Keep acting this way? Or a call for social revolution?

Good week to all of you,

In his book “Guerras Climáticas” (Climate Wars – quoted several times in these newspapers), Harald Welzer makes some cold, raw and tremendously realistic considerations on the strategy of KEEPING-ACTING-THIS-WAY (like he defines it) regarding global issues. In other words, the possibility of not doing anything respecting the destruction of our planet.

At this point, we already know the key points of our failures:

• Our extractive economy,
• Our consumer life philosophy,
• Our theatrical politics,
• Our rusty educational system,
• Our fossil fuel exploitation,
• Our Precambrian laws…

All of these processes occur at the expense of other dehumanizing processes which the common citizen is not aware of or forgets.

“They are not processes which occur in the scenery of social life, but behind the scenes of the networks that underlay them and, in that sense, such negative measures lack the potential to shock the citizens and do not raise problems in the field of political action”

The common citizen does not know, does not listen, does not see… the common citizen is not informed; the truth about the cost of his subsidized life is hidden from him. It is hidden, because the consequences of a global mass of indignant people manifesting themselves against the system could stop the inertia of the chaos in which we are immersed.

“But everything may go over well for a couple of decades, and for those who now are part of the middle-aged – and who ultimately constitute the hard core of the elite of politicians-keep-acting-this-way, within all, can be considered the most rational strategy when it comes to taking action.”

Which would be a sad, coward and pathetic excuse by our current decision makers, who unscrupulously think: I won’t do anything… because the system will collapse in a couple of years, but I will no longer hold the power when that day comes and, hence, I cannot be blamed, because everybody has short term thinking, and do not see what is going on from the outside, and do not perceive that my actions are digging everybody’s grave.

And those who govern us have another thing in favor: political representation, the public office and the political party, do not have a feeling of the individual. And they do not feel what is going on.  If reality was to be brought to the consciousness of the individual, we would feel that things are not OK at all.

The strategy of KEEPING-ACTING-THIS-WAY “also looks smart because it does not raise moral problems: the one who negotiates with the national state is not a single actor, but representational, and in the context of negotiations between countries, individual categories of behavior such as selfishness, lack of consideration or indolence are irrelevant. Any country can act like a pig without changing at all its negotiation power within the international network.”

“But if you imagine the strategy of keeping-acting-this-way being transferred to the sphere of the individual, the image presented immediately to the eye is that of a person with sociopathic traits who has no kind of problem in winning 70 times more than the rest of the people and consumes its raw materials in  large quantities, and, therefore, consumes 15 times more energy, water and food, and that, compared to other more disadvantaged people, returns to the environment 9 times more contaminants.

In addition, this sociopathic person shows a categorical lack of interest towards his children and grandchildren’s life conditions and agrees that, because of him and other people of his same condition, 852 million people worldwide suffer from hunger and over 200 million are forced to flee from their native lands.”

How would we all react –individually and then collectively– when we get to know the truth? And I am referring to those who CAN and MUST do something about it. Those who were lucky and had the chance of being born with a roof on top of them, food and education. Where are we standing in all of this? Those who think they are NOT in position of generating change should think it twice and read this newsletter about it, written months ago.

Erich Fromm, in “Del Tener Al Ser” (From having to being), states it spectacularly well:

 “Unless I can analyze the unconscious aspects of the society in which I live, I will not know who I am, because I will not know what part of me is not mine.”

Blunt. And off to think about it…

Global Hug,

Brian Longstaff.-

Pd. Excepting the last quote, the rest of them were extracted from “Climate Wars. Why do we kill (and will be killed) in the XXI century”. Harald Welzer. Katz Editores, Spain, 2010. Pages 289 y 290.

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