focus of ‘treatment’ unless and until the others in the system wake up to the dysfunction and start taking responsibility. The fact that practically everyone is currently behaving with awareness and responsibility regarding the greater good gives us a bit of a break, My guess is that quite a few ordinary members of the public allow themselves to assume that climate activists – particularly the kind that sit in the road and get themselves arrested – are somehow irresponsible; but in fact I have never encountered such a responsible group of people in my life. Evidence for this responsible attitude is that our movement was pretty much way ahead of the eventual ban on gatherings, cancelling even small local actions and meetings some time before it became official advice.
To be fair, almost everyone seems to have been ahead of our government. as far as its precautionary approach to the health issues are concerned. There’s a poem foretelling anarchy (‘The Second Coming’) in which W B Yeats includes dark and foreboding phrases like “things fall apart” and “the centre cannot hold” and in which he goes on to say that
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of a passionate intensity.”
For me this pretty much sums up the image of our so-called Prime Minister as his gruesome visage has filled ever larger amounts of the TV screen each day and he has struggled visibly to make contact with and to convey an authentic semblance of dignity, courage and wisdom.
Fortunately, for now at least, the great British public is pulling together in some fashion. This is probably not quite as much as the media, attached to a simple romantic narrative, would have us believe. I remember that when Diana died, if you read the papers you might have thought that the streets of London were flowing with tears whereas in fact the evidence of one’s own eyes was that most people were just going about their lives as usual. There is the palpable sense of a wind of change, however. As the scale of the emergency and the kinds of steps necessary to deal with it dawned unevenly across the population, I was aware of a couple of acquaintances who, ahead in the awareness stakes and urging friends to be more disciplined in their behaviour, remarked that they now understood a little better how I often feel. I wasn’t in the vanguard on this occasion and was in fact one of those needing to be told what to do. (Another learning from this crisis which my movement will need to highlight when the time is right is that we simply can’t expect everybody to change their behaviour in line with the common good – we need some leadership and some rules). It was a relief not to be in the front seat and it is a relief now to feel that, again for the time-being at least, we are all activists.
Of course this is a curious sort of activism, characterised as it is by dong not very much at all. Those bursts of togetherness and noisy activity which do take place are largely happening on virtual platforms like Zoom. Spending a lot of time monitoring phone chats and talking to people on zoom meetings is, interestingly, another way in which the life of the average person is now more closely resembling that of the average activist; who, as it happens, is probably doing a fair bit less of it.
There is definitely something to do, nevertheless, and this is to prepare for action when the time is right. I think that this action, whatever form it takes, needs to be focused very precisely upon the learning from the current crisis and the opportunities it presents . Those who have read Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine” will be familiar with the idea that after most international crises in recent times (like the Gulf war, tsunamis, 9/11, and of course the financial crash of 2008 although the book was written before that) a certain political lobby has been ready with its agenda of tax-cutting, decreased public spending and ownership, international bullying, increased inequality, austerity, etc) to exploit the situation for its own ends. The environmental lobby has to be equally ruthless, to make sure that this time is our time; the second coming, not of some dystopian nightmare as envisaged in Yeats’ poem but of rational, sane and basically kind government by and for the people, led by rational, sane and kind people rather than crackpots.
I’ve heard quite a few friends now – not generally activists themselves although sympathetic to the climate cause – say that they confidently expect things to change for the better after this. I’m more cautious. It’s easy to forget when you are feeling inspired and enthusiastic that hard work and some difficult choices need to be engaged with if the energy from moments of awakening is to be channeled into real change. It’s worth remembering how many people went around saying the UK had changed irrevocably for the better after the euphoria and optimism associated with the 2012 London Olympics. Within 4 years we had the misery and discord of Brexit and a few years later the awfulness of Johnson and his cronies. Expanded consciousness is pretty useless without Will and can be even harmful in leaving a legacy of disappointment and disillusionment if not acted upon with resolve and determination. We can end up feeling that we are simply incapable of learning from experience.
I’m still stumbling on with reading ‘A Short History of England” (as it it happens I’ve just got to to the mid 17th century century, just before the plague) and I have to say that if offers very little encouragement for any view that progress is made through the intelligent application of induction. It is, to this point, and at least so far as political leadership and decision-making are concerned, a tale of almost unmitigated stupidity, barbarism and waste.
I know that an obvious retort to this is that life in the 21st century, whatever its shortcomings, is a whole lot more pleasant than life in the dark ages and that the mid seventeenth century is correspondingly a better time than the centuries which preceded it and a worse one than those that succeeded it. Because the book concentrates so much on the behaviour of those in positions of power and privilege, which is in nearly every case crass, selfish and frankly absurd, it doesn’t really illuminate quite how actual progress and development has been achieved. What we need to notice, I think, is that this ‘progress’ is in fact driven by the initiative and efforts of ordinary citizens (actually quite a few of them extraordinary people, but the point is people not born or elevated into positions of political power) and carried forward by sometimes subtle and sometimes overt forces of collective will.
In other words, it’s down to us. Progress depends precisely upon how many of us and to what extent are willing to become and to remain activists. It would be dangerous and irresponsible to assume that the population as a whole is going to come to what seems at the moment like the obvious conclusions and exert their political will accordingly at the ballot box. Alongside the evidence that people do indeed seem more open and awake to ideas about environmental sustainability and socio-economic justice one needs to consider the fact that, for instance, Donald Trump has grown more popular in the USA in recent weeks even whilst manifesting in the starkest terms his gross unsuitability for office. Let’s not make the naive mistake of assuming that either political leaders or those they lead will behave rationally
There are of course openings, unexpected opportunities, acts of nature, unexplained forces, and these can generate feedback loops, cascades and movements for change as powerful in a social sense as those which are feared by campaigners and scientists as likely to create unstoppable climate breakdown; but this will only be the case if a decent number of us get on the same side and push in the right direction.
In my psychotherapy training days I remember feeling enlightened and uplifted by the idea that disturbance was essentially a good thing. It can be a difficult idea to hang onto. It requires faith. It also requires paying attention to what’s happening and exercising judgement about the right intervention at the right time. The idea is to bring about breakthrough rather than breakdown. Yeats’ poem says
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”, and then
“Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”.
The implication is that the centre needs to be pretty robust in order to manage in turbulent times. A casual survey of those in the centres of political power right now does not give grounds for optimism. If we are going to come through this and emerge whole on the other side I think we are going to have to stay active, in much greater numbers and with greater determination. However we do it, we need to get in the centre somehow, and stay there. If it’s true that there is a new collective spirit then we need to work consciously to hang onto it and make it count.. The leaders aren’t going to change. If it’s true that the people have changed, then the people need to be the leaders.
A Reluctant Activist 