Let the Next Pandemic be Peace
Image: Paul Klee - Tempelgärten - 1920
Editor’s Note: This is the first contribution at the R-Word from a writer other than myself, and marks the beginning of a new phase in The R-Word as an evolving publication. Soon there will be at least several other contributors other than myself. But for now, let us welcome Franco Meteyer to The R-Word.
These tentative, slightly chaotic personal reflections originated from a discussion about a book. The theme of the book is the possibility of reconsidering the non-violent strategies that characterize the climate movement and adopting instead a more robust approach towards “the infrastructural tentacles of fossil fuel capitalism”.
“Sit, be still, and listen, because you are drunk and we are at the edge of the roof.”
- Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī
As I contemplate the green fields of England becoming more and more yellowish and desperately dry during yet another heat wave while large swathes of ancient forests are burning out of control in southern Europe, I mull over the absurdity of climate denialism, the callousness of big oil companies, the criminal indifference of narrowly calculating politicians and their manipulative verbal acrobatics… mind you, so far England is considerably better off than the vast majority of countries that – especially in the global south – are bearing the brunt of this epochal man-made devastation of the ecosystem; but since I live here now, this is what my eyes are witnessing.
Some parts of this park look more and more like the Australian Outback or the Kalahari desert at the moment. This is not an exaggeration: broken, arid soil, sun-bleached shrubs, dried-up leafless tree trunks everywhere, after more than two-and-a-half months without rain and the highest temperatures ever recorded in the UK.
I walk through a wooded, shriveled, but still green area with the two dogs members of my family and I listen to the silence of the woods occasionally interrupted by the strident cacophony of shouts coming from a nearby football field, where apparently all the players in training are yelling at each other at the same time – who knows why – and I notice the contrast between the peace of the forest life and the adrenalinic madness fueled by too much testosterone of the human competitors. Even the dogs appear disturbed, and it seems to me as an unnatural violation of the acoustic harmony of nature.
One of the dogs walking with me is a 16-year-old Labrador with the soul of an explorer, who lives with us since birth, but now that age is catching up with him, our walks are more like little adventures in slow motion. He just follows his nose and stops to smell absolutely everything, most of the time giving the impression of being slightly lost or puzzled by his surroundings. Perhaps peculiarly for a dog, he likes a lot the blackberries that we collect from the woods and still manages to catch a few on the fly when I throw them to him.
The other dog is a small 9-year-old female of mixed origins who grew up as a stray in Romania before being ‘rescued’ by a canine charity and brought to England, where our paths finally crossed when she was already an adult. She has a fierce, courageous character, but she must have had a traumatizing infancy. She gets terrified by the explosion of fireworks, startled by small drones hovering above, the noise of helicopters and revving motorcycles. She freezes when she senses something she doesn’t like, often minutes before I realize what it is. She stops in her tracks and then starts heading back home with her head and tail kept low.
There is a small point here. Seeing the signs of distress in the animals I am most familiar with, makes me realize something that most of the time slips unnoticed in my everyday perception: what a monstrosity against nature a big sprawling city is, what an aggressive, harshly deafening interference with the natural rhythms of life. Surely, there must be better ways to organize our communities without punching our living planet in the face…
We must grow our resilience, and keep learning and consolidating our identification with the strength of the Mother spirit, rather than the weakness of our egos.
This atmosphere of impending doom that we sometimes perceive in the world we share is so depressing. We can be excused from feeling from time to time as shrunken wraiths of what we once were, sensing in our mind, flesh and bones the suffering of our Mother Earth, raped by generations of human hubris. Nevertheless, giving up is not an option. We must grow our resilience, and keep learning and consolidating our identification with the strength of the Mother spirit, rather than the weakness of our egos.
The world is a mirror of our state of mind. It is a choice whether our gaze decides to linger on the darkness or the light, on hating the problem or on endeavoring to find a solution. The world is a mirror of our psyche. We latch on to the images that we choose among the myriad of images we encounter, and then we feed on them. We project our interpretation and we make up the world as we go along. We may choose to see it as a nightmare, a frightening, defeating spectacle of never-ending aberration, or as a learning opportunity, a classroom, and act in it with the strength of our vision and understanding, and the determination of our hope. We may choose to obsess over the unremitting hammering of bad news and surrender to a sense of powerlessness in the face of the overwhelming magnitude of the current predicament, or focus on the marvelous energy emanating from the surging tide of new awareness developing in the youth movements around the world; on the courage, solidarity and resourcefulness of the indigenous communities fighting for the survival of their lands and way of life; on the inventiveness and determination of women, black, brown, Asian, Latino activists and marginalized communities in the heart and fringes of the global system. The world is a mirror. If you read separation into it, it will lead you further onto the path of separation; if you read cooperation into it, it will lead you further towards the path of unity.
This is not to say that reality is entirely subjective and hence a good joint or a glass of wine with friends is going to fix everything, but being aware of the agency of our mind in determining the perception of our reality makes a difference to our attitude.
Individuality as intended by the dominant capitalist paradigm is a bubble, an ephemeral occurrence of circumscribed consciousness imprisoned within the limits of a perception tied to the illusions of linear time and space and the fallacy of human supremacy. Individuality becomes individualism under the aegis of a Western culture suffering from a nightmare of separation.
When we want to act honestly and consistently with our belief in the interconnectedness of reality, we need to remember the limitlessness of nature. Often we are mesmerized by the incessant buzz of too much narrowly ‘factual’ information and our consciousness becomes boxed into the cultural and perceptual patterns that have been grooved into our minds by the boundaries of the world we see around us. Houses, roads, static imposing intrusive shapes limiting our imagination and imprisoning our sensitivity into heavy straight jackets of habits, asphyxiated crawling despair, or the compulsive vehemence of wanting to shape things in a particular way, applying our ideas of social engineering to the new society that we want to bring about.
There is a link between certainty and extremism. Certainty can lead to extreme stances, and anger is a self-justifying force, hence a healthy amount of self-questioning and constant scrutiny of our preconceptions is always necessary.
“A myriad bubbles were floating on the surface of a stream. ’What are you?' I cried to them as they drifted by. 'I am a bubble, of course' nearly a myriad bubbles answered, and there was surprise and indignation in their voices as they passed. But, here and there, a lonely bubble answered, 'We are this stream', and there was neither surprise nor indignation in their voices, but just a quiet certitude.”
- Wei Wu Wei
So we come to the idea of active engagement, militancy, resistance, and the conundrum of violence. The mind floats there, inevitably, spurred by a sense of indignation and frustration. Every sane human being will probably feel anger at some level when faced with the spectacle of what a minority of powerful individuals and organizations is inflicting upon the whole planet.
Radical reactions will unavoidably happen. Ultimately the question of violence is transcended by the inevitability of the surge instigated by the brutal repression of dissent, the blatant exploitation of people and nature, the perversion of the natural balance over many centuries, and the recent dramatic acceleration. Humanity has built dams: tangible, imposing dams, carving and scarring the body of Gaia to harness her wildness, and metaphorical dams, cultural grooves that have become dominant, creeping inside our notions of what is possible, of what is normal, right or wrong, and have limited the scope of our imagination. Who can now blame the wave bursting through the crumbling concrete structures, or the raw yearning for rebellion erupting from our imprisoned consciousness with the impetus of an inexorable certainty?
“Oh what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and equinox. This is what is the matter with us, we are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is a grinning mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of life, and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table.”
- D.H. Lawrence
The wave will come. It is not in our power to control it. The energy that will trigger it has been put in motion already by the violence of capitalism. When the collective consciousness senses that something is unequivocally out of place, it makes its voice heard in many powerful ways. Let's be clear: violence is in the system, in the ideology of profit and unlimited development on a finite planet, in the commodification of nature, in the cult of individualism and human supremacy. I remember the words of the French socialist Jean Jaurès: "Capitalism carries war like a cloud carries rain”. Little did he know that his climatic metaphor would become all too literal less than a hundred years later.
But when we ponder on violence as a possible tool of eco-activism, we realize that on the individual level it is often a shortcut, a release of inner tension, an illusory quick fix motivated more by our own sense of indignation and frustration rather than by soundly rational strategizing.
Also, is violence ever morally justifiable? I am asking this question to myself, not because I presume that my individual sensitivity – whatever that means – is the gauge of objective reality – whatever that means – but because I am responsible for my ideas, feelings and actions.
I strongly believe that the private is political and that every choice we make has an effect on the collective sphere. Everybody is ‘in politics’, whether consciously or unconsciously, and to paraphrase one of those fascinating chaos theory quotes, ‘the plastic bottle that I buy and carelessly throw away after my picnic in Dorset will kill a shoal of fish in the South Pacific.’
So, I wonder, could I engage in a violent action if I thought that it would help the cause I believe in, or could I endorse the actions of somebody else who does it? What is the frame of reference that I should keep in mind when evaluating the legitimacy and the repercussions of my actions? Should I use a compass of morality, practical effectiveness, political and social impact, historical justification and precedents, or all of the above?
In general, I know that the logic of Machiavellianism needs to be reversed: for me, the means qualify the end, and not vice versa. The means and the end are really the same. The way we go about building the society that we want will mark indelibly the quality, spirit, and ethos of that society. On the other hand, I am aware of the limitations of verbal language and the linear utterances of rational reasoning. Very often only a poetic, intuitive apprehension of reality is barely adequate to hint at its complexity. In other words, nothing is ever black or white in this world. Nevertheless, let us try to see more clearly into this.
The issue of violence can be highly controversial, and even a clear, shared definition of what constitutes violence is not easy to come up with. All this can perhaps be confusing, but it doesn’t need to be. I am not so naïve to pretend that the subject can be exhausted with a few quick notes, but in my opinion, it all comes down to how strongly we believe that human nature is intrinsically cooperative rather than selfish. To the extent that we are convinced of this, we will be prepared to embody and model uncompromisingly our values of peacefulness, regardless of the obstacles and the circumstances.
We need to show alternative solutions to reach a wide enough social consensus and interest in new models of survival for organized society.
I think it is important to watch with total honesty our inner motivations, not because we want to indulge ourselves in psychologism or goody-goody New Age posturing, but because motivations are hidden causes that will produce tangible effects. Our hands must get dirty in constructing the new structures and infrastructures that will maintain our living together sustainably, but our heads must stay above the battleground and remain clear in the coherence of our spiritual beliefs. We must concentrate on being the change we want to see on our doorsteps and in the world, stepping lightly, with reverence for all life, building independently our communities and ways of life without waiting for our so-called 'representatives' in government to measure up.
When I visualize the possibility of engaging in violent action, the very thought engenders sadness in me. I feel that it is motivated by anger and fear, that it comes from an anthropocentric arrogance and toxically masculine delusion of being ‘the custodian’, the one who should redress the balance. Well, that is my personal feeling, and I expect that there are different ways to look at this. But certainly, a decision to use radical, forceful, drastic means of resistance and disruption should not come from a self-righteous minority, however much they see themselves as representatives and vanguards of popular sentiment. Such a view rests on the elitist underestimation of the capacity of human nature to reject aberration.
Just an example among many possible others: what needs to be generated is a widespread rejection of the petrol-guzzling, fossil fuel based projects, structures and machines that capitalism is endlessly spouting out. We need to make the larger picture clearer, to point out the short-sightedness and suicidal absurdity of such projects, the moral unacceptability of putting profit above life, and above all we need to show alternative solutions to reach a wide enough social consensus and interest in new models of survival for organized society. New models that will rest on sustainability and harmony with the natural world rather than ‘development’, new models evidenced by myriads of examples of viable experiences and local initiatives, creating a new sense of social cohesion, vibrancy and pointing to a new sustainable social homeostasis thanks to the evidence of the possible.
We need acceptance – which is not the same as passivity – and faith in the inherent integrity and sense of cooperation of our brothers and sisters. We need amor fati, an organic serenity in tune with the flow of nature as the basis of our ecological militancy, and trust that life regulates itself... not necessarily on our watch.
It is probably a fair thing to say that our divorce from the sense of interconnectedness with the whole of life, and the loss of reverence for all the manifestations of life, began with the individualization and anthropomorphization of God, the invention of a figurehead representing ourselves in superhuman form and controlling the machinery of nature – the God of the Ego – separated and commanding, establishing rules, hierarchies, destroying the deviants.
Violence is the language of the dominator culture, the language of trauma, and dehumanizes both the giver and the receiver. Peacefulness is contagious because it resonates with the deepest layers of our nature.
As we are trying to change the cultural paradigm underlying the way we live, foster a spiritual, moral and philosophical reflection, and facilitate an ideological and structural shift of systemic proportions, we should realize that we can only do so if we manage to mirror coherently, in our attitudes and practice, that space of inner clarity, stillness and openness to the other that we cultivate inside.
We know that violence destroys the sense of community, polarizes and antagonizes people. Violence is the language of the dominator culture, the language of trauma, and dehumanizes both the giver and the receiver. It could be argued that – as long as we draw a line and make it clear that harming human lives is wrong and out of the question – sabotaging the machinery and the infrastructure that brings so much destruction to the living world is not violence. But the fact remains that it is perceived by many as such, and in any case, it can never be absolutely guaranteed that a materially destructive action started with the best of intentions will not escalate or get out of hand and cause damage to life.
We must act from a state of inner peacefulness. Peacefulness is contagious, because it resonates with the deepest layers of our nature, and can win over the vast majority of people, beyond allegiances to ideology and particular interests or points of view. We just have to remember the mass movement that led to the independence of India from the British colonial power, or the end of apartheid in South Africa and the process of ‘truth and reconciliation’. Of course, both these processes had their contradictions. Appalling violence flared up during a long struggle that was, in the main, characterized by a spirit of justice. The desire for peace and justice – inspired by the example of remarkable leading figures like Gandhi, Mandela, and Desmond Tutu among others – was the unifying force behind the momentum that sustained and informed the struggle.
I know this is probably a very futile form of day-dreaming, but sometimes I wonder in what way a new, ecological society will decide to deal with the psychopaths who have so remorselessly destroyed our world: the shadowy CEOs and managing directors of the unaccountable global corporations, the narcissistic billionaires who waste enormous resources to go into space on their private penis-rockets while keeping their workers on starvation wages and appalling working conditions, the mainstream media tycoons, the oligarchs of every nationality even when they call themselves ‘entrepreneurs’, the cynically manipulative presidents, prime ministers, the cunning politicians of all sorts, and the plethora of bureaucrats, functionaries, advisers, strategic military commanders, arm dealers… and so on and so forth.
As a person who believes in the inherent benignity of creation and the ultimate unity of reality, I prefer to redefine the concept of ‘sin’ as ‘mistake’ – dissonant notes in the harmony of the cosmos – and I am inclined to interpret cynicism, blatant disregard and lack of empathy with the other as a result of psychological traumas, mental illness, spiritual malaise coming from self-hatred. But I have to admit that the desire to forgive vacillates in front of the utter indignation that the criminal actions of these people elicit: these persons whose psyche seems stuck in infancy, but whose position of power in the capitalist hierarchy allows them to inflict devastating wounds on the body of society and the natural world.
What will the new, ecological society founded on love, sisterhood and brotherhood and the consciousness of interconnectedness with all life decide to do with the morally sick human remnants of an age of folly and destruction, the obstinate upholders of a system that is showing so dramatically its ethical bankruptcy and its abysmal irrationality? I like to think that this future, just society will be capable of forgiveness. They will be isolated, ostracized, disempowered certainly, and expropriated of the fruits of their criminal activities – which will be redistributed and reconverted in the global community for the benefit of the whole web of life. I like to imagine that the new society will practice accountability for all, but without the need for punishment and revenge. Eventually, some of them might be able to be reintegrated within local communities, to the extent that they will be able to embrace the ethos of commonality. But this is a flight of fantasy, at the moment.
As for now, the capitalist weltanschauung and institutions are rapidly losing legitimacy at the level of their values and ideas, and more and more people – from the global south to the center of the empire – are coming face to face with the realization that the current trajectory is both unsustainable and morally indefensible. Most people know that it is leading to self-destruction.
Conversely, the industrial-legislative-military complex is overwhelmingly powerful at the level of its ability to impose ever more drastic limitations on liberty and self-organization, and the powers that be can – and will – become increasingly vicious in their dying spasms… until a critical mass of awareness is reached and the shift in consciousness grows deeper roots and flourishes through the expansion of self-sustaining communal initiatives, localized but linked by a global project of solidarity.
Are there historical precedents when the use of popular violence achieved its political objective? Of course, there are many – but let’s look at the evolution of those experiences in context – how limited were these objectives, how did they develop, what structures, what society, what culture and societal spirit did they create? If you look for historical precedents to legitimize an inclination toward revolutionary violence, you will find scores of examples, but then you have to ask yourself: is violence ever really revolutionary? Does it ever change the deep quality of society and human relationships, or is it just about overthrowing a form of governance for another without mutating its content, culture and character? We need to evaluate this, not only against criteria of practical and political effectiveness but also based on our moral compass and spiritual beliefs.
And of course, there are also innumerable instances when revolutionary violence failed to achieve the objective and only led to more brutal repression, bloodbaths and consolidation of the existing power.
So we have to ask ourselves: is real change mature? Do we have faith that it is inevitable?
Needless to say that in this case, in this day and age we seem to be so close to ‘the point of no return’ that complete catastrophe and extinction of any trace of human civilization is also possible… If it is any consolation, the planet will eventually heal itself in new forms – without us. Perhaps we should keep an open mind about this possibility, without any arrogance, any presumption that human existence is the highest value, and human consciousness is the most elevated. That is just hubris.
But in the meanwhile, we are life in the middle of life that wants to live, so we focus on how to.
The movement has a range of proactive strategies available, from civil disobedience to exposing, demonstrating against, and obstructing initiatives that further compromise life by abusing Mother Nature. Above all, the movement for change needs to engage in what is sometimes referred to as prefigurative direct action, working more and more to build and sustain micro-initiatives that make a qualitative difference in people’s everyday life, reflecting the spirit, values, relationships and modes of organization of the new society emerging within the decaying skin of the old, bypassing the elitist, bureaucratic, centralized ‘representative’ institutions and creating expressions of direct, participative democracy. We have to “build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete”. And that should be the real cornerstone of climate activism.
And it needs always to be remembered that violence is wrong above all because it feels wrong. It is a discordant cry against our nature. It is delusional and counterproductive as a tactical tool, always leading to escalation, and it reflects the vicious circle of the dichotomy between the perceptually separated ego and the embedded / symbiotic / collective Self. I think it is our responsibility to move beyond this false dilemma and to continue developing the new language of creativity in cooperation, within the framework of the spiritual wisdom embedded in indigenous cultures throughout the world.
Capitalism infantilizes ‘the masses’, and makes human beings into ‘consumers’, depriving us of our personhood, and cutting off our roots from the soil of nature. It is up to all of us to set ourselves free from the iron chrysalis of the dominant culture and become adults, independent from the suffocating toxicity of a culture built on fear, aggression, exploitation, and supremacy.
If the proverbial, enlightened aliens from outer space should arrive and take a look at our world, hegemonized by the so-called western civilization, they would probably shake their big green heads, smile knowingly, and conclude that our species lives in the prehistory of consciousness.
The 'green movement' is a composite of multiple ideologies and points of view. Many don't even question capitalism and the dominator exploitative culture as the root cause of the environmental crisis. The scope of their militancy is well within the boundaries of the system, which they take as a given. But capitalism, in particular its rampant version of neoliberalism, has a way of messing it all up by its very mode of existence, and a critical mass of people is coalescing over a sense of outrage for the atrocious consequences of this absurdly consumerist way of life.
Let us do our best, in our circumstances, to transform this outrage into a positive mindset: a new way of thinking that prioritizes real transformation of the way we live on this beautiful planet that we share with all life.